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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75678 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                           HIS VANISHED STAR
+
+                      BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
+
+                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+                     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+                    The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+                                 1894
+
+                           Copyright, 1894,
+                          BY MARY N. MURFREE.
+
+                        _All rights reserved._
+
+           _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+        Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
+
+
+
+
+                          HIS VANISHED STAR.
+
+
+
+
+                                  I.
+
+
+It was a great property, reckoned by metes and bounds. A day's journey
+might hardly suffice to traverse the whole of his domain. Yet there
+was no commensurate money value attaching to these leagues of mountain
+wilderness, that bore indeed a merely nominal price, and Kenneth
+Kenniston's was hardly the temperament to experience an æsthetic
+gratulation that his were those majestic domes which touched the clouds
+and withstood the lightnings and lifted up an awesome voice to answer
+the thunder, or that his title-deeds called for all the vast slopes
+thence down to the unimagined abysses of the abandoned mine in the
+depths of the gorge. It was the spirit of speculation that informed
+his glance with a certain respect for them, as he turned his eye
+upon the mountains, and bethought himself how these austere craggy
+splendors were calculated to impress the shallow gaze of the wandering
+human swallow. He even appraised, in the interest of possible summer
+sojourners, the rare, pure, soft air with which his lungs expanded.
+Science was presently set a-prying about the margins of rocky springs,
+hitherto undiscovered and unnoticed save by oread or deer; a few
+blasts of dynamite, a great outgushing of exhaustless mineral waters,
+a triumphant chemical analysis ensued, and an infusion of enthusiasm
+began to pervade his consciousness. Such resources--infinitely smaller
+resources--elsewhere in the world meant a fortune; why not here?
+
+He was an architect by profession, and the aspect of the world seemed
+to him parceled out in available sites. It cost his imagination,
+trained by study and enriched by travel, no conscious effort to
+perceive standing in fair proportions, turreted and terraced, finished
+to the last finial, the perfected structure of his projected summer
+hotel, on that level space above craggy heights, facing the moon and
+the valley, with the background of still greater heights, ever rising,
+heavily wooded, to the peak towering above. He saw it, as a true
+architect, in completion; as the wren sees his builded nest, not as the
+single straw or wisp of hair. Yet the day of small things must needs be
+overpassed,--of straws and wisps,--of struts and purlins, plates and
+tie-beams. His day of small things was full of wrangling and bitter
+bafflings, heart-burnings and discouragements. His partners in the
+undertaking had not been induced to cast their lot with his save by the
+exercise of infinite suavities of crafty eloquence, overpowering doubt
+and fear, and indisputable demonstrations of disproportionate profits
+in the very air. One was a seer in a commercial sort, an adept in
+prognosticating unexpected expenses for which no covenant of provision
+had been entered into, and he beheld full-armed disaster menacing every
+plan save that of his own preference. The other had no imagination
+whatever, architectural or otherwise. He recognized no needs which
+required adornment, and measured the taste of the public by his own
+disposition to spend money to gratify it. That Kenniston's plans
+should have come through the ordeal of their councils, with the ever
+lopping-off incidents common to the moneyed non-professional, retaining
+any element of symmetry or grace or beauty argued much for their
+pristine value. He regarded them for a time with a sort of pity and
+affronted tenderness for their maimed estate, but little by little the
+original intentions faded from his mental view, and he could see with
+renewed satisfaction the flag flying from the tower without remembering
+that he had held this octagonal gaud upon the building by main force,
+as it were, against the iconoclastic grasp of the practical men.
+
+Nevertheless he was relieved to be free from their presence. He felt
+that it was well that their legitimate business--one as a stock-broker,
+the other a real-estate agent--held them to their desks in the city of
+Bretonville. The manifest purpose of their creation, he thought, was
+fully served in their furnishing forth their quota of the sinews of
+war. He was much younger than either, but he had learned something
+beyond their knowledge in this internecine strife, and when it
+became necessary to provide for them occupation, to prevent further
+interference in the venture which had come to be of most hopeful
+interest to both, he wrote to them touching the finding of a suitable
+man to keep the hotel when built, certain that in this quest for a
+Boniface he had set them by the ears, and relying on their different
+temperaments to keep them wrangling together and to leave him in peace.
+
+Every sylvan detail of the scene pleased his artistic and receptive
+sense, as he stood on the great natural terrace, the site of the
+future building, and surveyed the landscape. It was a phenomenally
+felicitous opportunity. This plateau projected from a lateral spur of
+the Great Smoky chain, and faced the southeast. Thus the main body of
+the mountain range, diagonally across the Cove, seemed strangely near
+at hand; one could study its chasms and abysses, its jungles of laurel
+and vast forests, as it were from mid-air; it was the point of view of
+a bird. Through a gap lower down, the parallel lines of the eastern
+ranges became visible, elsewhere hidden by the great boundary ridge,--a
+wonderful fantasy painted in every gradation of blue, from the slaty
+grayish hue near at hand under the shadow of a cloud, the velvet-like
+tones of ultramarine beyond, and still further the metallic hardness
+of tint as of lapis lazuli, till the most delicate azure outline of
+peaks faintly obliterated its identity against the azure eastern sky.
+All unflushed the sky was here, although to the right the clouds were
+red above the western mountains. They closely hemmed in the Cove,
+heavy, massive, purple and bronze and deeply green, in such limited
+latitude of color as their lowering shadows would permit. Far down
+their slopes the river ran, threading the deep forests with elusive
+steely glimmers. He could not hear its voice, but from great cliffs
+hard by the silvery melody of the mineral springs beat upon the air
+with a rhythm inexpressibly sweet and wild and alluring. So definite
+it was that it seemed odd that one did not "catch the tune." In an
+open space some scattered sheep were feeding,--the effect pastoral
+and pictorial. The whole scene, with its blended solemnity and beauty
+and dignity, would well accord with the castellated edifice his fancy
+had set in its midst. It might indeed be a mediæval world upon which
+the windows should look, instead of the prosaic nineteenth century,
+so far it would appear from sordid to-day, so well would the fashion
+of the building aid the illusion, were it not for a section of the
+foreground immediately below the cliffs of the terrace, where there
+stood, bare and open and unsheltered, a primitive log cabin, a stretch
+of cornfields, a horse-lot, a pig-pen, and all the accessories of
+most modern and unimpressive American poverty and ignorance. Being
+near, and bearing human significance, the prosaic little home seemed
+the most salient point, in its incongruity, in the whole magnificent
+landscape. The methods of the mountaineer furthered, too, the effect
+of antagonism. Along the side of one of the ranges near at hand, a
+great gaunt blackened area bore token of a "fire-scald." Kenniston's
+eyes rested frowningly on this deep burnt scar upon the face of
+nature. It came from the pernicious habit of "setting out fire in the
+woods" in the autumn, to burn away the undergrowth and dead leaves,
+in order to give freer pasturage to wandering cattle. Here, as is not
+unfrequently the case, the fire, instead of merely consuming leaves,
+twigs, and shoots, had gathered strength and fury, burning the giant
+trees to great blackened, deadened skeletons, bleakly standing, and had
+devastated some hundred acres. He could see in the sparse shadows the
+cattle feeding on the lush herbage, and he ground his teeth to reflect
+upon the alarm any future conflagration would spread among the autumnal
+lingerers of summer sojourners and the catastrophe that might ensue to
+the chateau on the rocks.
+
+"We _must_ buy him out," he muttered. "He _must_ be made to
+go."
+
+Kenniston's heart was as heavy with presage as if his flimsy chateau
+stood on the cliffs behind him; for it was not to be mediæval in point
+of strength of materials.
+
+The project of buying out Luther Tems seemed hardly so feasible as when
+first presented to the minds of the company. The proposition to this
+effect had already been made to the astounded mountaineer, and rejected
+with a plump No. A second and better considered effort, coupled with a
+disproportionately large pecuniary consideration, had fared no better.
+There Luther Tems was, and there he meant to stay, as his father and
+his grandfather had before him to a great age, till Death bethought
+himself at last of these loiterers in so obscure a corner of the world,
+and, although belated, gathered them in. The company was now at its
+wits' end. The place was an eyesore, a trail of the serpent in this
+seeming Paradise. It was, too, a source of danger and discomfort, and
+to seek to remove it was one of Kenniston's errands here, as well as
+to confer with the contractor, in his dictatorial character as one of
+the company rather than the architect. His visit was so timed that
+he was on the ground a day or so in advance of his coadjutor, and in
+furtherance of his project had asked for quarters in Luther Tems's
+house.
+
+Far was it from Luther Tems, the fear of being over-persuaded. He was
+a lugubrious presentment of obstinacy, as he sat at his hearthstone.
+The immovable determination expressed in the lines of his face and the
+curve of his lips was incongruous with the other characteristics of his
+aspect. He was not of the gigantic build common among the mountaineers.
+He was singularly spare and alert, and there was something in his
+movements and in the lines of his figure which betokened that when
+endowed with more flesh it had expressed an unusual grace. His
+features were absolutely regular, and although the eye, sunken amidst
+a multitude of wrinkles and half hidden by the beetling eyebrow, no
+longer showed the fine lines of its setting and its pristine color
+and brilliancy, and his jaw was lank from the loss of teeth, and
+his well-cut lips were contorted over his quid of tobacco, he still
+exhibited to the discerning gaze of the architect enough traces of
+the beauty of his younger days to justify the feminine sobriquet of
+"Lucy." A good joke it had been in the Cove forty years before, but
+custom had dulled its edge and hallowed its use, and now he would have
+had to think twice before he saw aught incongruous in the appellation.
+It was a convenience in some sort, too, and averted misunderstandings,
+for his son bore his name of Luther. Although inheriting a share of
+his father's good looks, it had been admixed with the "favor" of the
+Tates, his mother's people, who were a tall, burly folk. He was heavier
+far than his father, and slower at twenty-four than "Lucy" Tems would
+be at eighty. The strong resemblance in their faces ended there, for
+naught could be more unlike the elder than the meditative composure
+with which the younger man sat and smoked his pipe, and now slowly rose
+and replenished the fire and seated himself anew. He had nothing in
+look or motion of the panther-like, dangerous intimation that informed
+the old man's every gesture and glance. But this expressed itself
+with a certain supple, feline effect in his daughter, a tall girl,
+in whom the beauty of his youth was duplicated. She had the chestnut
+hair, the exquisitely fair complexion with its shifting roseate
+suffusion, the large beautifully set dark blue eye, the high narrow
+forehead from which the hair grew backward, but lying on the temples
+in delicate fibrous waves,--all the fine detail that had graced her
+father's youth, and that had seemed so wasted on the wild scapegrace
+boy of the mountains, merely attaining the recognition of ridicule
+among his fellows, and unvalued by its possessor. She wore a dark blue
+homespun dress that enhanced her fairness, and she sat in a low chair
+in the firelit log room and busied herself, with a monotonous gesture
+and a certain sleek aspect, in carding cotton. Kenniston had seen her
+previously, and in his preoccupied mind she roused no interest, neither
+then nor now.
+
+He sat down by the fire, among them, much nettled to observe that there
+was a stranger, a man whom he had never before seen here, ensconced
+on the opposite side of the hearth. The shadow of the primitive
+mantelshelf obscured his face, and even when the fire flashed up it
+barely sufficed to show his burly figure in an attitude of composed
+waiting and observation.
+
+His presence added an element of doubt and difficulty to the already
+troublous negotiation, and Kenniston, accustomed to civilized methods,
+and having expected to carry all before him, felt a sinking of the
+heart out of proportion to the value of the property he coveted. He
+had, in his experience, conducted delicate and difficult negotiations,
+involving large considerations, many parties in interest, and
+conflicting claims, to a successful issue. And yet, what enterprise
+so unpromising as to buy from a man who will not sell! So did the
+half-masked presence of the stranger in the shadow shake his confidence
+that he did not at once open the subject nearest his heart. A short
+silence ensued upon the greetings, and he was fain to lay hold upon the
+weather as a subterfuge.
+
+"It holds fair, colonel," he said.
+
+He used the title in secret derision, as the usual sobriquet of men
+of dignity and substance in the lowlands. He had scant faith in the
+existence of any discerning perceptions and delicate sentiments in
+the minds or hearts of people in homespun; it had served to amuse him
+at his first meeting with old Tems, when he had not dreamed that so
+uncouth a character had a part to play upon the elaborate stage of
+his own future, which was a-building with such care and thought and
+hope, and he had laughed in his sleeve to observe the simplicity and
+acquiescence with which the fine title was accepted. He intended its
+use in no military sense, and he did not learn till afterward that
+old Tems bore a veritable title, which he had earned on stricken
+battlefields, and had later commanded a band of guerrillas whose name
+was a terror and a threat.
+
+Tems took his pipe from between his lips. "It holds fair," he
+echoed drawlingly; then, "Dunno fur how long," as if to admonish
+any speculator in the weather to be not too happy in a vale of such
+incertitude.
+
+"All signs favor!" A sudden singing feminine tone pervaded the
+conversation.
+
+Kenniston glanced up. In one corner, a stairway from the attic above
+came down into the room. A young girl, whom he had not before noticed,
+was sitting on the steps midway. From this coigne of vantage she
+overlooked the room, and participated in the conversation when moved to
+do so.
+
+Kenniston fancied that from some real or affected rustic shyness
+because of his presence she had sought this retirement, for she flushed
+deeply at his glance, and bent her head over a piece of rough mending
+which she seemed to be perpetrating on a jeans coat with a gigantic
+needle and a very coarse thread. She could hardly have seen very well
+to set the stitches, and as her side was toward him he could ill
+distinguish her face for the shadow and her industrious attitude and
+her falling hair.
+
+Julia Tems looked up at her with a laughing glance, half raillery, half
+sneer. But the brother took up the question with an air of contention;
+he wanted rain for his corn crop, and he believed the clouds must
+surely hold it in trust for him.
+
+"The fog war a-getherin' along the mountings this evenin', an' I seen
+'bout a hour ago a thunder-head a-loafin' round over Piomingo," he
+averred with a certain bitterness, as if to protest against the arguing
+away of these prospects.
+
+"Waal," the singing voice, curiously vibrant, broke forth once more,
+"we air likely ter git a good full rain, ez would holp up the crap
+'fore long, but we ain't goin' ter hev no steady set o' bad weather
+now. Signs don't favor it."
+
+The old man again took his pipe from his mouth.
+
+"Ye-es. An' a body mought b'lieve from yer talk that ef Satan war ter
+cotch us by the right leg this week, he'd be mighty likely ter turn us
+loose by the lef leg nex' week." He laughed sarcastically. "All of us
+air s'prisin' apt ter be suited, no matter how things turn out." He
+replaced his pipe, adding, with the stem between his teeth, "That's
+Ad'licia's notion," and then smoked imperturbably.
+
+The little optimist looked at him with an indignant, affronted gaze for
+a moment, then bent once more to her sewing.
+
+She had forgotten Kenniston, and her face was fully revealed in the
+moment that she had turned it on her critic,--an oval face, with a
+little round unassertive chin, a thin, delicate, aquiline nose, a small
+mouth with full lips, the indenture in the upper one so deep as to make
+it truly like a bow, and widely opened gray eyes that resembled nothing
+so much as moss agates. They were veiled by long, reddish lashes, and
+the hair that hung curling down about the nape of her neck was of a
+dull copper hue. Her complexion was exceedingly white, and she had that
+thin-skinned look which is incompatible with freckles as annuals; in
+those milk-white spaces about the eyes were sundry tokens of the sunny
+weather which even the dark days of winter would not obliterate. Her
+figure was slender, and she did not look strong. She wore a brown
+homespun dress, and she bit the coarse thread with a double row of
+small perfect white teeth as she addressed herself to threading her big
+needle anew.
