"Sally, those awful Night Riders are around again."

"No, Milt, you don't really mean it?"

Sally looked up quickly from her sewing across the hearth to where her stalwart husband sat with crossed legs, making of his swinging right foot a make-believe skittish horse for Milton, junior, age three.

"Father, what does Night Riders mean?" asked a young girl of nine or ten standing near, who had her mother's fair complexion and richly tinted hair, but her father's dark and expressive eyes.

"They are men who band together and ride through the country at night for the purpose of forcing people to do certain things that the band demands. The members usually go masked so that they may not be recognized."

"Then they must be wicked men," continued Alice frankly, "if they are so afraid they will be seen. Did you ever see a Night Rider, father?"

"A long time ago," answered Milt soberly, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he glanced across at his wife, "and he was a pretty sorry sight, I must say."

"Has ma seen one, too?" persisted Alice, with the insistence of childhood.

"Yes, dear, when I was a girl and lived with your grandma before she died, at a toll-gate just down the road apiece, I saw a Night Rider then."

"What was he like?" questioned Alice, deeply interested, "Was he scary looking?"

"No," said her mother hesitatingly, "I thought him rather good-looking at the time," and she smiled over at her husband.

"Was he as good-looking as father?" asked Alice, following the glance with her keen young eyes.

"Nothing like," affirmed Sally emphatically, and then she and Milt both laughed.

"What are the Night Riders after now?" she inquired some time later, after the children had gone to bed, and the two sat talking by the fire. "There are no more toll-gates to be raided."

"It's the tobacco question now, instead of free roads, and it's becoming a very serious one."

"I knew that in some parts of the old Blue Grass State the tobacco growers were having considerable trouble, but I hadn't heard that mischief was brewing in this quarter."

"Yes, the trouble is spreading generally throughout the tobacco growing regions of the State. Successful raids have been made on several cities and towns, and the large independent warehouses burned; buyers for some of these houses have been severely whipped, and in some cases ordered to leave the State. Troops have been ordered to several points to protect property and maintain order, and the Governor has been called upon to suppress the lawlessness that is abroad."

"Why, this is worse than during the toll-gate troubles," said Sally.

"Much worse," assented her husband. "The loss of property is very much greater. Barns have been burned filled with tobacco, and hundreds of plant beds scraped, and a promise is being exacted from the growers not to produce a crop this present season. It's a sort of triangular war in which the grasping Trust—the pooled Tobacco Association and the Independent growers, all figure," added Milt.

"And have you agreed to pool your tobacco?" asked Sally, when the serious situation had been more fully discussed.

"No, I think I have the right to dispose of it as I see fit. I am a free man, and live in a free country, and I don't intend to be coerced. I have sold my last year's crop to an independent buyer, and will begin delivering it sometime within the next few days."

"I hope there'll be no trouble over it if you do," said his wife earnestly. "I have had quite enough experience along the line of night riding to last me for several years to come."

"I scarcely think any attempt will be made to intimidate me" asserted Milt confidently. "In some places threatening letters and warnings have been sent to persons who have fallen under the displeasure of the band, but nothing of the kind has occurred about here."

"Don't you think it would have been a wise plan to let the growing of tobacco alone until these troubles are settled?" inquired his wife.

"No, I do not. They are trying to force the farmer to cut out his crop of tobacco this year, but—as I have said before—this is a free country, and it seems to me a man should be allowed to grow what he chooses on his own land."

"It would seem so, and yet when to do this is to invite trouble, it appears to me that the wisest thing would be to leave the matter alone."

"I hate to be driven against my will," argued Milt. "I have set out to raise a crop of tobacco this season, and I don't want to back down. That is why I have put my plant bed in the garden near the house, so I can protect it, if necessary. I think, though, there need be no uneasiness along this line."

The next morning on going to his barn, Milton Derr found tied to the barn-door a bundle of switches and a crudely written note to which was fastened some matches and a cartridge.

The note ran as follows:

"Milt derr, you'r bein watched, we have an eye on you, we hear you air goin' to turn dumper an' sell yore crop to independents, also air fixin' to raise another crop. Better not, these three things air for sech as you. Yore weed may go up in smoke before it's ready for the pipe. Go slow.

N. R."

Milton Derr slowly read over this illiterate note some two or three times before he seemed to gather its full meaning, then he carefully folded it up and put it in his pocket. Surely someone must be trying to play a practical joke on him by sending such a communication as this, and yet, taking into consideration the numerous rumors of happenings in other localities, this ill-spelled epistle possessed all the ear marks of a genuine note of warning from the terrible Night Riders.

"I must keep this from Sally," he muttered, "at least until I can get my tobacco safely delivered, and it's up to me to deliver it at once, before the Night Riders conclude to pay me a visit, as this note intimates they may do in the near future."

"Sally was not so far from wrong after all, when she said trouble would come of this," he added. "When once I can get my crop safely delivered and out of my barn, there is little further danger to apprehend."

Acting on this supposition, Milt immediately after breakfast began preparations for removing his crop, and with the aid of two hired men was ready by noon to start for the point of delivery some miles distant, telling his wife that he would return sometime during the night.

After supper Sally sat down to do some mending, and among other things to fix the pocket-linings of the coat her husband had laid aside for a heavier one during his long drive, and this note of warning, which he intended to keep from her knowledge for the present was the first thing she came across during her self-imposed task.