Munsey's Magazine, September 1922

This September 1922 Munsey's Magazine installment features "Borrowed Fire," a romantic drama by Charles Neville Buck. The opening depicts Cullom Bowes, an usher, witnessing the wedding of his beloved Phyllis Belknap to his close friend Dick Carson. The ceremony—conducted by a bishop pronouncing them man and wife—devastates Bowes, who maintains composure through the breakfast festivities. At the reception, he befriends Joe Carson, Dick's older brother from Kentucky, a lawyer and war veteran from the Second Kentucky Regiment. Later, Phyllis leads Joe to the guarded billiard room displaying wedding gifts. While admiring ancestral portraits, Joe becomes startled upon seeing a Jewett painting of his great-uncle, Fighting Jack Powell, who died in the War of 1812. Joe cryptically references "Powells of the Cumberlands," hinting at Kentucky connections, then asks about someone named Judson Powell in recent times, raising the title's suggestion of a feud transplanted eastward.