+
+"Studyin' 'bout the weather, an' gittin' onhappy 'bout yer buildin'?"
+demanded old Tems of his guest.
+
+There was a slight twist of the lips, suggestive of covert ridicule on
+his part, as he asked the question.
+
+Kenniston was totally unaware of furnishing in his proper person
+amusement to the mountaineer, but to his host he seemed a fool more
+bountifully endowed with folly than any other specimen of the genus
+with whom Tems had ever been brought into contact, and the projected
+hotel was accounted a ludicrous impossibility. It was Tems's secret
+persuasion that most of the population of this country had been slain
+in the war; he had himself seen much slaughter in its grim actuality.
+The idea that there were people who would wish to come long journeys
+to fill that vast projected structure seemed the most preposterous
+vaporing of imbecility.
+
+"Ain't they got nowhar ter bide?" he would demand, in incredulous pity
+for the homeless summer birds.
+
+He had come at last to treat it in his own mind as a bubble, a mere
+brainless figment, and only his courteous instincts prevented this
+from becoming apparent, although now and again it was perilously near
+revelation.
+
+"Well, no; I think the weather won't affect my building for a good
+while yet," answered Kenniston. Then, with a sudden afterthought, and
+perceiving the opening, "I'm troubled, though, about the blasting for
+the coal cellars and wine cellar. There will of necessity be quite
+an avalanche of fragments of the rock falling into the valley, and I
+wanted to give you warning of it before it begins."
+
+The look of attention deepened on the old face. The thin old head
+suavely nodded.
+
+"Thanky, sir. I feel obligated." And old Tems relapsed into silence.
+
+Kenniston was baffled for a moment, but presently he returned to the
+charge.
+
+"You and your family could leave the premises while the blasting was in
+progress. It might be inconvenient, but"--
+
+"Yes--ye-es--ef so minded," the ancient householder acquiesced.
+
+"By all means," Kenniston pursued with more energy, stroking his brown
+whiskers with one hand, while he looked, keenly interrogative, at his
+interlocutor. "There might be danger, positive danger, in remaining."
+Then, seeking an ally, and taking hope from the quiescent silence of
+the stranger in the corner, "_You_ agree with me surely?"
+
+The stranger laughed, a round, vigorous, elastic tone.
+
+"Waal, I reckon old Cap'n Lucy is about ez good a jedge ez ter the
+dangers in dealin' in gunpowder ez ye'll meet up with this side o'
+Jordan. I'd be willin' ter leave sech ter him."
+
+"Of course--of course," Kenniston agreed hastily. "Only I am anxious to
+have no sort of responsibility,--moral responsibility, I mean,--in case
+of an accident to members of his family."
+
+He reflected that two of these were feminine, that the sex is to a unit
+a coward by open confession, and he sought to play upon their fears.
+
+But once more Adelicia interfered to show the more hopeful side of
+things.
+
+"It's toler'ble fur from hyar, a right good piece," she turned her head
+to say before she again bit the thread.
+
+"Not from the site of the first blasting; the wine cellar will be under
+the billiard-room, which will be in the pavilion at this end of the
+bluffs." He had waxed warm, excited. "The rock could easily be flung
+as far as this, and even if no human life were endangered, might kill
+horses or cows, or crash through the roof, or break down the chimney."
+
+"Waal, the comp'ny is a good, solid, solvent comp'ny, ain't it?" said
+the man in the corner unexpectedly,--"respons'ble in damages?"
+
+Kenniston recoiled suddenly, and Tems pricked up his ears, like the old
+war-horse that he was. The prospect of conflict in whatever sort was
+grateful to his senses, and he snuffed the battle from afar. In this,
+too, he saw his defense and his opportunity. Kenniston would hardly
+have conceived it possible that, with such inconsiderable adversaries,
+he could be routed in diplomacy. It was not, however, to bring matters
+to this point of view that his schemes were designed.
+
+"I hope there will be no need for a demand for damages," he said
+stiffly. Then, driven back upon his last resource, the simple truth, he
+continued, turning toward the man in the corner, "It has been partly to
+avert all dangers and troubles that the company has been trying to buy
+out Mr. Tems, at his own price."
+
+"My h'a'thstone hain't got no price," said old Tems acridly.
+
+Kenniston had thrown himself back in his chair with a dogged
+exasperation of manner. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his
+short flannel coat. His square chin, glimpsed in the parting of his
+full beard, was deeply sunken in its lustrous fibres. His lowering blue
+eyes were fixed on the fire, all aglow, for at this altitude the chill
+summer nights cannot dispense with the smouldering back-log. His legs,
+in their somewhat worn integuments of dark flannel and long boots,--for
+there are penalties to footgear and garb in clambering about these
+rough mountains,--were stretched out before him, and Adelicia's cat
+found them convenient to rub against, as she arched her back and purred
+in the dull red light. He felt at the moment irritated beyond measure.
+This idea of a lawsuit, craftily interjected by the stranger whom he
+himself had called into the conversation, might seriously embarrass
+the proceedings of the company. It could be held _in terrorem_ at
+every point. Nay, it might incite Tems to seek out occasion to make a
+pretext of injury. It added a prospect of indefinite discomfort and
+jeopardy to the already harassed present.
+
+"I kin b'lieve that, Cap'n Lucy,--I kin b'lieve that," said the
+stranger, with a sudden outpouring of his full, mellow, rich voice.
+Its sonorousness and sweetness struck Kenniston only vaguely then, but
+he remembered it afterward. "Ye want yer _home_, an' the company
+wants yer _hut_."
+
+"I don't want thar money,--ain't got no cur'osity 'bout the color of
+it," old Tems said tartly.
+
+Neither of the younger Temses uttered a word. Luther smoked
+imperturbably, and Julia, as sleek, as lithe, as supple as a panther,
+bent her beautiful, clear-cut, distinct face above the cards, which
+she moved with a flexible elasticity that made it seem no labor.
+Every line about her was sharply drawn; the very plaits of her glossy
+hair showed their separate strands, over and under and over again, in
+the coil at the back of her head. Against the dark wall, she had a
+fixity, a definiteness of effect, like a cameo, in contrast with the
+somewhat tousled head which Adelicia held back to observe her completed
+industry. She lifted the mended coat in both hands before her, and
+contemplated the patch, set on indeed as if it should never come off
+again, but with what affront to the art of fine needlework!
+
+She was not so absorbed, however, as to be unmindful of the disaffected
+state of feeling in the room below, and she must needs seek to improve
+it.
+
+"We ain't so mighty easy tarrified, nohow," she remarked, suavely
+addressing the information more directly to Kenniston's pretended fears
+for their safety. "An' ez ter rocks fallin' an' sech,"--she turned her
+head askew to better observe the effect of the flagrant patch,--"I hev
+tuk notice ez trees streck by lightning mostly falls whar thar ain't no
+house."
+
+"'Kase thar be mighty few houses whar the trees be lef'," observed old
+Tems, whose contradictory faculties were called into play every time
+she spoke.
+
+"Waal, fower hev fell, lightning-streck, sence we-uns hev been a-livin'
+hyar, an' nare one teched us," she argued.
+
+Kenniston caught his breath. "How long have you been living here,
+colonel?" The secret gibe came back to him with the sudden secret
+renewal of his hope.
+
+"Five year, or thereabout," growled old Tems.
+
+"Five year this comin' fall," put in Adelicia, with exactitude. "We-uns
+lived then nigher sunrise, on the flat o' the mounting, over thar." She
+nodded with her wealth of bronze curls toward the east to indicate the
+direction of the locality.
+
+"And if you would move then, colonel, why not now?" demanded Kenniston.
+
+It seemed as if old Tems would not reply. So deep a scowl had
+corrugated his face that in its wizard-like aspect not the faintest
+vestige of his famous ancient beauty remained.
+
+"Burnt out," he growled at last.
+
+"The fire-scald, ye see," explained Adelicia, turning her oval face
+upon Kenniston.
+
+It had an old-fashioned, even a foreign cast, was his superficial
+thought, as he gazed up at her in the dusky shadows of the staircase;
+it reminded him of some antique miniature. But his recognized idea was
+expressed in the words, echoed in surprise and with a touch of dismay,
+"The fire-scald!"
+
+"Fire war set out in the woods ter burn the bresh; but the wind sprung
+up, it did, an' the fire tuk the house an' fence an' all. Ye mus' hev
+noticed the fire-scald over yon?" Once more she nodded her head in
+intimation of the direction. "Then we-uns moved hyar an' raised this
+house."
+
+Old Tems's surly, disaffected look caught her attention. "But this hyar
+house air a heap better 'n the burnt one; that war old, fur true, an' I
+tell ye the wind used ter shake it whenst stormin'. Roof leaked, too.
+Roof war so old that the clapboards war fastened on with wooden paigs
+stiddier nails. My great-gran'dad--Cap'n Lucy's gran'dad--didn't hev
+much modern improvemints, leastwise in blacksmith's gear, when he kem
+hyar ter settle from old Car'liny."
+
+She glanced down, smiling. Her strangely old-fashioned little face was
+lovely in smiling, but Kenniston did not heed; he did not even hear her
+words; he was absorbed in a train of thought that came to him as she
+talked.
+
+She looked slightly ill at ease for a moment, perceiving the defection
+of his attention; then, as if to make the best of it, she turned her
+head and glanced over her shoulder at the man in the corner.
+
+"Ye hev hearn that?" she said.
+
+He nodded. She saw the gleam of his full blue eye. "They called East
+Tennessee the 'Washington Deestric',' arter them days," he said, his
+big voice booming out. Then he went on to tell of an old house which he
+knew, in which wooden pegs also served as nails, as a set-off, it might
+seem, to the ancient dwelling that perished in the "fire-scald," and
+presently he was wrangling with old Tems as to the precise route that
+certain early settlers were said to have taken through the mountains,
+in which discussion even the silent Luther joined, and Kenniston was
+left undisturbed to his thoughts.
+
+These thoughts were significant enough. He had seen this vast property
+of his only once before in all the years that it had been in his
+possession. It had descended to him in due course, with the rest of the
+paternal estate, at the death of his father, who had been a successful
+merchant of Bretonville. He had had some little but well-restrained
+inclination for speculation, and these miles of mountain fastnesses
+were a single instance of it, looking to the future development of
+mineral resources. The abandoned mine in the gorge expressed the
+failure of hopes of silver and lead, which had led him only for a
+little while and only a short distance. He himself had never laid
+eyes on his purchase; but once, in a college vacation, the son, on a
+pedestrian tour, had explored to some purpose the woods up and down
+these steeps and across the line. Kenniston remembered now for the
+first time how the face of the country had impressed him then, for the
+fire-scald had so altered its aspect. The slope where the quaint little
+ante-Revolutionary house was perched had then seemed high and steep. In
+building anew, Luther Tems had selected a site on more level ground,
+considerably removed from the area of the burnt district. Possibly
+the fear of disaster when those blackened and decaying trees should
+finally complete their doom and fall, or the vicinage of springs for
+the essential water supply for man and beast, had served to influence
+his decision; but he had certainly made a very considerable journey
+from his former situation, and cut a large cantle out of the Cove in
+his present settlement.
+
+Kenniston's mind was hard upon the trail of the boundary lines, as
+his absorbed eyes dwelt on the red fire. They were ill defined in his
+memory, for when the great body of a man's land, numbering thousands of
+acres, bears a merely nominal price, a few furlongs amiss here or there
+in the wild jungle of the laurel are hardly worth the counting. In this
+particular instance the accuracy of metes and bounds made a difference
+all apart from actual values. It was his recollection that his lines
+included all those slopes to the "backbone," a high craggy ridge that
+ran like a spinal column adown the mountain mass. If this were the
+case, old Tems had inadvertently set up his staff of rest on his
+neighbor's land, was himself a mere trespasser, and might be ejected
+without difficulty in due process of law.
+
+Kenniston stirred uneasily as he contemplated this possibility. In its
+extreme unpopularity there was a very definite menace. He could ill
+afford to antagonize the whole countryside. The lawless, illogical
+mountain population would be arrayed as a unit against his interests.
+Even single-handed, old Cap'n Lucy seemed formidable, when active
+aggressions were contemplated. And he could appreciate, too, the
+seeming injustice, from the rustic standpoint, that, for the frivolous
+and flippant desire of keeping the landscape sightly for the fastidious
+gaze of the gentlefolk, an old man and his family must be turned out
+of house and home. Kenniston knew that although he might pay the full
+value of Cap'n Lucy's improvements, the popular censor would account
+this naught if the mountaineer were forced to quit his home against his
+will.
+
+Nevertheless law is law, and Kenniston could easily forecast the
+triumphant result of a legal arbitrament. Tems had not been ensconced
+here, within his own inclosures, claiming as his own, long enough to
+acquire any title under the statute of limitations, even if he could
+establish adverse possession. The property was his own, and he would
+satisfy even every moral claim upon him in paying the interloper the
+full value of his improvements. At all events he would have the line
+run out, and perhaps the land formally processioned.
+
+At the idea of prompt action in the matter, his full red lips, only
+partially visible through his beard and mustache, were pressed together
+firmly; his teeth met with a certain stiffening of the jaw into a
+hard, determined expression; his eyes were cast up suddenly over the
+primitive humble interior of the cabin with a certain impatience of
+its uncouthness, so at variance with the gala trim of modern comforts,
+so homely, so American, so hopelessly, desperately, the presentment
+of the unprogressive backwoods. Built five years ago, said they!
+It might have graced the "Washington Deestric'." His white teeth
+showed, as he half sneered and half laughed. He would, if he might,
+with a wave of the hand, have swept it and all it represented out of
+existence; nay, into oblivion. As his eyes came once more to their
+former point of rest, the fire, they suddenly encountered the intent
+gaze of the man in the corner. It discomfited Kenniston in some sort,
+although he could not have said why. His glance fell; he nervously
+uncrossed and recrossed his legs, and thrust his hands deeper into
+his pockets. A vague sense of sustaining covert enmity had begun to
+pervade his consciousness. He could not say whether this were induced
+by the mere inception of the unpopular idea of eviction, or whether
+it were a subtle perception of something antagonistic in the mental
+attitude toward him of the composed, watchful man who sat in the
+corner. It was not a furtive observation. It dwelt upon him openly,
+deliberately, steadily. It held no element of offensiveness; it was
+so calm, so incidental, so apparently, so naturally, the concomitant
+of the thoughtful, contemplative pipe, which now and again his hand
+steadied, or removed to release a wreath of the strong tobacco smoke
+which pervaded the apartment. Yet Kenniston felt, oddly enough,
+that it was not an incidental observation. It was charged with much
+discernment. A discriminating analysis was, he instinctively knew,
+coupled with it. He began, on his part, to more definitely gauge the
+two or three fragmentary contributions which the stranger had flung
+into the talk. The allusion to the solvency of a company and its
+responsibility in damages savored of a knowledge far beyond the ken
+of the Cove, this region of primitive barter where there is neither
+currency nor commerce; where the operations of far-away courts are
+but faintly echoed, as of retribution overtaking some reckless and
+unwary criminal, and the provisions of the law seem merely futile and
+disregarded devices of lawyers who seek to live upon the people by
+their enforcement. Then the crafty contrast of the differing estimates
+of the house, the one as a home, the other as a hut, intimated some
+definite capacity to play upon the springs of human emotions. He
+wondered if he had ever before seen this man. He had a good memory,
+but he did not charge it with the various mountaineers he met, and
+sometimes he forgot their names and occasionally their personality.
+He was restive under this slow, reflective gaze, and he pushed back
+his chair suddenly and walked away to the door. It was open and widely
+flaring, and he stood there as if scanning the weather signs.
