and each wore a tag for safe-keeping in his button-hole.  Around the Greek portico of the capitol building he saw more soldiers lounging, and near a big fountain in the State-house yard was a Gatling-gun which looked too little to do much harm.  Everywhere were the stern, determined faces of mountain men, walking the streets staring at things, shuffling in and out of the buildings; and, through the iron pickets of the yard fence, Jason saw one group cooking around a camp-fire.  A newspaper man was setting his camera for them and the boy saw a big bearded fellow reach under his blanket.  The photographer grasped his instrument and came flying through the iron gate, crying humorously, “Excuse me!”

And then Jason ran into Steve Hawn, who looked at him with mild wonder and, without a question, drawled simply: 

“I kind o’ thought you’d be along.”

“Is grandpap here?” asked the boy, and Steve shook his head.

“He was too po’ly—­but thar’s more Hawns and Honeycutts in town than you kin shake a stick at, an’ they’re walkin’ round hyeh jes like brothers.  Hello, hyeh’s one now!”

Jason turned to see big Babe Honeycutt, who, seeing him, paled a little, smiled sheepishly, and, without speaking, moved uneasily away.  Whereat Steve laughed.

“Looks like Babe is kind o’ skeered o’ you fer some reason—­Hello, they’re comin’!”

A group had gathered on the brick flagging between the frozen fountain and the Greek portico of the old capitol, and every slouching figure was moving toward it.  Among them Jason saw Hawns and Honeycutts—­saw even his old enemy, “little Aaron” Honeycutt, and he was not even surprised, for in a foot-ball game with one college on the edge of the Blue-grass, he had met a pair of envious, hostile eyes from the side-lines and he knew then that little Aaron, too, had gone away to school.  From the habit of long hostility now, Jason swerved to the other edge of the crowd.  From the streets, the boarding-houses, the ancient Capitol Hotel, gray, too, as a prison, from the State buildings in the yard, mountaineers were surging forth and massing before the capitol steps and around the big fountain.  Already the Democrats had grown hoarse with protest and epithet.  It was an outrage for the Republicans to bring down this “mountain army of intimidationists”—­and only God knew what they meant to do or might do.  The autocrat might justly and legally unseat a few Republicans, to be sure, but one open belief was that these “unkempt feudsmen and outlaws” would rush the legislative halls, shoot down enough Democrats to turn the Republican minority, no matter how small, into a majority big enough to enforce the ballot-proven will of the people.  Wild, pale, horrified faces began to appear in the windows of the houses that bordered the square and in the buildings within the yard—­perhaps they were going to do it now.  Every soldier stiffened where he stood and caught his gun tightly, and once