A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT" Lone Morgan was a Virginian by birth, though few of his acquaintances knew it.

Lone never talked of himself except as his personal history touched a common interest with his fellows.

But until he was seventeen he had lived very close to the center of one of the deadliest feuds of the Blue Ridge.

That he had been neutral was merely an accident of birth, perhaps.

And that he had not become involved in the quarrel that raged among his neighbors was the direct result of a genius for holding his tongue.