+
+For so long he had seen the castellated walls of his new building rise
+upon the great natural terrace of the mountain, above the series of
+crags, that he experienced a sort of subacute surprise to mark the
+loneliness and melancholy of the landscape. Only the pinnacles of
+the mists glimmered in the moon, as unsubstantial as the turrets of
+his fancy. Below were all the darkling spaces of the night-shadowed
+forests. Above, the heavily wooded slopes loomed vaguely in the
+dim light, for the moon was in her first quarter, here showing the
+gaunt face of a crag, and there a ravine made visible by thronging
+spectre-like vapors. The stars were bright. Near the great dome he
+marked the scintillating circlet of the Northern Crown; its splendors
+seemed enhanced, he thought, by the vicinage of that towering densely
+dark mass beneath. So still it all was! He heard the silvery tinkle of
+the liberated mountain springs near his own site sounding with such
+freshness, with such elfin spontaneity, with such flexible fantasies
+of cadence, that one would have imagined he must surely have bethought
+him how featly the chorusing oreads were singing; it only brought to
+his mind anew the chemical analysis, and the hordes of valetudinarians
+waiting to bring all their ills, real and imaginary, to lay them, with
+more valuable considerations, at the shrine of his Spa.
+
+His sense of difficulties and discouragements took on a new lease, and
+as he turned impatiently away from the door he almost ran against young
+Luther Tems, who had come to gaze upon the clouds with that humble,
+expectant wistfulness characteristic of those votaries of the weather,
+the farmer class.
+
+"Would you-uns jedge thar war rain in that batch o' clouds settin'
+ter the south?" he drawled seductively, as if he sought to influence
+favorably the unprejudiced opinion he asked.
+
+"I'm no judge of weather signs," Kenniston returned succinctly,
+although in another mood it would have suited well his satiric bent to
+invent and promulgate a formula of fictitious barometrical science.
+
+As he glanced loweringly toward the fireside group, thrusting his
+hands into his pockets and advancing with long steps to his former
+chair, he was quick to observe that the man in the corner seemed
+to have determined on a leisurely departure. He had risen, and was
+returning to his pocket a brier-root pipe, taking the sedulous care
+to knock all the ashes out of it on the jamb of the fireplace, which
+betrays him whose pocket linings have more than once been the scene
+of an incipient conflagration. Kenniston regarded him, as he stood in
+the full light, with a disaffected interest, a sort of responsive
+enmity. And yet there was nothing of itself inimical in this man's
+bearing. On the contrary, suggestions of good fellowship predominated
+in his open manner and clear blue eye. He was exceedingly tall, not
+judging by Cap'n Lucy's elegant and slight proportions, nor by the
+burlier Luther's height, but by actual measurement. It had been long
+since he had shaved,--his full yellow beard hung like a golden fleece
+far down over the breast of his brown jeans coat; his long, straight
+yellow hair, of the same tint, had its edges upturned in the semblance
+of curl by the obstacle of his collar. He had a large, bony, hooked
+nose, which gave a certain strength to his countenance. The fashion of
+the feature was such as to suggest sagacity in some sort, as of keen
+instinctive faculties, but its expression was as ferocious as that of
+an eagle's beak. His mustache hid his lips and was lost in his beard.
+He wore great spurred boots drawn high over his brown jeans trousers,
+and a wide-brimmed black wool hat. A faded red handkerchief about his
+neck now and again showed amidst the hirsute abundance, for he turned
+his head quickly and vigilantly. He had an air of self-confidence
+which was somewhat imposing. It constrained in his interlocutor a sort
+of reluctant acceptance of his own estimate of himself. Kenniston,
+looking at him with an unacknowledged respect for the untrained natural
+forces his personality expressed, felt him to be formidable; how, or
+why, or when it was not manifest, nor in what sort his conciliation
+might be compassed, nor how it should be worth the effort. His bland
+phrases of departure set the man of etiquette ill at ease. Kenniston
+was accustomed to uncouthness in the mountaineers, even to lowering
+looks and open expressions of enmity when he or his plans impinged
+on their prejudices; polite duplicity, the native of drawing-rooms,
+seemed strangely out of place in this region of paradisaic simplicity
+of feeling and manner. His own acute social sense and his valued
+commercial acumen had given him an intuition of this man's aversion
+to him or his projects, or both; but his hand was feeling yet the
+stranger's cordial grip, and the sonorous invitation, "Obligated ter
+hev a visit over at Lost Time," was ringing in his ears.
+
+"Who is that man?" he abruptly demanded of his host, as soon as the
+jingle of the spurs and the sound of the horse's hoofs were silent on
+the air. Then, seeking to make his question more incidental, he added,
+"Seems to be a friend of yours."
+
+Cap'n Lucy and Luther looked at each other, exchanging a grin of
+derision. The two girls seemed unaccountably embarrassed.
+
+"Waal, stranger," said the old man, "he's a widower, a sort of
+perfessional widower."
+
+Luther broke out laughing with a hearty joviality. It surely was not
+he who had been deluded by the clouds and made the sport of the winds;
+it hardly seemed possible that he could take so much pleasure in aught
+save good prospects of the fruits of the earth.
+
+"He hev gin me an' Luther a heap o' trouble, an' we-uns hev tuk a power
+o' counsel tergether ez ter what we-uns war goin' ter do 'bout it," old
+Tems continued.
+
+Kenniston, conscious that he had roused some standing joke, cast his
+slightly satirical glance from one to the other, and with a sort of
+scornful patience waited their pleasure to enlighten him.
+
+Adelicia, with heightened color and an affronted aspect, was making a
+great show of inattention; while Julia, with her sleek, deft grace,
+went on impassively carding cotton.
+
+"He kems hyar a-visitin' the whole fambly, an' thar he sets an' sets;
+an' Luther loses his sleep, till, follerin' the plough nex' day, he
+dunno the share from the ploughtail, nor Gee from Haw; mighty nigh fit
+ter fall in the furrow, jes' walkin' in his sleep."
+
+Once more Luther's crude boyish laughter rang against the rafters; this
+was at all events no somnambulistic demonstration.
+
+"Ef thar was jes' _one_ gal in the fambly, Luther an' me would
+git off gyard jewty: but ez fur ez he lets on he jes' kems ter visit
+us all,--_all_; an' hyar we hev got ter set, an' watch him cast
+sheep's-eyes fust at one gal, then at t'other, till Luther an' me air
+plumb cross-eyed, looking two ways at once."
+
+It was a great mutual possession to have so witty a father and so
+appreciative a son.
+
+"A' fust," continued the old man, when the filial hilarity had somewhat
+subsided, "I jes' felt like I couldn't spar' either o' the gals.
+Whenst my darter was born, the fust thing I done war ter buy me a
+shootin' iron, express fur the fust feller ez kem a-sidlin' round,
+talkin' 'bout marryin' her, an' takin' her away, an' tryin' ter make
+her b'lieve ez he was a finer feller 'n her own dad: an' I didn't
+know--the insurance o' some folks is powerful survigrous--but he
+_mought_ set up ter purtend ter be _better lookin'_!"
+
+His daughter might seem to have shown her appreciation of his famous
+good looks by adopting them all. As she lifted her eyes and smiled
+upon the narrator, the brilliant and spirited beauty of her face might
+indeed be a welcome reminiscence of the time when he, too, wore so fair
+a guise, and might impart a zestful relish of the resemblance.
+
+"An' then Ad'licia, she kem hyar when her mother, my sister Amandy,
+died. My sister hed married a second time, a mighty mean man, an'
+whenst I tuk Ad'licia--she war 'bout three year old--I jes' said, 'Yer
+mam didn't hev much jedgmint in marryin', an' I reckon ye'll take the
+failin' arter her; an' ye'll show sech jedgmint ez ye kin l'arn in
+marryin' nobody.' An' she agreed: she warn't very young at three, jes'
+sorter youngish; an' though people mought think she hedn't hed a chance
+ter view the world on sech a p'int, she hed her senses powerful well
+in hand. So we made a solemn promise. An' I felt plumb sot up till
+lately. I don't want nare one of 'em ter marry. A fust-rate man ain't
+wuth a fifth-rate woman, much less a fust-rate woman," he declared
+chivalrously. "Leastwise, ye can't git the gals' daddies ter think so.
+An' now, jes' ez we air all so sot an' stiddy in our minds, hyar kems
+this widower, this _perfessional_ widower; fur he don't show no
+signs o' bein' nuthin' else! An' we dunno whether he kems ter listen at
+Julia hold her tongue, or Ad'licia talk, or hear Luther praise God fur
+the weather, or ter git my best advice on politics. We'd do ennything
+ter git shet o' him. He mought hev air one o' the gals, ef he'd only
+say _which_."
+
+And he chuckled as he gazed into the fire.
+
+"What's his business? Farmer, I suppose?" suggested Kenniston.
+
+"Naw; he hev got a leetle store,--powerful leetle trade, 'count o' the
+cross-roads store at the settlemint, though he trades right smart.
+Liberal, too. He'll take ennything,--load o' corn, load o' wood, sech
+like heavy truck ez thar ain't no sale fur ginerally, 'count o' the
+wagonin' an' roads bein' so heavy. Whenst you-uns git yer railroad
+put through,"--he gave him a rallying wink at this aberration, as he
+esteemed the projected narrow gauge,--"ye'll mend all that."
+
+"Oh, yes; you'll be in touch with the markets of the world then," said
+Kenniston, with his satiric laugh. "Only a little question of freight
+rates between you and New York."
+
+This sarcasm did not cut so deeply as one might imagine. It would have
+been impossible to insert the idea--save with an axe--into old "Lucy"
+Tems's brain that New York was more important and metropolitan than
+Colbury, or essentially more remote.
+
+"This Lorenzo Taft ain't been so sociable till lately. That's what
+makes me call him a _perfessional_ widower," old Tems went on,
+with a peculiar relish for the designation. "He hev two childern, gal
+an' boy, an' the gal hev been with her gran'mam down in Blount County
+till the old woman died; an' now he hev got 'Sis,' ez he calls her,
+with him, an' he wants a step-mammy fur her! He ain't a-courtin' a wife
+fur hisself; he's courtin' a step-mammy fur 'Sis.' An' in course his
+sheep's-eyes would go cornsider'ble furder with the gals than they do,
+ef they didn't know that he air jes' out a-trappin' fur 'Sis.'"
+
+"Waal," said Adelicia suddenly, "I dunno ez folks oughter think hard
+of him fur that, 'kase 'Sis' did look powerful lonesome an' pitiful,
+settin' up all by herself 'mongst all the men at the store."
+
+"Thar, now!" exclaimed Cap'n Lucy triumphantly, "makin' excuses fur
+folks agin! I told ye ez ye couldn't hold out till bedtime 'thout
+excusin' this one fur that, an' t'other one fur which."
+
+"Waal," said Adelicia, "it's a mighty late bedtime."
+
+She was rolling up the coat as carefully as if a first-class triumph of
+needlework had been accomplished upon it.
+
+"'Sis' didn't 'pear ter me ter need enny lookin' arter whenst I seen
+her," said old Tems heartlessly. "She 'peared ter be some fower or
+five hunderd year old, an' stiddy an' settled ter accommodate."
+
+"She be 'bout ten year old," said Adelicia gravely.
+
+"I wonder," said Cap'n Lucy, with a twinkle of the eye, "I _do_
+wonder ef that thar pernicious way o' makin' excuses fur folks's
+faults would hold out ef Ad'licia war ter set out ter be somebody's
+step-mammy!"
+
+Luther suddenly held up his hand with an intent look, bespeaking
+silence. The rain was coming. From far away one could hear the steady
+march of its serried columns, now amongst the resonant woods, and
+now through open spaces, and again threading narrow ravines. A bugle
+blast of the wind issued suddenly from a rocky defile, and was silent
+again, and once more only the sounds of that resistless multitudinous
+advance pervaded the mountain wilderness. Already the influx of air
+from the open door was freighted with dank suggestions commingled with
+the odor of dust. For a panic was astir in the myriad particles that
+lay in heaps in the sandy road; they seemed to seek a futile flight
+in some inadequate current of the air, and were wafted a few paces
+along, to fall again upon the ground, and finally to be annihilated
+by the vanguard of the great body of the torrents. A tentative drop
+here and there on the clapboards of the roof, increasing presently to
+a brisk fusillade, and then all individuality of sound was lost in the
+tumultuous downpour under which the cabin rocked.
+
+Perhaps it was because he had seldom been brought into such close
+intimacy with the elements that Kenniston found little sleep that night
+under the reverberating roof. He could touch it by lifting his hand
+in the tiny shed-room beneath the eaves, which was devoted to his use
+as a guest-chamber. At arm's length, too, with but the thin barrier
+of the clapboards intervening, was the wild, riotous rain. He seemed
+in the midst of its continuous beat and thunderous splash, as its
+aggregations swept from the eaves into the gullies below, so entirely
+did its turmoils dominate his senses. Now and again the shrill fanfare
+of the triumphant wind sounded, and a broad, innocuous glare of sheet
+lightning illumined the little apartment through the multitudinous
+crevices between its unplastered boards; for this addition to the
+house was not of logs, like the main structure. He could see, too, at
+intervals, as he lay in indescribable discomfort on the top of the
+big feather bed, the landscape without through the open door; for the
+heavy, close air had induced him to set it ajar. He found a certain
+interest for a time in these weird illuminations: the great mountains,
+slate-tinted in the searching yellow glare, with clouds of white vapor
+hanging about them; the rain, visible in myriads of fine lines drawn
+perpendicularly from zenith to valley, apparently stationary, as if it
+were some permanent investiture of the atmosphere; the little porch,
+low-browed, on which the door of his room opened, and which leaked with
+a heavy, irregular pattering. Half a dozen dogs were lying there,
+having taken refuge from the storm. A scraggy cedar-tree close beyond
+held down its moisture-freighted branches, and amongst them he saw once
+a great owl, business interrupted for the nonce, staring at him with
+big yellow eyes, as it ruffled up its feathers against the rain.
+
+He was conscious of sustaining the steady, sedate gaze of the nocturnal
+fowl even when the whole world would disappear as with a bound into the
+depths of darkness. As if the sound had been restrained by the presence
+of light, the tumult of rain would seem redoubled upon the roof. The
+unmannerly elements evidently disturbed no one else in the house. It
+was as silent as if no life beat within the walls. The very dogs were
+still. One of them, a fat, callow fellow, with an ill-appreciated sense
+of a joke, roused them once by facetiously snapping at a sleeping
+confrère's tail, set wagging by the propitious happenings of dreamland.
+Whether it was that he had interrupted the gustful gnawing of a
+visionary bone, or simply that his elder was of a vicious temperament,
+he was soundly cuffed, rolled over on his fat, round sides, and sent
+shrieking under the house. He came out after some indulgence of vocal
+woe on a piercing key, and, perceiving Kenniston, sought to make his
+acquaintance. Being a shaggy shepherd, his rain-laden hair diffused
+a peculiarly canine odor throughout the little room; he was used to
+rebuffs, and it required but a single tweak of the ear to send him,
+depressed and discouraged, to prosaic slumbers among his kindred.
+
+The lightnings failed. The world was plunged into unbroken gloom. The
+hours wore on into the deeps of the night. Once, as Kenniston was on
+the point of losing himself in sleep, he heard a shrill blood-curdling
+cry, searching out every nerve of repulsion in his body,--a panther
+shrieking from the terraces of his castle in the air. Even the fierce
+dogs, lifting their heads to listen, only whined and huddled closer
+together. When at last he dreamed, his mind clung close to the theme
+that held his waking thoughts. It was of processioning those wild acres
+of mountain fastnesses, and the serpentine lengths of the surveyor's
+chain seemed alive as the chain-bearers dragged it writhing through
+the grass. And again he was taking off the hospitable roof beneath
+which he slept, and riving off the doors, and somehow Cap'n Lucy was
+curiously helpless to resist this desolation of his roof-tree. But
+the man in the corner was plotting against him, and seeking to excite
+public animosity; and while he was busy in counterplotting, suddenly
+Julia appeared, with a strange face, subtle and insidious and sinister,
+leading the panther which he had heard filling the night with terror.
