More astonished than ever, Governor Clark said, "Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Liles?"
With a shake of the head, "Jay-bird" said that he had traveled all night and upon reaching the city had come straight to the governor. The governor at once took him in, gave him his breakfast, and told him to go over to the capitol, until he could learn more about the case.
Ten hours later, the sheriff came by stage and soon found "Jay-bird" at the governor's office. When the sheriff introduced himself to Governor Clark, the governor immediately asked if it was a fact that this man, condemned to a year of confinement and hard work in the penitentiary, had trudged on foot alone all the way from Lewis County. When told it was just as "Jay-bird" had said, the governor, in amazement, asked, "Is the man crazy? Couldn't he have escaped?"
"Easily, and all the sheriffs, constables, and rewards could never have caught him. No, 'Jay-bird' is not simple; he is only honest." The governor was so interested he asked for all the details.
Then "Uncle Buck" told of the fight, the trial, and the conviction, of how "Jay-bird" had kept his word when permitted to go to say good-by to his loved ones, of his long life of honesty and hospitality, and of how he had begged to come alone on foot to Frankfort, rather than as a common, convicted felon.
With a heart heaving with emotion and eyes dim with tears, the executive hastily affixed his name and the seal of the commonwealth to a small piece of paper, and, handing it to Larkin Liles, said in a husky voice, "Mr. Liles, go home to your family and kiss the little ones for me. You shall never enter the penitentiary while Clark is governor of Kentucky."
THE "PRIDE OF THE PENNYRILE"[3]
It is eminently proper that the metropolis of "Jackson's Purchase" should bear a name of Indian origin. Although the greater part of Kentucky, with its fertile meadowlands, towering forests, and tangled cane-brakes, was only the hunting ground of the red men, yet all that territory in Kentucky and Tennessee lying between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers was the home of the Chickasaw Indians. This large tribe had their main town at Chickasaw Bluffs, where Memphis now stands, with a number of other settlements scattered throughout this seven million acres of fertile lands.
As Kentucky was once a part of Virginia, and as the "Old Dominion" was a British colony, this section was once claimed by Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War, Virginia, relying on the former policy of the mother country, that,