All sich es follers burnin' down a pore man's happy home,
Will hev ter reck ther Bear Cat's wrath an' no more free ter roam."
And perhaps as the lass listened, she wondered if her own home-spun cavalier might not be going straight from her door to one of those mysterious meetings where oath-bound men gathered in awful and spectral conclave.
Sometimes, too, it was not only a song but an actual sight as well, which made the flesh creep along the scalp. Sometimes out of the distances came, first low and faint, then swelling into fulness that chorus of male voices along the breeze, and after it came the sight of a long serpent of light crawling the highways.
Through doors opened only to slits wondering eyes peered out into the blackness while that mysterious procession passed, seemingly an endless line of torches shining on black horsemen riding in single file.
When the singing ended and the night-riders went in silence they were even more awe-inspiring and ghost-like than before—and, except by remembering that the man of the house was absent, no woman could guess who any member of the train might be, for they passed with hat brims bent low and black masks coming down to their black slickers, and even their horses were swathed in flowing coverings of the same inky disguise. They were torch-lit silhouettes riding the night, but when they passed, those who saw them knew that some task was being accomplished in which the law had failed and that somewhere black dread would deservedly strike.
Kinnard Towers himself, racking his brain, took a less romantic view, but one of equal concern.
"Hit's done got beyond a hurtful pest now," he grumbled to Black Tom as the two of them sat over their pipes. "Ther longer he goes on unchecked ther more an' more fools will flock ter him. He's gittin' ther people behind him an' hit's a-spreadin' like hawg cholera amongst young shoats."
"Does ye 'low they're all Stacys—or air thar some of our own kin mixed in with 'em?" queried Tom anxiously, and because he, too, had been pondering that vexing question, the Towers leader shook his head moodily.
"Thar hain't no possible way of tellin'. They seems ter possess a means of smellin' a man thet hain't genu-winely fer 'em an' sich-like kain't git inter no meetin's ter find out nothin'."