+And he was frightened, and awoke.
+
+
+
+
+                                  II.
+
+
+Lorenzo Taft met the rain halfway to his own dwelling. He pulled his
+hat over his eyes and bent to his mare's neck before its fury, and
+although the animal now and again swerved from the bridle-path at the
+glare of the lightning, she carried her master steadily and fleetly
+enough; and it was not far from his reckoning of the hour that they
+should pass the Lost Time mine when a broad illumination of the skies
+revealed the great portal, gauntly yawning in the side of the range,
+where a tunnel had been made in the search for silver, and abandoned.
+He pulled up his dripping steed and seemed to listen. Water had risen
+within, evidently, from the infinite enmeshment of the underground
+streams and springs that vein the great range; he heard it lapping
+upon the rocks, as it came pouring along its channel in the tunnel.
+It played around the mare's fetlocks, and now and again the animal
+fretfully lifted her forefoot. Another flare of the weird, unearthly
+yellow light, more lingering, brighter, than the last, showed the
+swift clear flow of the current, the great bleak beetling rocks of
+the oval aperture, the trees on the mountain side high above it, and
+beyond, three hundred yards or so, a little log cabin set upon the
+slope, which was a gentler declivity here, surrounded by a few acres of
+cornfield, and the appurtenances of beehives, hen-house, and rickety
+barn common to the humbler dwellings of the region. He could even see,
+between the house and the steep ascent immediately behind it, the
+far-away crags, as the range rounded out, glimmering in the lightning
+down the vista thus formed.
+
+It seemed the simplest of domestic establishments, and a forlorn little
+family group met his gaze as he opened the door and stepped within. The
+fire had dwindled to a few embers; a flickering flare from a handful
+of chips flung on in anticipation of his return, heralded by the sound
+of the mare's hoofs, showed the unplastered log room of the region,
+more unkempt than is usual, and betraying the lack of a woman's hand.
+The slight preparation for his reception was not the work of a boy of
+twelve, who sat soundly sleeping in a splint-bottomed chair, his whole
+attitude one of somnolent collapse, as if he had not a bone in his
+body, his round face white and freckled, his curly red hair growing
+straight up from his forehead, his slightly open red mouth of a merry
+carelessness of expression even in unconsciousness. On the opposite
+side of the fireplace a little girl was staidly seated. She had a
+narrow, white, formal little face; thin light brown hair, short and
+straight and smooth, put primly back behind her ears; a small mouth,
+with thin, precise lips; a meek eye, with a gentle lash. Her father
+looked at her with a sentiment of awe rising in his stalwart breast.
+"Consider'ble older'n the Newnited States, an' I hed ruther keep house
+for a regiment o' pa'sons," he commented silently.
+
+She wore a checked homespun dress, spotlessly clean, a dark calico
+apron, high-necked, buttoned to the nape in the back, shoes and blue
+stockings, which are rare among the children in the mountains at
+this season; and despite her limited inches, she was as formidable
+a spectacle of perfect precocity and prim perfection as ever a man
+who liked to go his own gait had the pleasure of looking upon. Miss
+Cornelia Taft was entirely competent to see all that might be going on
+in her small world, and she had brought her own unalterable standards
+with her, in her pocket as it were, by which to judge.
+
+There was a little unacknowledged weariness in her expression, and a
+certain stiffness as she got down out of her chair, which intimated
+that she was not quite equal physically to her resolution to sit
+up for him. He was about to requite this after the usual manner of
+those favored with this feminine attention, but she had begun to rake
+out some Irish potatoes roasting in the ashes, and Lorenzo Taft's
+remonstrance was subdued from his original intention.
+
+"Look-a-hyar, Sis," he said, "whyn't ye go ter bed? Ye mustn't sit up
+waitin' fur me this time o' night. I don't eat no second supper, nohow."
+
+But he was presently disposing of the refection of potatoes, corn
+bread, and buttermilk in great gulps, while she looked on with her
+inexpressive, unastonished eye.
+
+"Whyn't ye make Joe go to bed?" he demanded, his mouth full, as he
+nodded at the sleeping boy.
+
+The vaguest expression of prim repudiation was on her face. "He 'lowed
+he warn't sleepy," she said, with some capacity for sarcasm. She
+would have mended Joe as if he were a rag doll, but for his stalwart
+resistance. She did not expend herself in vain regrets. She had cast
+him and his tatters off forever, unless indeed he should come some day
+and sue to be made whole.
+
+"Waal," said Lorenzo Taft, bending a perplexed brow upon her, "jes' let
+him be, an' ye go on upsteers an' go to bed. Ye'll never grow no higher
+ef ye set up so late in the night."
+
+She turned obediently toward the stairs, or rather a rude ladder
+that ascended to the loft, while Lorenzo Taft paced back and forth
+in the room with a long, elastic stride, troubled and absent, and
+only conscious at the last moment that it was a look of the keenest
+curiosity that the little girl's placid eyes cast down upon him as she
+disappeared amongst the shadows of the loft.
+
+He stood still, disproportionately perturbed, it might seem. Then he
+sought to reassure himself.
+
+"I reckon I ain't much similar ter old Mis' Jinaway, nohow; an' ez
+she air useter a quiet, percise old 'oman's ways an' talk, I mus'
+seem toler'ble comical, bein' so big an' hearty, an' take big bites,
+an' talk loud, an' ride in the storm." He paused in the midst of his
+sophistry. Her look was so intelligent, so keenly inquisitive. "She's
+mighty leetle, but"--his caution had returned--"a ca'tridge o' giant
+powder ain't so powerful bulky. I hev got ter git somebody ter take
+keer o' her,--or ter take keer o' _me_, sure!"
+
+If the small Cornelia Taft's curiosity had been excited by what she had
+already observed, she would have thought his subsequent proceedings
+very strange indeed, could she have supervised them. But her placid
+little eyelids had closed at last upon her calm little eyes, and a very
+few gentle homesick tears for a place where they washed the dishes,
+and swept the floors, and slept in an airy room with the firelight
+flickering, and mended their garments; if amusement must be had, what
+gay times she and her grandmother had enjoyed, to be sure, when they
+raced as they knit their stockings, pausing twice or thrice in the
+evening to compare speed and measure the accomplished hose! A very
+strange man she thought her father, and she would have thought him
+stranger still if she could have seen him presently take a lantern
+and cross the open passage to the other room of the log hut, which
+served as store. There were embers here as well, and as he locked
+the door again they showed the array of gear needed for a country
+trade,--knives, shoes, shears, saddles, harness, rope, a little calico,
+sugar, coffee, salt, and iron. There was a counter at one side, on
+which stood the scales. It seemed a very commonplace structure, unless
+one should see him open a door into it on the inner side. This was
+not a cupboard, which might have been convenient; it gave upon a door
+in the puncheon floor, which, lifted, showed a ladder leading to the
+cellar. He went through, feet foremost, closing the counter door after
+him as well as the other. He lighted his lantern, not with a coal or
+flint, as is usual, but with the more modern and progressive match,
+and then down the ladder he went very warily, for it was a somewhat
+slight structure, and he was a heavy man. It could be removed, too, in
+a moment, which added to its insecurity.
+
+And still there was naught apparent which could justify so much
+caution. The lantern, now fairly alight, revealed empty boxes and
+barrels, and a scanty reserve of stock similar to the goods which the
+shelves above showed. He pushed a few boxes aside, took down a board or
+two of the wall in the rear, and in another moment was in one of the
+tunnels of the abandoned mine, the wall replaced behind him.
+
+Surely, a man was never more ingeniously secure, he thought, as he
+went at a brisk pace into the depths of the mountain, and it would all
+be jeopardized by the influx into the Cove of a horde of tourists and
+summer sojourners that the projected hotel might bring. No exclusive
+aristocrat was ever more jealous of his seclusion from the roving of
+his kind than Lorenzo Taft. And then this danger of his own household,
+his own hearthstone; this silent, disapproving, prying, perfect little
+primness!
+
+He crossed water once. He never crossed it without remembering the
+instinct of the deer pursued to put a running stream between its
+flight and the hunter. The rivulet, very narrow here, flowed in a
+rocky bed at a swift rate. This was a tributary of the larger torrent
+that had flooded the mine, and, together with the small output and the
+inadequate prospect, had caused the work to be abandoned. Two of the
+miners had been drowned in the catastrophe, and this circumstance had
+doubtless contributed to the solitude of the locality. It was a place
+of strange sounds, with the forever-echoing rocks, and few curiosity
+seekers had ever ventured farther than the great outer portal of the
+Lost Time mine. Into this tunnel, with which Taft had joined a tunnel
+of his own secret workmanship, the water had not risen, albeit the
+lower excavations were all submerged; and as he went dryshod, he heard
+the deft patter of his tread on the well-beaten "dirt" path multiplied
+behind him by the echoes into the semblance of many a following
+footfall. This illusion might have jarred less accustomed nerves, but
+Taft had heard this impalpable pursuit so long with impunity that he
+was hardly likely to heed it now. Something, however, that he sometimes
+heard, and that was more often silent, he had learned to watch for, to
+fearfully mark the sound when it came, and to note its absence with a
+shuddering sense of vacancy and a chill suspense. It was like the sound
+of a pick continually striking into the earth, not with a hurried or
+fitful stroke, but timed with a composed regularity characteristic of
+the steady workman. Sometimes it seemed far away, sometimes immediately
+overhead, and again just underfoot. Those who heard it accounted for
+it readily enough. Who had set the ghastly superstition afoot none
+might say, but the belief widely obtained that the two lost miners
+thus wrought continually in the depths of the mountain, digging the
+graves that had been denied them on the face of the earth. To Taft,
+the familiar of the dark, the weird, and the uncanny, it seemed a
+likely enough solution of the mystery, and he nothing doubted it. He
+could not account for another phenomenon, not so frequent, but often
+enough forced upon his contemplation to bring him to an anxious pause.
+Sometimes he heard, or thought he heard, voices, loud, resounding,
+distinct,--hailing, hallooing voices; and again so uncertain, so
+commingled, were these vibrations, so repetitious and faint, that he
+could not be sure that they were not merely echoes,--echoes of the
+talk and mirth of the group of moonshiners whom another turn of the
+underground passage showed him at their work in the broader space of a
+chamber of the mine, where the great timbers still stanchly supported
+the roofing masses of earth, and the walls of sandstone bore freshly
+the gaunt wounds that the blasting had wrought in their rugged sides.
+
+
+
+
+                                 III.
+
+
+The gloom of the place had a unique underground quality which could
+hardly be compassed elsewhere by the mere exclusion of daylight. The
+yellow flare from the open door of the furnace seemed chiefly to serve
+to render visible the surrounding darkness. The masses of shadow were
+densely black. Where the firelight smote them they merged reluctantly
+into expositions of the darkest possibilities of umber and burnt
+sienna and dismal gradations of duskier brown. The clay wall facing
+the furnace door at one side, however, glowed with the reddest of
+terra-cotta hues. Against this the group was outlined, motionless, all
+eyes turning upon the black aperture of the tunnel along which the
+faint, wan gleams of Taft's lantern had preceded him. The moonshiners
+had an air of pretermitting work, and the expectant, receptive
+attention which characterizes the secluded in colloquy with him from
+the world without.
+
+There is a certain rapacity in this demand for developments. Withdrawn
+from the scene of action, it seems as if anything definite and decisive
+might have happened in the interval of time, when perhaps only
+combinations of causes are slowly and imperceptibly tending toward
+the precipitation of the event. When the full-voiced greetings were
+supplemented by the inquiry for the news, Lorenzo Taft stood for a
+moment at a loss, conscious of a need of caution in the recital of his
+suspicions and doubts and indeterminate fears. He sat down on the side
+of a barrel, looking, in the flickering dusk and the vivid gleams from
+the furnace, like some able-bodied, overgrown Bacchus, with his flowing
+yellow hair and beard definite against the terra-cotta wall behind him,
+his reckless, jovial blue eyes full of life and vigor, and his fair and
+florid complexion wearing already the deeper flush painted by brush
+whiskey.
+
+"I dunno 'bout _news_, edzac'ly." He hesitated, wiping his mouth
+with the back of his hand, as if he could hardly summarize so few
+experiences and impressions for the benefit of the debarred.
+
+"That's always the way," sarcastically exclaimed Jack Espey, a slight,
+eager-eyed young man, the impersonation of impatience. "'Renzo don't
+never hear no news in the Cove; leastwise"--he cast a keen, significant
+glance at the others--"none ez he air aimin' ter tell agin."
+
+The facial expression of the other men changed subtly, unmistakably.
+Some strong sentiment of disaffection had evidently been set astir in
+Taft's absence. As he slowly recognized it, a deep, dismayed gravity
+fell upon his features, which were as incongruous with his expression
+for the moment as if they were merely component parts of some jovial
+mask. It was a petrified look, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon
+Head of Trouble.
+
+The other men said nothing, maintaining a sort of wary attention
+inimical in its close receptivity. The suggestion had communicated
+instant fire to certain inflammable suspicions and antagonisms. All the
+work about the still was given over for the nonce, and Lorenzo Taft
+had a certain overpowering realization of being brought suddenly to
+judgment, without a moment in which to take account with himself and
+his agile duplicities and perfect his defense.
+
+There were four of the moonshiners besides Lorenzo Taft. Their
+aspect had so little in common that one might wonder at the cohesive
+property of the enterprise to hold them together, were it not for
+the opportunity of profit so rare in these mountain communities, and
+the great and ever-present dangers of the law that served to cement
+their association when once they had fallen into the toils of the
+illicit worm. One, in his shirt-sleeves, was somewhat beyond middle
+age, bearded and grizzled and grave, with a sedate eye, callous hands,
+and a steady look as if he might be trusted to do a good deal of hard
+work by sheer force of industrial momentum when once about it. He
+had distilled much liquor against the law in his time, and even had
+an experience in such matters antedating the unpopular whiskey tax.
+His was a sober, trusted judgment in questions of pomace and mash,
+singlings and doublings, and the successes of the manufacture were his.
+Another had a downy lip, full, petulant, passionate; a large blue
+eye, deeply bloodshot; a tousle of light curling hair; an overgrown,
+large-jointed look,--a mere boy, despite his thickened utterance, his
+shaking hand, and his frequent reference to a jug down amongst the
+shadows which the others left almost untouched. A far more dangerous
+personality was exemplified in the keen-eyed man, of about twenty-five,
+called Jack Espey. He had a wild, alert, aggressive look, widely opened
+bluish-gray eyes, full of reflections of the world without, straight
+black hair, a drooping mustache, a fair complexion, a square jaw, and
+about him was the unmistakable intimation of recklessness. He wore a
+white wool hat set far back on his head, a blue shirt, and blue jeans
+trousers, and he clasped both his hands across one knee above his long
+spurred boot, while he sat on a shelf of the rock, half in the shadow
+and half in the light. The gleam fell on the handle of the knife in his
+belt and his pistols, which he did not lay aside to assist in the work.
+Yet it was not toward him that Taft, surprised and overtaken, cast the
+first covert glance of anxiety and deprecation. A smiling, dark-eyed
+gaze fixed upon his face shook his confidence, in that moment of
+detection. The smile was not one of pleasure, but Larrabee's eyes were
+seldom without it. It was tinged with a suggestion of contempt; it was
+habitually slow; it seemed rather an unintentional emanation from the
+spirit within than a means of communication with others of his kind. He
+smiled, as it were, to himself. He had a pale, clear-cut, intelligent
+face, with fine straight features, dark eyes, and short auburn hair. He
+was about twenty three or four years of age, lean but strongly built,
+and tall, and was dressed in brown jeans, with great rough boots.
