A strange race of aquatic pioneers, jeans and leather clad, the rifle and the setting-pole equally theirs, they came out of every stream down which a scow could be thrust at flood-time; from tiny settlements far back among the hills; from those bustling sinks of iniquity, the river towns.  But now, surely, yet almost imperceptibly, their commerce was slipping from them.  At all the landings they were being elbowed by the newcomers—­men who wore brass buttons and gold braid, and shiny leather shoes instead of moccasins; men with white hands and gold rings on their fingers and diamonds in their shirts—­men whose hair and clothing kept the rancid smell of oil and smoke and machinery.

After the reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was.  But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty.  He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years before, and in the churchyard he had found the graves and read the inscriptions that recorded the virtues of certain dead and gone Carringtons.  It had all seemed a very respectable link with the past.

He was on his way to Fayetteville, where he intended to spend the night, and perhaps a day or two in looking around, when the meeting with Betty and Murrell occurred.  As Murrell disappeared in the direction of Balaam’s, Carrington took a spiteful kick at the unoffending coin, and strode off down the Fayetteville pike.  But the girl’s face remained with him.  It was a face he would like to see again.  He wondered who she was, and if she lived in the big house on the other road, the house beyond the red gate which Charley Balaam had told him was called the Barony.

He was still thinking of the girl when he ate his supper that night at Cleggett’s Tavern.  Later, in the bar, he engaged his host in idle gossip.  Mr. Cleggett knew all about the Barony and its owner, Nat Ferris.  Ferris was a youngish man, just married.  Carrington experienced a quick sinking of the heart.  A fleeting sense of humor succeeded—­had he interfered between man and wife?  But surely if this had been the case the girl would not have spoken as she had.

He wound Mr. Cleggett up with sundry pegs of strong New England rum.  He had met a gentleman and lady on the road that day; he wondered, as he toyed with his glass, if it could have been the Ferrises?  Mounted?  Yes, mounted.  Then it was Ferris and his wife—­or it might have been Captain Murrell and Miss Malroy the captain was a strapping, black-haired chap who rode a big bay horse.  Miss Malroy did not live in that part of the country; she was a friend of Mrs. Ferris’, belonged in Kentucky or Tennessee, or somewhere out yonder—­at any rate she was bringing her visit to an end, for Ferris had instructed him to reserve a place for her in the north-bound stage on the morrow.