The night before, John Burnham had gone down to the capital to see Jason.  All that day he had been hardly able to keep his mind on book or student, all day he had kept recalling how often the boy had asked him about this or that personage in history who had sought to win liberty for his people by slaying with his own hand some tyrant.  He knew what part politics, the awful disregard of human life, and the revengeful spirit of the mountains had played in the death of the autocrat, but he knew also that if there was in that mountain army that had gone to the capital the fearful, mistaken, higher spirit of the fanatic it was in the breast of Jason Hawn.  He believed, however, that in the boy the spirit was all there was, and that the deed must have been done by some hand that had stolen the cloak of that spirit to conceal a malicious purpose.  Coming out of his class-room, he had seen Gray, whose face showed that he was working with the same bewildering, incredible problem.  Outside Marjorie had halted him and tremblingly told him of Jason’s long-given promise and how he had taken it back; and so as he drove to the country that afternoon his faith in Jason was miserably shaken and a sickening fear for the boy possessed him.  He was hardly aware he had reached his own gate, so lost in thought was he all the way, until his horse of its own accord stopped in front of it, and then he urged it on with a sudden purpose to go to Jason’s mother.  On top of the hill he stopped again, for Marjorie’s carriage was turning into the lane that led to Martha Hawn’s house.  His kindly purpose had been forestalled and with intense relief he turned back on his heart-sick way homeward.

With Marjorie, too, it had been a sudden thought to go to Jason’s mother, but as she drew near the gate she grew apprehensive.  She had not been within the house often and then only for a moment to wait for Mavis.  She had always been half-fearful and ill at ease with the sombre-faced woman who always searched her with big dark eyes whose listlessness seemed but to veil mysteries and hidden fires.  As she was getting out of her carriage she saw Martha Hawn’s pale face at the window.  She expected the door to be opened, as she climbed the steps, but it was not, and when she timidly knocked there was no bid to enter.  She was even about to turn away bewildered and indignant when the door did open and a forbidding figure stood before her

“Mavis has gone down to see her pappy.”

“Yes, I know—­but I thought I’d come—­”

She halted helplessly.  She did not know that knocking was an unessential formality in the hills; she did not realize that it was her first friendly call on Martha Hawn; and curiously enough the mountain woman became at that moment the quicker of the two.

“Come right in and set down,” she said with a sudden change of manner.  “Rest yo’ hat thar on the bed, won’t you?”