+He had a certain inactive, lounging aspect, and laid aside with a
+reluctant gesture the worn New Testament which he had been laboriously
+reading as he sat close to the door of the furnace and caught its
+glimmers.
+
+"Naw," reiterated the keen, eager Espey, with what he intended to be a
+sneer, but which was instead a snort of indignation, "ef 'Renzo hears
+enny news, he ain't rememberin' ter sheer it with we-uns; he keeps it
+from us, moles o' the yearth that we be!"
+
+He dropped his voice dramatically. The others, with a hot sense of
+injury, gazed with glowing eyes upon Taft.
+
+"Why, look-a-hyar," Taft felt impelled to defend himself, "what is it I
+ain't told ez ye want ter know?"
+
+There was a close understanding among the "moles o' the yearth," for
+the united accusation about to be voiced was withheld as Larrabee fixed
+his ever-smiling eyes upon him and held up his warning hand.
+
+"Waal, 'Renzo, what _is_ the news ye hev tole hyar?"
+
+It was the pride of intellect which illumined Larrabee's face, that
+ineffable sense of power which a conscious mental superiority bestows.
+The smile in his eyes extended to his lips; he laughed a little,
+showing his strong white teeth, and there was something craftily
+brilliant in his expression as he looked down and turned the Testament
+in his hands, and looked up and laughed again.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed Espey rancorously, "ye purtend ter go out an' see
+nuthin' an' hear nuthin'. I reckon ye air 'feared we'll git skeered too
+easy, an' light out an' leave the still, an' sech; so ye tell we-uns
+nuthin' 'bout sech ez ye meet up with. Jes' ondertake ter jedge fur us
+an' gin us no warnin' nor nuthin'"--
+
+Larrabee broke in suddenly: "_We_'ll ondertake ter tell you-uns
+the news, 'Renzo Taft, though we do be 'moles o' the yearth'! _Thar's
+a stranger in the Cove!_"
+
+A large, imposing personality is at a peculiar disadvantage when
+overtaken by disaster. Lorenzo Taft felt detected in every fibre,
+and he was conscious of comprising a good many pounds avoirdupois of
+culprit as he sat arraigned before them all. He could only look from
+one to the other in flushed doubt and anxiety as to how much they knew
+of what he had his own reasons to conceal.
+
+"He air 'bidin' down at old Lucy Tems's house; an' ez ye sot out ter
+go thar this evenin', ye air 'bleeged ter hev viewed him," persisted
+Larrabee.
+
+"Oh, I viewed him," said Lorenzo Taft, the steadiness of his fixed gaze
+beginning to waver somewhat as he sought to assume a more incidental
+manner, in the midst of his amazement to hear the details of his visit
+to the Tems cabin from these "moles o' the yearth," miles away in the
+rain and the mist and the darkness, and locked up in the denser medium
+of the depths of the solid ground.
+
+"I'll tell ye his name," continued Larrabee, his eyes still smiling,
+but the curves of his mouth fierce, and his breath coming fast. "His
+name is Kenn'ston, or sech."
+
+A wild, confusing fear of supernatural agency in this knowledge had
+begun to pervade Taft's consciousness. Then he caught himself suddenly.
+
+"Ye mus' hev hearn on _him_ whenst _he_ war hyar afore," he
+said.
+
+"Hyar afore!" exclaimed the anxious-eyed men in concert.
+
+"He be the man ez 'lows ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove, or
+sech like. Ye mus' hev hearn 'bout him."
+
+A silence ensued. "That war 'way las' year," the elder moonshiner said
+at last.
+
+"He 'pears ter go powerful slow," said the boy, disaffected and
+incredulous.
+
+As the grizzled elderly distiller pondered on the matter, the perplexed
+wrinkles and lines of his worn face were painful to see. "Ye be
+right sure he ain't no revenuer nor nuthin'?" he asked anxiously,
+subordinating his own judgment.
+
+"Great Gosh, naw!" exclaimed Taft, with a resonant, confident note.
+This idea, so at variance with his knowledge of Kenniston's plans,
+had not occurred to him. He broke out into a sonorous laugh at the
+fears which for the first time he comprehended. "Revenuer!" he cried
+contemptuously. "Moonshining would be a powerful slick bizness ef
+revenuers war sech ez him!"
+
+The sense of relief induced a slackening of the tension among the
+others. They too laughed, albeit a trifle constrainedly, and glanced
+consciously from one to the other. But Larrabee turned the Testament
+back and forth doubtfully in his hands, and asked suddenly, without
+looking up, "Then, why n't ye tell 'bout him a-fust, ef ye didn't want
+us not ter know 'bout him,--jes' ez news?"
+
+Taft was silent for an instant. But the sense of partial success
+is a prophetic element in the completion of triumph, and, with an
+irreflective dash at the nearest means of exculpation without full
+disclosure, he replied precipitately:--
+
+"News! I didn't count _him_ no news. Sech ez him don't count much
+whenst a man's a-goin' a-courtin'."
+
+The silence with which this was received was expressive of extreme
+surprise. The crackle of the furnace fuel, the roar of the flames,
+the rush of the air along one of the unseen shafts near by that had
+some immediate communication with the outer atmosphere, and sustained
+a strong current through the connecting drift, even the continuous
+dripping from the worm, each made itself conspicuous in the absence of
+other sound.
+
+Jack Espey had suddenly lifted one spurred boot to his knee, and was
+affecting to examine the rowel. "Who be ye a-courtin' thar at old Cap'n
+Lucy's?" he gruffly demanded, but with an obvious effort to assume an
+off-hand manner.
+
+The steady look which Larrabee fixed upon Taft was, evidently, not
+incidental. The blood rushed to Taft's head. He had not dreamed of
+this complication. He saw that his answer meant far more to each of
+them than to him. And yet it was a difficult answer to give. He could
+not even seem to hesitate, and he must needs decide his fate at chance
+medley.
+
+"Ad'licia!" he blurted out at a venture. Then, as the recollection of
+the handsome, silent Julia came over him with the inevitable sense of
+comparison, a pang seized his utilitarian heart; for since an excuse
+for his silence as to the details of his visit must needs be framed,
+and a stepmother be chosen in such haste, why could he not have
+bethought himself of the beauty? The fact that others were touched by
+this matter, of which he had so suddenly a subtle perception, rendered
+his decision extra hazardous. His own natural interest, his swift
+regret for his choice, which was likely to ensue in any event since
+his feelings were not involved, dulled his observation for the moment.
+It was the least fraction of time which he had failed to improve, but
+when his discerning, covert gaze sought the faces of the other two men
+it could tell him naught of what he wished to know. Jack Espey still
+sedulously examined the rowel of his spur lifted to his knee, and
+Larrabee's eyes were fastened upon the worn book which he turned in his
+hands.
+
+"I reckon I'm mighty welcome ter my ch'ice of Ad'licia," Taft said
+ruefully to himself. "Ad'licia 'd stand no sort'n chance with young
+fellers sech ez them, alongside o' sech a lookin' gal ez Julia."
+
+The instinct strong in ambitious human nature to enter the lists for
+a prize stirred within him, albeit it was merely his own fancy that
+rated Julia at this phenomenal value. Fictitious though it was, it
+belittled Adelicia in his estimation. However, the die was cast. He
+had openly avowed his preference, and it was hardly to be presumed
+that the arrogant Julia would suffer herself to be second choice to
+one of her own household. The possibility of defeat from any objection
+to him on the part of the lady never occurs to a man of that type.
+In his bluff vanity, a concomitant of his other hardy attributes, he
+thought he had only to choose. And he had chosen. He began to seek
+to reconcile himself to his selection. It would not be judicious to
+have a rivalry in a matter of this sort--of which young men are apt to
+make so much--between himself and members of his gang; more especially
+Espey, who was dangerous because of his hot head, and Larrabee, who
+was dangerous because of his cool head. And then Adelicia was of an
+easy, acquiescent, optimistic temperament, and was likely to put up
+more readily with the two children, Joe and Cornelia. He astutely
+reflected that it would probably require all the optimism attainable in
+the Cove to put up with "Sis." He began to feel that he was very lucky,
+or rather instinctively and intuitively sagacious, to have made such a
+choice at a snap shot. A troublous household would the determined and
+doubtless exacting beauty make of it. "Sp'iled ter death, I expec', by
+Luther an' old Lucy; nare one of 'em dunno _how_ ter say 'no' ter
+nuthin' Julia sets her head ter, I reckon. An' I ain't no young feller,
+nohow, to go danglin' arter the purtiest gal in the kentry, pickin'
+out a second ch'ice fur a wife. Ad'licia hain't got no home, bein'
+jes' Cap'n Lucy's niece, an' I reckon she 'd be glad an' pleased ter
+hev a house o' her own, with nuthin' ter do but ter keep blinders on
+Sis 'bout'n the still an' sech, an' set her a-sewin' or a-hoein' till
+she gits some growth an' jedgmint." He began to pluck up. "Purty is ez
+purty does. Air one o' them boys is welcome to Julia!"
+
+Then a sudden thought smote him.
+
+"'Pears ter me I oughter hev a cornsider'ble gredge agin you-uns," his
+big voice boomed out with all its sonorous confidence once more. "I
+kem hyar arter goin', ez ye knowed, ter Tems's, an' durned ef ye don't
+haul me over the coals like ez ef I hed hearn suthin' ez I didn't want
+you-uns ter know."
+
+"So ye did, so ye did!" said Espey eagerly. "Ye didn't 'low fur we-uns
+ter know ez that man war hyar agin surely settin' out ter build his
+tavern or sech. 'Kase ef sech a many folks war stirrin' in the Cove,
+we-uns would be 'feared they'd nose us out 'fore long, an' quit the
+still."
+
+Lorenzo Taft's face once more grew stony, as if he beheld some
+petrifying prospect not included in the range of vision of the natural
+eye.
+
+"I reckon I hev got ez much call ter be 'feared ez you-uns," he
+protested. "I dunno ez enny o' you-uns hev sarved out a prison term fur
+illicit distillin' but me."
+
+The others stirred uneasily at the mere mention of the possibility,
+their faces, stricken with a deep gravity, all illumined by the
+brilliant flare of the flames springing up anew; for the grizzled
+elderly man was busying himself in replenishing the fire. The wall
+of red earth on one side, on the other the wall of dark gray rock,
+alternating with lighter tints, where the blastings had riven its
+close texture; the heavy supporting timbers made of great tree boles
+(what sordid translation from the noble forests without, where the
+unstricken of their kindred still towered toward the stars, and sang
+with the winds, and received glad gifts from the seasons in springing
+sap and spreading leaf, in acorn and cone, and kept a covenant with
+time registering the years in mystic rings in their inmost hearts!);
+the black aperture of the tunnel on one hand, and opposite a mysterious
+recess leading beyond; even a rat, and his elongated shadow, which,
+augmented into frightful proportions, sped after him in a mimic chase
+across the trampled red clay floor,--all became visible in detail.
+The disorder of the immediate surroundings, the barrels, the tubs,
+the sacks full of meal, the great woodpile, the rotting refuse of the
+pomace in heaps waiting to be cast down into the half-submerged shaft
+close at hand, the copper still, itself, and the spiral worm and its
+adjuncts made a definite impression hitherto lost in the gloom. The
+shadows of the mountaineers doubled their number, as they sat, grave
+and absorbed, and gazed at the deep red and yellow and vivid white
+flare within the furnace. They seemed to wait in silence until the
+ill-fitting door clanged again, as if their senses recognized an added
+safety in the gloom which was not approved by their judgment.
+
+As the door closed the elder distiller spoke.
+
+"I dunno ez I hanker ter sarve no prison term," he said lugubriously.
+"An' I kin see full plain ez this hyar still will hev ter quit ef the
+Cove gits full o' valley folks. We-uns will hev ter move, sure!"
+
+"Move whar?" demanded Taft. "I been a-movin' afore. That's how kem I
+lef' Piomingo Cove, whar the revenue folks knowed me better."
+
+There was another long silence.
+
+"Burn him out!" exclaimed Jack Espey violently, bringing the foot which
+he had held on his knee down to the ground with a vehemence that made
+the spurs jingle. "Let _him_ move! Burn his shanty every time he
+gits it started."
+
+Lorenzo Taft recoiled. The glimmer from the crevices of the furnace
+door made a dull red twilight about him, as he sat on the barrel
+against the red wall. The suggestion was not new to his mind. He had
+not intended, however, that it should take root amongst the moonshiners
+and augment their jeopardy. He thought that, if he were any judge of
+character, Kenniston would soon have enemies enough here. The stranger
+was already busy in antagonizing Cap'n Lucy,--an early collision was
+inevitable. This catastrophe to the building might be presumed to be
+the natural outcome of their wrangles, and he would fain have silently
+awaited this interpretation of the event. As to the old mountaineer he
+felt no qualms of conscience; Cap'n Lucy was amply able to take care of
+himself.
+
+This was the trend of Lorenzo Taft's plan,--the reason of his avoidance
+of the subject of the stranger. How or why his expectation should have
+miscarried he could not for the life of him see. The man had before
+been in the Cove. His presence would soon be an ordinary accepted fact.
+Fate merely would seem to harass Kenniston and his plans. Fire is a
+dangerous element in building, nevertheless requisite, in the tinner's,
+the plumber's, even the paper-hanger's art, and a conflagration in
+remote places is a terrible thing. Kenniston would become discouraged
+after a time, and desist.
+
+But Lorenzo Taft had never intended that this work should be through
+the united means of moonshiners. Five men were too many to keep the
+secrets of arson. The art of moonshining is necessarily worked with
+numbers, but the fire-bug's must needs be a solitary trade. He could
+not see the rift in his logic. How _had_ they taken the alarm?
+
+He marked with secret fear how the suggestion fared. Larrabee, who had
+begun again to read by the knifelike gleam from the crevice of the
+furnace door, caught upon the page on his knee, as he sat close beside
+it, looked up with a keen, pondering face, his finger still on the line
+along which it was wont to guide his wavering comprehension. Surely
+he found no thoughts in its wake responsive to the idea now astir in
+his active, untaught brain. Law-breaking is a progressive evil. If
+he had not been engaged in the crime of illicit distilling,--which
+has, however, its apologists from the mere standpoint of economics,
+who plead the inherent right of a man to use his own corn and fruit
+to serve his own advantage,--this further iniquity of the destruction
+of the property of another could not have found lodgment in his
+consideration, for he was not naturally a cruel man, nor wicked.
+But in the depths of the earth, working at an unlawful vocation, in
+jeopardy of his liberty and in fear of his life, viewing the world
+only in transient glimpses in the midst of a backwoods community, and
+sustaining in effect an assumed character, that of a slothful farmer,
+an ignorant man's mind, however good the native essence, is not likely
+to develop fairly; and he may read the New Testament, as indeed those
+wiser and better than he have done, as a matter of literary interest
+and excitement, with not a thought of personal application.
+
+The half-drunken boy pulled himself out of his semi-recumbent position
+on the floor.
+
+"That's the dinctum, by Gawd!" he exclaimed, his solemn red face
+swollen and somnolent of expression. "Burn him out! Burn him out! Make
+_him_ move! Kindle up a leetle hell around him!"
+
+He broke out with a wild, hiccoughing laugh, singing in a queer
+falsetto,--
+
+    "'Ladybug, Ladybug, fly to yer home!
+    Yer house is on fire'"--
+
+ending in a shrill cackle of derision and a quavering whoop.
+
+"Shet up, sonny!" said Copley, the veteran moonshiner, who seldom
+interfered save upon a question of work. Even he turned from the
+examination of the fermentation of a tub of mash which had been in
+question, his lantern in his hand, and a slow smile of discovery in
+the perplexed, anxious wrinkles of his wooden face. "I reckon our fire
+would last ez long ez his buildin' timber."
