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"They tell me," continued Charles, "that you are about to marry Sir Theodore Branson?" "'Tis false," said Matilda, quickly, her bosom evidently palpitating with shame and anger. "Then how could you think of waltzing with him?
Clara put out her hand to her impulsively. "And my mammy," she cried, "my dear Virginia mammy." The Sheriffs Children Branson County, North Carolina, is in a sequestered district of one of the staidest and most conservative States of the Union. Society in Branson County is almost primitive in its simplicity.
Out of this incident, the officious sheriff managed most ingeniously to create an embroilment with the town of Lawrence, Buckley, who was alleged to have been accessory to the crime, obtained a peace-warrant against Branson, a neighbor of the victim.
Now pa says that Linkern lived there onct and kept store, but he didn't get it. He was so poor that he used to have welts on his legs from wearin' the same buckskin pants. That's what pa says. So if he didn't get the treasure, who did? It couldn't be Mr. Branson, for he got his start raisin' onions and peddlin' 'em here in town.
To the east, Sherman's army had passed on its march to the sea; but no straggling band of "bummers" had penetrated the confines of Branson County.
The sheriff of Branson was a man far above the average of the community in wealth, education, and social position. His had been one of the few families in the county that before the war had owned large estates and numerous slaves. He had graduated at the State University at Chapel Hill, and had kept up some acquaintance with current literature and advanced thought.
Having thus announced his determination, the sheriff closed and fastened the wicket, and looked around for the best position from which to defend the building. The crowd drew off a little, and the leaders conversed together in low tones. The Branson County jail was a small, two-story brick building, strongly constructed, with no attempt at architectural ornamentation.
Beside him lay a vacant timber claim, and he invited a young man named Dow to take it, Dow boarded with Branson. When the Missourians came into Kansas the preceding March, many of them staked out a claim which they pretended to hold. One William White, of Westport, Mo., pretended, in his way, to hold this claim. There was not a particle of legality in his proceeding.
To the north in Virginia, to the west in Tennessee, and all along the seaboard the war had raged; but the thunder of its cannon had not disturbed the echoes of Branson County, where the loudest sounds heard were the crack of some hunter's rifle, the baying of some deep-mouthed hound, or the yodel of some tuneful negro on his way through the pine forest.
"Well," said a round-shouldered farmer, who, in spite of his peaceable expression and faded gray eye, was known to have been one of the most daring followers of a rebel guerrilla chieftain, "what air yer gwine ter do about it? Ef you fellers air gwine ter set down an' let a wuthless nigger kill the bes' white man in Branson, an' not say nuthin' ner do nuthin', I 'll move outen the caounty."
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