+
+There was not a protest from among them. Lorenzo Taft, more dismayed
+than he could at once realize, again marveled how they had taken the
+sudden alarm.
+
+"Ye ain't never tole me yit how it air ez you-uns fund out, sence I
+been gone this evenin', ez thar war a stranger in the Cove, an' how ye
+knowed 'twar this hyar Kenn'ston down at Tems's."
+
+There was a sudden volley of laughter, and Larrabee closed his book
+with a bang of triumph.
+
+"Our turn now! Jack, _he_ wants ter hear the news!" he called out
+to Espey.
+
+"Ye mought ez well s'arch the hen-house fur teeth ez ter kem hyar
+ter we-uns, 'way down in the ground, axin' fur news!" protested Jack
+sarcastically.
+
+A frown was gathering on Taft's face. He no longer had the incentive
+to self-command which the welfare of a plot requires. His plot was
+shattered; the event was out of his control, at the uncovenanted mercy
+of the future. It was almost sheerly from the force of curiosity that
+he pressed the question:--
+
+"How _did_ ye know, ennyhow?"
+
+Perhaps he might not have been enlightened save for Larrabee's relish
+for detailing the circumstances, in the paucity of incident and
+interest in their underground career.
+
+"Waal," he began in a narrative tone, and they all composed themselves
+to listen. Even the elderly drudge decanted a jug of doublings into a
+keg with marked speed of manner, and shuffled up into the circle, where
+he seated himself on a broken-backed chair, which, since he could not
+lean backward, rendered him fain to lean forward, his elbows on his
+knees,--"waal, this evenin', it bein' sorter lonesome down hyar,--I
+knowed 'twar goin' ter rain,--I felt sorter like 'twould be toler'ble
+pleasant ter read in my book."
+
+He paused in pride; the respect of the others for this accomplishment
+was visible on their faces; it might be said to be almost tangible.
+
+"I couldn't find it, though, nowhar; an' I s'arched an' s'arched. An'
+suddint I 'membered I hed lef' it on the counter in the store. So
+knowin' 'twar nigh dark, an' nobody likely ter be stirrin', I went up
+inter the suller an' listened; an' ez I hearn nuthin', I went up the
+ladder inter the room. Ye know I felt plumb safe, fur I thunk the door
+war locked on the outside."
+
+"Waal, warn't it?" asked Taft, with a swift look of alarm.
+
+"_It warn't locked at all_; fur, ez I stood thar,--I hed jes' by
+accident shet the door o' the counter up an' the suller,--the door of
+the room opened."
+
+Taft's breath was fast. He had himself unlocked the door before he came
+down to the still. He could have sworn it.
+
+"The door opened, an' a leetle gal kem in," Larrabee went on.
+
+Taft's dismayed eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon him.
+
+"Ye didn't tell her nuthin'!" he exclaimed, for he recognized the
+avenging "Sis" without description.
+
+Larrabee laughed at the reminiscence of the humors of the situation.
+
+"I war fit ter drap down dead with plumb skeer at the sight o' her!
+But I sorter held up by the counter, an' I say, 'I kem ter see 'Renzo
+Taft,--yer dad, I reckon.' An' she owned up ter it. An' I say, 'I
+'lowed he kep' the door o' the sto' locked.' An' she say, 'He do.
+I think 'twar locked.' 'I reckon not,' I say, 'fur I couldn't hev
+walked in ef he hed locked it.' An' she say, 'I couldn't hev locked it
+_good_, agin. I _onlocked_ it this evenin' with my grandmam's
+key what I brung from her house.'"
+
+Lorenzo Taft gasped. The idea of old Mrs. Jiniway's keys unlocking his
+helpless doors gave him a sense of the futility of concealment from the
+prying feminine eye which nothing else could so adequately compass.
+
+"An' then," continued Larrabee, with another burst of laughter,--Taft
+did not think "Sis" half so funny,--"I axed her what ailed her ter
+open the door of her dad's store whilst he war gone. She looked like
+she hed a mind not to say another word. But she tuk another notion,--I
+reckon she didn't like ter be faulted,--an' 'lowed ez a strange man hed
+rid by; an' his horse bein' turrible fractious and hard-mouthed, the
+bit hed bruk in the critter's mouth, an' he wanted ter buy another. So
+Sis tried ter open the door, and done it, with her granny's key. An'
+she sold him a bit. She said he war powerful saaft-spoken an' perlite,
+ez ef she 'lowed _I warn't_! An' that gin me a chance ter ax her
+what he said. An' she tole his name, an' the word ez he war 'bidin' at
+Tems's,--fur Sis axed him. He got away with mighty leetle news that Sis
+hed enny cur'osity 'bout."
+
+Lorenzo Taft listened in silent despair. Disaster seemed closing about
+him. Certainly this was a field for a stepmother. Adelicia could not
+take the enterprising "Sis" in hand a moment too soon.
+
+"How much did she want to know 'bout _you-uns_ that _ye_
+didn't tell?" demanded Taft.
+
+"Waal, I fell in line, an' wanted ter buy suthin', too. I purtended I
+wanted ter buy a pound o' nails. Sis weighed 'em out fur me,--gin me
+mighty scant measure,--an' then I 'lowed I would wait ter see you-uns,
+an' I sot down in a cheer. An' she sent Joe ter set with me,--ter see I
+never stole nuthin' o' the gear, I reckon,--an' went off in the t'other
+room ter spinnin', ter jedge by the sound o' the wheel. An' Joe drapped
+off ter sleep, an' arter a while I croped down hyar agin. I reckon she
+'lowed, when she missed me, ez I got tired an' went away."
+
+Taft, anxiously canvassing the probabilities, could but deem this more
+than likely. He began to breathe freely. The girl was too young to
+critically observe any departure from the usual routine, or to reason
+about the matter. He doubted if she would know what moonshining was,
+or could draw any inference from the fact of concealment should their
+precautions chance to fall under her notice. Not that he intended,
+however, to submit them to this jeopardy. The finding and fitting of
+old Mrs. Jiniway's key to the door, in order that the sale of the bit
+might not be lost, savored too much of a precocious intelligence to
+be needlessly trusted. "Sis will bear watchin'," he said to himself,
+unaware that this was a mutual conclusion.
+
+For early rising was one of the virtues inculcated in old Mrs.
+Jiniway's rule of life. Cornelia Taft was awake betimes the following
+morning,--a dawn full of rain, of gray mist veiling the mountains,
+of low clouds, of heavy, windless air. She saw its melancholy gleams
+through the crevices of the clapboards of the roof above her head and
+the batten shutter close by her bed. She knew that these fugitive
+glimmers were brighter than the dull day slowly breaking without,
+from the contrast with the deep tones of intervenient shadow. She lay
+looking at them for a time with this thought in her mind, and then
+she leaned forward and opened the shutter. It was as she had fancied:
+the dusk was almost visible, like a brown mist that seemed subtle
+and elusive, and always vaguely withdrew whenever the eye would fain
+dwell upon it. A great elm grew just without the window and hung high
+above the roof. Its leaves were all lustrous and deeply green with the
+moisture; the graceful bole and branches were darker and more definite
+than their wont. A bird's-nest was in a crotch. She turned her head
+to hear the sleepy chirp of nestlings. She wondered that Joe had not
+rifled it,--only because he had not observed it, she felt sure. "That
+boy don't take notice o' nuthin'," she commented acridly upon her
+senior. The next moment her own powers of observation were brought
+into play. She heard steps, voices, a loud laugh, and before she
+could experience either fear or surprise very definitely two or three
+men passed out of the house, under the elm-tree, and down the road,
+vanishing in the mist. She recognized one of them as the man who had so
+suddenly appeared in the store the day before; another she had never
+seen; the third was very young and very drunk.
+
+Despite the sanctimonious atmosphere that had characterized Mrs.
+Jiniway's domicile, the doings of the unregenerate had always been
+commented upon with the freedom affected by those who are subject
+neither to the temptation nor the transgression. Few gossips were
+better informed upon current affairs than she and her youthful charge;
+and it might be safe to say that, to all intents and purposes, a United
+States marshal knew no more about the revenue laws as applied to
+illicit distilling than did Miss Cornelia Taft.
+
+Her small mind received a great enlightenment as she watched the young
+moonshiner reel down the road with his two companions, and then she
+leaned forward and softly and deftly closed the shutter as before.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV.
+
+
+The day proved of variable mood. The mists clung sullenly to slope
+and ravine for a time; the clouds hung low, full of menace; even a
+muttering of thunder afar off now and again stirred their dense gray
+masses. The veiled mountains were withdrawn into invisibility. Below,
+the earth lay as if it consisted only of dull levels, limited, silent,
+comatose, for the dank, drowsy influence pervaded all energies alike of
+the animate and the inanimate; there was no sound of beast or bird, no
+stir of wind or rustle of leaf, and a lethargy dulled pulse and muscle
+and brain.
+
+The sunburst came with the effect of revelation. A vague tremor
+pervaded the tissues of the gray mists, and all at once a great white
+glory was on the green mountain sides. The vast spaces to the blue
+zenith were filled with radiant flying fleecy forms as the transfigured
+vapor took wing. Far in the south the gray cloudage still held its
+consistency, and trembled with thunder and sudden elusive palpitating
+veins of yellow lightning. But the lithe arc of a rainbow presently
+sprang athwart it, and the wind came gayly piping down the gorge. In
+the actual perceptible jubilance of the earth, it might seem that the
+miracles of the goodness and the gladness of the sun were no common
+thing. There was a visible joy among the leaves as they fluttered
+together, and lifted up their dank fibres, and lustrously reflected the
+pervasive sheen, and tremulously murmured and chanted in elfin wise
+beneath the breath. How was it that the plaining river should suddenly
+find its melodies again as if light and song were interdependent? A
+tumultuous, rollicking stave it flung upon the air; and so, faster
+to the valley! The benignant revivification was on the very flocks;
+the dull, submissive sheep, huddled drowsily together in the gray
+menace of the morning, were astir once more, and dispersed here and
+there as they browsed. Even Luther was singing in the barn as he
+mended his ploughgear. All day the swift upward flights of the sheeny
+white figures continued at intervals, and when Adelicia set forth to
+drive the cows home, in the afternoon, only the more radiant aspects
+of the world gave token of the storm of the night. She hardly left
+the print of her shoe in the wild woodland ways through which she
+wandered, so had the warmth and the light dried the dank herbage. She
+was out betimes. There was something in the long, meditative strolls
+that harmonized with certain moods, and Cap'n Lucy sometimes sourly
+commented, "Ad'licia gone ter fotch home the cows? Waal, who be a-goin'
+ter fotch home Ad'licia?"
+
+It might be an hour before Spot would think of turning her crumpled
+horns homeward. The sun shone aslant through the vast forests, but
+still hung well up in the western sky. Through the deeper gloom
+amongst the gigantic trees the rays hardly penetrated. She stopped
+once to gaze from the midst of the dark green shade of the umbrageous
+tangle at the strange effects of the light where it fell into an
+open space cleared long ago by "girdling" the trees, which betokened
+collapsed agricultural intentions, for the ground had never been
+broken by the plough. The enormous dead trees were still standing, and
+time and rain and wind had worn them to a pallid whiteness. She could
+see the successive clusters of columns, one after another, rising in
+the sunlight, until the roofing foliage nearer at hand cut off the
+view. To Kenniston's cultured experience they were reminiscent of the
+colonnades of some great cathedral, when he had observed the place and
+the same effect. She had naught in mind to which she could compare
+them, but those white, silent, columnated aisles in the midst of the
+savage fastnesses of the great wilderness always impressed her with a
+certain solemnity as she passed, and she was wont to pause to gaze at
+the spot in awe and with a vague sinking of the heart; for, despite her
+optimism, Adelicia's heart was not always light. She was sensible of
+its weight this evening, as she wandered on, leaving the still, white
+sanctuary in the midst of the forest glooms. Her face was wistful and
+pale. Her dark gray lustrous eyes were dreamy. She walked slowly and
+aimlessly, her brown dress brushing the undergrowth aside with a gentle
+murmur, her yellow calico sunbonnet hanging on her shoulders and
+leaving her auburn head bare. Her errand was far from her mind. She did
+not even bethink herself to call the cow, until suddenly she noticed
+how high upon the great boles of the trees the slanting sunlight
+registered the waning of the day. Then, as she set the echoes vibrating
+with the long-drawn cry of "Soo, cow! soo!" she turned at right angles,
+following the trend of the mountain stream, invisible in the labyrinth
+of the woods, but not far distant she knew by the vague murmur of
+waters borne by the wind. She had looked for no other listener than the
+somewhat arbitrary Spot, who would heed or not as she listed, and who
+might now be standing knee-deep in the limpid ripples near at hand,
+hearkening, but making no response, intending to fare home at her own
+good pleasure. But the long, musical, mellow call, with its trailing
+echoes, attracted other and more receptive attention, and as Adelicia
+turned suddenly into a straighter section of the path she saw at the
+end of the vista, before it curved again, standing beneath a tree and
+with his face toward her, a man apparently listening and waiting for
+her.
+
+He had dismounted from his horse, a light-tinted yellow roan, who stood
+as still as if he were of bronze, while his master leaned against the
+saddle, with his hand on the bridle. He held the other arm akimbo, with
+his hand on the belt which supported a knife and a pair of pistols.
+They were unconcealed by a coat; he wore a blue shirt and blue jeans
+trousers, with heavy boots drawn to the knees; and she recognized him
+rather by his accoutrements than his face, for his wide white wool hat
+was pulled far over it. From under the broad brim he gazed at her with
+sullen, lowering eyes.
+
+"I hearn ye callin' the cow, an' I knowed yer voice," he said. "I been
+waitin' fur ye."
+
+She faltered for a moment; then, with an evident effort, quickened her
+step and went forward to meet him. She apprehended the anger in his
+face, apparently, for there was a disarming, deprecating look in her
+clear dark eyes as she cast them up at him. Her yellow sunbonnet hardly
+served more for shelter than an aureola might have done,--a background
+for her auburn head; her dark brown dress and the green shadows of the
+trees added a pallor to her white oval face with its small delicate
+chin. He did not heed her appealing gaze. It was with a stern, hard
+voice that he spoke, and a fiery eye.
+
+"I hev got a word ter say ter ye, Ad'licia," he began, walking slowly
+by her side and leading his horse, the reins thrown over his arm and
+his uplifted hand near the bit.
+
+The animal's head was close above his shoulder, and as Adelicia met the
+creature's large-eyed and liquid gaze it seemed to her as if she were
+doubly arraigned before them both.
+
+"Ye needn't ter try ter fool me," said Jack Espey between his teeth.
+
+"I ain't tryin' ter fool ye," protested Adelicia.
+
+He looked at her narrowly, taking note of her evident discomposure, and
+placing disastrous construction upon it.
+
+"Ye 'low ye kin fool me 'thout tryin', I reckon," he said, with a
+sarcastic smile.
+
+"I ain't a-foolin' ye," gasped Adelicia. "Ye know--why, _ye know_
+I ain't!"
+
+He hesitated, half constrained to believe her. He still gazed
+searchingly at her from under the broad brim of his hat. Her wild,
+agitated look made him doubtful.
+
+"Now, ye jes' ondertake ter fool me," he continued, with an accession
+of angry jealousy, "an'"--he laid his hand on the pistol in his
+belt--"I'll ondertake ter shoot ye dead on the spot."
+
+The color surged to her face. The tears rushed to her eyes. A sharp
+conflict waged in her heart for a moment, and then she walked on beside
+him, pale, composed, silent, as if she were alone in the depths of the
+primeval wilderness.
+
+Only the sound of the stir of the saddle with the breathing of the
+horse as the animal tramped on behind them, their muffled footfalls
+barely perceptible on the thick herbage of the cattle path, the light
+whisper of the wind in the leaves, broke the pause, while Jack Espey's
+touch trembled on the handle of the pistol as he walked beside her.
+
+Her calmness shook his own composure.
+
+"Ad'licia!" he exclaimed petulantly, but with an evident softening of
+his fierce mood, "whyn't ye say suthin'? Whyn't ye say suthin' ter me?"
+
+"I dunno what ter say," she responded coolly.
+
+"Ye know what I want ter hear," he declared passionately.
+
+"'Tain't no use ter say it agin." She turned upon him her eyes, soft
+and lustrous, like some brownish-greenish moss in the depths of a
+crystal spring. "I done said it an' said it."
+
+His hand released the pistol, and pushed his hat far back on his dark
+hair with a hasty gesture of impatience. Then, with a sudden calmness,
+"Ad'licia, ye oughtn't ter git mad with me! Ye oughtn't ter git mad so
+dad-burned easy!"
+
+"Mebbe I oughtn't," she said, with a note of sarcasm in her vibrant
+voice. Her eyes were bright, her cheek flushed.
+
+"'Tain't right," he continued didactically. "'Tain't religious." He
+looked at her with grave, admonitory eyes.
+
+"Mebbe 'tain't," she responded. She laughed a little, unmirthfully, and
+her lip quivered.
+
+He strode on a few steps in silence, at a loss for words for
+explanation. He dreaded and deferred it, and yet he longed for its
+possible reassurance. As his thoughts canvassed its probabilities, he
+broke out tumultuously once more:--
+
+"I hev got good reason ter b'lieve ye air foolin' me,--good reason, I
+tell ye, now, Ad'licia!"
+
+"Good reason agin my word?" she demanded, her pride in her eyes.
+
+He stared at her. "A gal's word!" he said lightly, and then he laughed.
+As a guaranty it struck him humorously. "I reckon thar ain't many men
+ez would be willin' ter stand or fall by sech."
+
+"Ye set store by it wunst," she said humbly.
+
+"'Twar when ye promised ter marry me," he declared precipitately,
+unconsciously showing that it was the prospect which he had valued
+without trusting the promise. "An' I want ye ter 'bide by it, too," he
+sternly added, suddenly perceiving that it was not policy to adduce too
+freely precedents as to the friability of feminine promises.
+
+She shook her head, regardless of his keen, fiery eye. "I ain't goin'
+ter marry nobody, I reckon," she said slowly. "Ye'll shoot me dead
+fust, some day, in one o' yer tantrums."
+
+"Ye ain't a-goin' ter marry 'Renzo Taft, an' that I tell ye, now. I'll
+shoot ye fust, sure!" he cried furiously, his eyes blazing upon her.
+
+The look in her face checked his passionate rage. An utter wonderment,
+a deep bewilderment, overspread it as she echoed, "_'Renzo Taft!_
+The man over yander at Lost Time mine? War ye a-talkin' 'bout
+_him_?"
+
+He controlled himself instantly, although his eyes were all ashine and
+alertly restless.
+
+"Who war you-uns a-thinkin' 'bout, Ad'licia?" he asked gently and
+incidentally.
+
+"Jasper Larrabee, o' course," she answered innocently.
+
+He could only grind a curse between his teeth, and then he was
+speechless for a moment.
+
+"I dunno nare nuther good-lookin' young man in the Cove," continued
+Adelicia, girlishly talking on, oblivious of the significance of her
+disclosures. "Though I b'lieve Jasper ain't studyin' 'bout sech ez
+marryin'. He jes' kems thar toler'ble frequent ter read out'n his
+book ter uncle Lucy. He kin read powerful well. Uncle Lucy 'lows he
+senses the Gorspel better from Jasper's readin' 'n the rider's, 'kase
+whenst he don't onderstan' he kin make Jasper stop an' spell it out
+an' read it over. An' sometimes"--she broke into a little dimpling
+laugh--"whenst the Gorspel goes agin uncle Lucy's policy an' practice,
+he makes Jasper spell an' _spell_, an' yit them times he can't
+spell it out to suit uncle Lucy. But it's plumb heartsome ter hear
+Jasper read of a stormy night," she added, recalling the one spiritual
+pleasure of her stunted, starveling spiritual life.
+
+As she glanced at his face, there was something so gruesome, so
+strange, in its expression that she was fain to remonstrate. "Ye 'pear
+powerful techy, Jack," she said. "Ez ter 'Renzo Taft, it's jes' old
+uncle Lucy's foolishness; an' I wish he 'd quit it, too! Though 'tain't
+no harm, nuther. Uncle Lucy jes' makes out ez 'Renzo Taft air arter me
+or Julia fur a step-mammy fur his leetle gal, an' it tickles him ter
+talk 'bout'n it,--it's so foolish! Why, Jack, 'Renzo Taft is old enough
+purty nigh ter be _my_ dad; an'--he ain't ugly, edzac'ly--but,
+but--nowise desirable. Uncle Lucy air always peckin' at me fur
+puttin' myself out ter obligate other folks, but I ain't so powerful
+meek-tempered ez ter marry 'Renzo Taft ter be a step-mammy. Though he
+ain't axed me, nor nobody else ez I knows on. An' I ain't got nuthin'
+agin him."
+
+He walked on beside her, hardly listening, and scarcely caring what
+she said or thought of Taft. For him, at the moment, Jasper Larrabee,
+and his gift of reading the Scriptures and interpreting them to Cap'n
+Lucy's satisfaction and her humble and incidental pleasure, filled all
+the horizon. His jealousy had taken a new lease on life with this more
+promising object, and with the surer foundation of what she said of
+Larrabee rather than of what Taft said of her. He hardly heeded her
+presence as he sought to gather together his faculties. He did not
+even feel the clumsy caress of the horse now and again rubbing his
+head against his master's shoulder, as he minced along behind him,
+accommodating his long stride to the shorter compass of the human step.
+The young man's eyes were hot; they seemed to burn the dry lids, as he
+gazed down through the cool leafy vistas of the forest; but his voice
+was calm enough when he suddenly said to her:--
+
+"Ad'licia, ef ye keered ennything 'bout me wuth talkin' 'bout, ye'd
+marry me now."
+
+The placidity which her face had resumed as she had talked disappeared
+abruptly. She was once more anxious, disquieted, on the brink of tears.
+
+"Ye know, Jack," she expostulated, "I can't marry agin uncle Lucy's
+word."
+
+"Ye would ef ye keered a straw, a bare straw."
+
+"Uncle Lucy jes' say, 'Wait awhile.' It's jes' 'awhile,' else I would
+go agin his cornsent."
+
+"Ye don't keer," he reiterated dolorously, for her protest was welcome
+to him.
+
+"Uncle Lucy jes' say," she went on very fast, "jes' wait till that man
+ez you-uns shot in Tanglefoot Cove gits well. He'll git well, I reckon.
+Ye said he war powerful hearty an' big. Uncle Lucy say he ain't goin'
+ter lemme marry a man ez mought be tried fur his life, ef he kin holp
+it."
+
+"Ef ye keered fur me, ye wouldn't gin _that_ fur Cap'n Lucy's
+word!" he asseverated, as he lifted his arm high in the air and snapped
+his fingers resonantly.
+
+The horse shied suddenly at the sound, and pulled heavily on the hand
+that held the bit.
+
+Her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Jack," she said in deep humiliation, "I can't 'low at this time o' day
+ez I don't keer fur uncle Lucy's word. I never eat none o' my own bread
+in my life."
+
+She knew that he had turned and was staring at her, although she
+could not distinguish him through her tears. If she had never loved
+him, her heart might have warmed to him now, for the vehemence, the
+partisanship, with which he protested her independence.
+
+"Eat yer own bread!" he cried in a ringing voice that made her shrink.
+"Ye never eat nuthin' else! Who churns, an' sweeps, an' mends, an'
+cooks, an' milks cows, this many an' many a day? That thar dough-faced
+Julia?"
+
+To his amazement she burst out laughing, but the next moment she was
+sobbing in good earnest, and he hardly knew whether she was glad or
+sorry.
+
+He scarcely paused to wonder. He went tumultuously on to repudiate the
+obligations that so lowered her pride and her title to self-respect.
+"Who hoes, an' sews, an' weaves, an' spins, an' raises the chickens
+an' tur-rkeys an' sech, an' answers old Cap'n Lucy's call 'Ad'licia!
+Ad'licia!' all day long? That thar long, lank, limp Julia? Ef I war
+ter marry ye an' take ye away from thar, that house would fall down, I
+reckon, an' old Cap'n Lucy knows it."
+
+His well-set bluish-gray eyes had brightened as he spoke; he smiled
+genially; his face was handsome and intelligent with this expression.
+The next moment it clouded heavily. He could not do this as almost any
+other man might,--marry a wife and take her home. He was a fugitive
+and an exile by reason of the jeopardy of the man whom he had shot in
+Tanglefoot Cove, and who still hung between life and death, his own
+fate involving that of his enemy. Jack Espey felt sure that he could
+have proven self-defense, had he permitted himself to be apprehended at
+the time. But from the circumstance of his hasty flight, uncertain what
+he had done and animated by ignorant terrors of the law, the lapse of
+time, the dispersion of witnesses, he feared to submit his action to a
+legal arbitrament now.
+
+The suspense was in itself a terrible retribution, but it is safe
+to say that Espey had hardly appreciated its rigors till now, when
+it hampered his every prospect in life. He had been a man of some
+substance in his native place, according to the humble rating of
+the mountaineers, and the lowering of pride involved in his present
+situation was very bitter to him. He could not ask to be received
+under Cap'n Lucy's roof, and its hospitalities certainly would not be
+offered. He repented of his candor in making known his circumstances
+when he had "asked for" Adelicia, for in the probation on which he had
+been placed he recognized the crafty hope of her uncle that the affair
+would soon blow over. He felt it a poor reward for his frankness, and
+he determined that it should not go without requital in turn. "Jes'
+lemme fix up that cussed bother in Tanglefoot, an' durned ef Cap'n Lucy
+ever shell see Ad'licia's face agin!" he often said to himself.
+
+Meanwhile he hung around as best he might, fraternizing secretly with
+the moonshiners; for here was the best opportunity of earning enough to
+provide for his simple wants, and to keep him out of the observation of
+the law, while awaiting the result in Tanglefoot, whence the news had
+lately become more hopeful.
+
+He had fallen in with Jasper Larrabee at the blacksmith's shop at the
+cross-roads, where he had paused in his flight for his horse to be
+shod; the two had "struck up" a mutual liking, and Espey had come
+with Larrabee to the Cove, where he divided his time pretty equally
+between his new friend's home and the Lost Time mine. His frankness had
+not extended to these acquaintances, who knew no reason why he should
+shun observation except that which they shared with him concerning the
+still. His utility there and its financial advantages were ample to
+justify the continuation of his stay in the Cove; and thus, but for his
+own attack of conscientiousness in revealing his true circumstances to
+Adelicia and Cap'n Lucy, he might have seemed as advantageously placed
+as any of his compeers.
+
+"Waal," said Adelicia, unaccountably brightened, "we-uns hev ter 'bide
+by uncle Lucy's word an' wait awhile, bein' ez he hev tuk keer o' me
+all my days, mighty nigh. An' ye better be toler'ble perlite ter Julia,
+too," she added, with a radiant smile. "Julia's cornsider'ble apt ter
+take notice o' slights."
+
+He promised humbly, swallowing his pride with a mighty gulp; and as
+they came out from the woods into the more open spaces shelving to
+the great crags, they encountered Kenniston, a cigar in his mouth, a
+memorandum in his hand of the boundaries of his land, taken from the
+calls of his title-deed, a good-humored triumph on his face, and a gay,
+kind voice as he instantly recognized and greeted Adelicia.
+
+He called her to come and observe the splendor of the view from a
+certain craggy point where there would be an observatory, and his
+enthusiasm was not dashed even when she gazed off wonderingly into
+space, seeing nothing to which she was unaccustomed, and evidently
+apprehending naught of what he said. He wondered a trifle, subacutely,
+how much the perception of beauty may be promoted by the sense of
+contrast. Since she knew no dull levels or discordant scenes, the
+sublime was merely the natural daily presentment of creation, no more
+a marvel than the rising of the sun, and thus she was bereft of its
+appreciation. He wondered, too, if the converse of the proposition
+were true,--if those to whom nature is expressed in a meadow, or a
+series of knobs, or a pond, can have no mental conception of the
+austere splendors of the craggy heights or the stupendous area of
+infinite detail spread before the eye within a wide horizon piled
+with mountains. He showed her, too, a small drawing of the projected
+hotel, which she held awry and almost reversed to gaze upon it. His
+good humor extended to her companion, whom he had never before seen.
+Although usually aloof and averse to strangers, Espey found the
+suave words a salve to his sore heart. He did not know how much less
+pleasant Kenniston could be when not pleased. Just now even this new
+acquaintance harmonized most aptly with his gracious mood. Artistically
+viewed, poor Espey might have graced the romantic stage, as he stood,
+in his dark blue shirt and trousers and great spurred boots, defined
+against the yellow-bronze horse which he held by the bit, his belt
+full of weapons, his broad white hat far back on his black hair, and
+his defiant face at once wild and eager and wistful. The man of the
+alert pencil was moved to wish that he had the art to do him justice.
+
+Kenniston's kind and ingratiating manner as he explained his plans and
+expectations, which could not interest the mountaineer, who was as
+foreign to such considerations as deer or bear, secured nevertheless
+Espey's attention and respectful silence. He looked now and again with
+a sort of reluctant liking at Kenniston's face as he talked, regretting
+that, since he attached so much hope and consequence to the project,
+it would be necessary to burn the buildings down as fast as they were
+erected.
+
+In the plenitude of his access of amiability, Kenniston lagged behind
+and let them stroll away homeward together,--as pretty a pair of rustic
+lovers, he thought, as one could wish to see.
+
+The sun was well down; the sky was red; the evening star was in a
+saffron haze; the nearest mountains had turned a deep purple, with a
+vague, translucent, overlaying gray hue like the bloom on a ripe grape;
+the distant ranges had vanished in the mystery of night. It was not
+dark, but the flare of the fire within the door of Cap'n Lucy's cabin
+was visible as it rose and fell on the puncheon floor in transitory
+flickers. It was a poor place, but it was home, and to the exile it
+looked like paradise. Julia had come to the door, and stood there half
+in the soft outer light, and half in the firelight within. Schooled
+and docile, Espey remembered his monitor's bidding, and roused his
+unwilling, flagging energies and his tired, sad heart to evolve some
+pleasantry as he called out a greeting from the bars. She turned her
+sleek head and smiled at him. There had never been such eyes in the
+Cove, except perhaps those which Cap'n Lucy had opened there first some
+sixty years before, nor such long, dark, curling lashes. She might,
+however, have been no more comely, for all Jack Espey cared, than old
+"T'bithy," Adelicia's cat, who arched her plebeian scantily furred
+back in the door, and surveyed the landscape with her yellow eyes, and
+yawned from sheer mental vacuity. He got through the interview with
+what poor grace he could, and from a sense of duty; and as he was about
+to mount, he offered, unobserved by the others, to take Adelicia's
+hand. To his amazement, she looked him full in the face with hard,
+angry eyes, struck down his hand with a petulant gesture, passed him
+like a flash, and disappeared within the door.
+
+Jack Espey, who had no more recognition of the aspect of jealousy than
+if he had never felt its power, could but mount and ride away in angry
+bewilderment; and Kenniston, hearing the furious speed of his horse's
+hoofs as he went headlong down the dark, rocky road, looked wonderingly
+after him.
+
+"He'll break his neck, at that rate," he said.
+
+
+
+
+                                  V.
+
+
+Kenniston's gracious mood was not of long continuance. He was of the
+temperament which demands a prerequisite for good nature. Given an
+adequate reason to be happy, and he could show you a fine article of
+felicity. But his heart would not bubble with gratitude on general
+principles for ordinary blessings enjoyed in common by humanity at
+large. It was not enough for him that the fried chicken was fat; that
+his cigar was good; that as he smoked after supper on the little porch,
+the air was so fragrant, so fine, so dry; that the stars were brighter
+for the great dark amphitheatre of mountains above whose summits,
+serrated against the horizon, his far-reaching gaze sought them; that
+Julia, as she sat on the step of the threshold, had an outline and a
+coiffure that he would have discriminated as classic in marble; that
+every trace of the battered beauty of old Cap'n Lucy's countenance
+vanished, leaving it a unique ideal for a gargoyle, when his guest
+chanced to intimate that he had written to the register in the county
+town, who had furnished him with the calls from his title-deeds, and
+that he felt very sure that Cap'n Lucy had inadvertently trespassed on
+his neighbor's domain. Harmoniously ugly as his countenance was, Cap'n
+Lucy's conduct was more so.
+
+"Waal, sir," he said, after an interval of stunned dismay, during which
+Kenniston leaned forward, drawing with his cane an imaginary line on
+the floor, and repeating the measurements for the boundaries from the
+paper in his hand, "ye an' the register may go to hell, sir, an' brile,
+sir!"
+
+Cap'n Lucy's face was very distinct in the light from the fire within
+the door, as he sat tilted back in the chair against the post of the
+porch, and a sudden sensation ensued amongst his household as they
+gazed upon him, astounded by this unprecedented breach of all the
+canons of hospitality. There was silence for a moment. Luther stirred
+uneasily, the legs of his chair rasping harshly on the rough flooring
+of the porch. Even Julia gave signs of having heard by turning her head
+slowly, with a certain interest and excitement on her impassive face.
+Adelicia's eyes dilated with alarm as she half rose from her seat on
+the step of the porch; she had grown pale; her delicate, fine little
+chin and her lips quivered with the agitation of the moment.
+
+"Oh, uncle Lucy, ye don't mean that,--ye don't mean that, now!" she
+urged.
+
+"Oh, I ain't partic'lar ez ter _when_!" the old man blurted
+out. And then he paused to chuckle in sinister fashion over his play
+upon the double meaning of the word "now" in this connection. He had
+a satisfaction, too, in thwarting the ever-ready peacemaker and
+apologist, and in her look of balked surprise as she cogitated upon his
+answer.
+
+His grimly jocose pride in his cleverness relieved the tension of the
+moment. It suddenly became more practicable for Kenniston to overlook
+his rude rage, when the circumstances rendered it hardly possible for
+him to take cognizance of it. His indignant repugnance to the situation
+was sharply manifest in his face, however, which was of an expressive
+type, but he compassed an off-hand manner as he said,--
+
+"Oh, the register and I may be burned indefinitely and to your heart's
+content, in due course of spiritual justice; but I fancy it won't be
+the direct consequence of anything in the nature of muniments of title,
+and it won't change the metes and bounds of this land by one rod,
+perch, or pole."
+
+Another voice broke into the discussion abruptly:
+
+"What reason hev ye got ter 'low ez Cap'n Lucy be on yer land?"
+
+The dull irradiation of the porch from the flicker of the fire within
+the house barely sufficed to show Lorenzo Taft's burly form standing
+beside the post. His approach had been unnoticed by the group, but his
+question apprised them that he had joined them some moments previously,
+and the pawing of his mare at the gate showed that she had been hitched
+in anticipation of passing the evening there. In the excitement of
+the situation the usual greetings were dispensed with, and Kenniston
+not unwillingly recited anew the calls of the title papers, again
+sketching the boundary line with his cane on the floor, and even taking
+from his pocket a letter, and drawing upon the back of the envelope
+a miniature plat of the irregularly shaped body of land. Even in his
+preoccupation he could but note the intelligence of the attention which
+the visitor closely bent upon his exposition and the rude draught, the
+receptivity of his mind, the pertinence of his questions. Taft stood
+leaning over the back of Kenniston's chair, his blue eyes fixed on the
+paper in the slim deft fingers of the draughtsman, his own brawny hand
+laid meditatively on his long yellow beard.
+
+"Of course," said Kenniston, folding the paper, and by way of
+concluding the matter, "I am ready to pay the colonel the full value of
+his improvements. He has only to name his price."
+
+The irate glance which Cap'n Lucy shot at him served to steady him a
+trifle, to tame his buoyant sense of triumph. He had an ample fund
+of physical courage; that is, in his fresh, healthy, normal mental
+impulses he never thought of fear. But he had seldom been brought into
+actual personal danger, and the details of sundry lawless and furious
+feuds that had come to his knowledge during his stay in the mountains
+were brought suddenly to his remembrance by that swift, scathing look;
+he was further reminded that few of these bloody chronicles recounted
+so definite a provocation as the effort at eviction. Nevertheless,
+the sense of proprietorship was strong within him, and the active
+aggressiveness of a man with the coercions of that weapon in his hand,
+the law of the land, made his blood stir when Cap'n Lucy, wagging his
+arbitrary old head, retorted, "An' s'pose I say--like I hev said--ez
+my h'a'thstone ain't got no price! S'pose I won't sell, an' I won't
+gin in, an' I keep my line whar I know my line hev got a right ter
+be,--whut then, hey?"
+
+But for his gray head, so did his manner and expression reach the
+climax of aggravation, it might have seemed righteousness to smite
+him. Kenniston, held in the bonds of such considerations, controlled
+himself with difficulty. He was unused to self-restraint, or to
+occasions that necessitated it. The color had overspread his face; he
+was hot, impatient, indignant. "Why, then, there's nothing for it but
+to procession the land and establish the boundary," he declared.
+
+Cap'n Lucy stared in amazement. This possibility seemed never to have
+occurred to him as a solution.
+
+"Percession my lan'!" he cried at last, as if the extremity of insult
+had been offered him. "Percession my lan'!" His face was scarlet; his
+eye blazed; his hand, held out with a gesture of insistence toward
+Kenniston, shook with fury.
+
+"Or _my_ land," Kenniston sneered. "'Tisn't capital punishment.
+Plenty of men have survived the processioning of land,--thriven on it!
+My land, then; the process won't hurt it. Get the line,--that's what I
+want."
+
+Once or twice Adelicia sought, in her agitation, to interpose. Now
+she rose and came to Cap'n Lucy's side, taking hold of the shaking
+hand which he brought ever nearer to Kenniston's face, who would not
+draw back, nor mitigate nor postpone his demand, in the front of this
+threatening gesture. "Oh, uncle Lucy--don't--don't! Sweet uncle Lucy,
+don't! Thar's room enough in the mountings fur all o' we-uns! Look at
+the mountings--how big they air--toler'ble roomy fur sure! Don't quar'l
+'bout _lan'_, uncle Lucy,--whenst we-uns hev got all out o' doors
+fur lan',--an' git in a fight, mebbe, an' git hurt, an'"--
+
+"Ad'licia," snarled "sweet uncle Lucy," with a gasp, pretermitting
+his attentions to Kenniston to turn upon her his corrugated face,
+"Ad'licia, I tole that man ez war so dead set ter marry ye ez I
+wouldn't let him hev ye. But I hev changed my mind. I'll tell him he
+kin cart ye off from hyar ter-morrer, an' welcome, mighty welcome, ef
+so be he ain't changed his mind; fur I can't abide ye an' yer 'peace
+talks,' like a Injun, an' yer interferin' with yer elders, an' yer
+purtenses, no mo'! Thar, now!" he exclaimed in triumph, as she fell
+back quite speechless because of this disclosure of the matrimonial
+proposition. "I reckon ye'll set down now, an' stay set!"
+
+Then he turned to Kenniston with an accession of fury, the fiercer for
+the momentary stemming of the tide.
+
+"An' I say, hyar I be, an' yer percessionin' don't tech me nowhar. An'
+hyar I'll 'bide, no matter whut! An' I won't sell out, an' I won't take
+no price fur my h'a'thstone, no matter whut!"
+
+"Then," said Kenniston hotly, "you'll be ejected in due process of
+law,--that's all."
+
+He changed color the next moment and bit his lip, for he had put
+himself in a false position.
+
+"That's toler'ble tall talk ter a man under his own roof," said Cap'n
+Lucy, suddenly cool, and not without dignity.
+
+Kenniston was out of countenance for the nonce. He felt that there was
+scant grace or utility in forcing the matter, which was beyond the
+control of either, to this unseemly issue. He had been hurried by his
+impatience of contradiction and Cap'n Lucy's illogical and arbitrary
+temper far beyond his intention, which was originally merely to propose
+to have the surveyor run out the boundary line in order to demonstrate
+for the old man's enlightenment the fact that he was a trespasser, and
+to offer to pay the full value of the improvements. But he was not of
+the type from whom penitents are developed. The acknowledgment of being
+in the wrong was inexpressibly repugnant to him. Perhaps he could not
+have constrained himself to make it but that he foresaw the reversal of
+their mutual position.
+
+"You're more than half right, colonel. I am out of place here. I feel
+that. And, under the circumstances, I think I had better take myself
+off."
+
+He had intended to get the better of his host. But his most cruel
+desire could never have sought to compass the deep humiliation of
+vanquishment which had befallen poor Cap'n Lucy. The implied reflection
+upon his hospitality, the consciousness that his own hasty words
+justified it, the receding and diminishing aspect of the provocation
+common to the mental vision at such moments, with the magnifying of
+the offense, all combined to render him a chopfallen and lugubrious
+old noncombatant in the space of a second. But Cap'n Lucy's talent for
+open confession and repentance was not more marked than Kenniston's. He
+sat grum, crestfallen, afflicted of mien, but silent. His keen eye had
+no longer an alert interest; it was fixed with an absorbed, reflective
+stare on an intermediate point some two feet from the floor, with the
+air of insight rather than outward vision. Kenniston was not prepared,
+either, for the protest from the younger and ordinarily acquiescent
+members of the family.
+
+"Thar, now!" exclaimed the apathetic Luther, rising to the occasion
+like a man of this world. "Ye hev actially got ter the p'int o'
+quar'lin' over yer old land an' worldly goods an' sech. An' what
+diff'unce do it make? The line is thar, no matter what air one of ye
+say, an' I reckon the county surveyor air man enough ter find it.
+Mebbe ye 'low ye air powerful interestin', but I ain't listenin' much,
+through wantin' to interjuice this hyar plumb special apple-jack I got
+this evenin' from the cross-roads. Ye 'lowed ye hed never tasted sech,
+Mr. Kenniston. Now try this, sir, an' ye'll feel good enough ter set
+out an' sing psalms an' hymes an' speritchul chunes the rest of the
+evenin'."
+
+Adelicia took a pitcher which the languid Julia had alertly fetched.
+She spoke for her, as if Julia were dumb. She looked up at Kenniston,
+with her delicately tinted old-fashioned oval face set in smiles.
+
+"Ef ye want ter temper it enny?" she suggested.
+
+"Git out'n the way, Ad'licia, with that pernicious jug o' cold water!"
+exclaimed Luther, shoving her aside. "Take it straight, stranger; don't
+spile the good liquor."
+
+The feminine members of the family had observed that Kenniston's
+glass was usually diluted, and in their eagerness to facilitate peace
+they gave him no excuse. He hardly liked to nullify his bluster of
+incipient farewell by accepting this show of good fellowship and
+further hospitality, and yet he could not rudely repel it. He felt
+that both he and his host had gone too far, much farther than he had
+intended. Yet nevertheless his was not the nature nor the practice to
+overlook an affront. He took the glass, with a slight laugh and the
+outward show of amity, but he was determined to adhere to his threat of
+departure. Their interests were too adverse to make a longer sojourn
+appropriate; time would render them even more inimical, and he was
+under no obligations to put up with indignities at the hands of Cap'n
+Lucy or any other man. Could he have thought anything humorous that
+affected his interests, he must have been moved by the serio-comic
+aspect of the old man, sedulously silent lest his tongue escape him,
+solemnly sampling the new liquor,--for his son had filially and with
+great show of courtesy waited upon him,--a sort of aged pallor upon the
+wrinkles of his face, where erstwhile his rage had glowed so ruddily.
+In drinking, Taft had unconsciously a knowing and discriminating air.
+He was comparing the quality of the beverage with the apple brandy
+of the Lost Time still. He looked very thoughtful as he lowered the
+glass, and let the flavor permeate his palate, and once more took a
+careful, considerate draught. It was more like business than pleasure.
+Luther himself did not indulge beyond the merest swallow for form's
+sake. He was occupied in guiding the conversation clear of difficulties
+and bellicose suggestions; and, considering his limited and uncouth
+experience, his efforts to reëstablish the decorums of peace were
+worthy of praise. He evidently considered that he had failed utterly
+when Kenniston rejoined him in the porch, after the rest of the family
+had retired for the night, and communicated his intention of immediate
+departure. "I can make the cross-roads by daylight or breakfast time,
+no doubt," he said, "if you will let me have my horse; and I can rest
+there an hour or so, and then ride on and reach the train, the night
+express, as it passes the tank and stops for water, about sundown."
+
+In vain Luther protested. Kenniston declared this his original
+intention. He would save time, and prevent making both journeys
+by daylight. "I don't believe I could stand the sun two days in
+succession, at this season. And if I like, I'll lie over at the
+cross-roads, and make another night ride." He urged Luther to say
+nothing to Cap'n Lucy or the other members of the family, as he did not
+want to combat any objections to his departure. "The old cap'n will
+think I bear malice, and--really I must go."
+
+Luther's hesitation in the matter was a trifle nettling to a free
+agent. He evidently hardly liked to take the responsibility of acting
+without the autocratic paternal concurrence. Kenniston himself felt the
+irking of leading-strings. "Cap'n Lucy or no Cap'n Lucy, I'm going," he
+said to himself, making a dash for liberty, as it were. "I believe the
+man thinks Cap'n Lucy owns the earth."
+
+Luther's obduracy gave way presently, although he persisted in
+saddling his own horse, also, and accompanying his guest as far as the
+cross-roads. Kenniston was oppressed with the sense of so punctilious
+a host, and the long ride in the dewy night, along the deserted roads,
+under the white silent stars, would have accorded better with his
+humor had he been solitary. But the freshening wind that came with the
+daybreak had a sense of liberty in the broad spread of its wings. Under
+the slow revelation of the clear gray skies of dawn, he marked how
+far the tumult of its flight extended in the stirring of the forests
+on the mountain sides, awakening from the lethargies of the night.
+He experienced a certain quickening interest in the unrolling of an
+unfamiliar landscape from the obscurities of the darkness. He had a
+keen zest for its beauty, the splendid symmetry of its setting amidst
+a new and strange conformation of the mountains; he was responsive,
+too, to that touch of pensive melancholy, that sense of loss, which
+one must feel in noting the day-star fade, the quenching of that
+white, tremulous, supernal lustre in the midst of the roseate mists;
+but his strong mundane heart stirred to see the sun sail majestically
+up amidst the full argosy of scarlet and amber clouds, freighted with
+the future, and the breathless expectation of the quiescent landscape
+merge into the certainty of largess to the present moment. And he had a
+yet deeper satisfaction: he noted the inferiority of the magnificence
+about him to the scene he had left, his own, his very own, and he dwelt
+upon the recollection of it with a personal triumph, as if he had
+himself designed and built it. It was with an influx of hopefulness,
+of content, of renewed interest in the world, that he shook hands with
+Luther, glad enough to part with him.
+
+The mountaineer looked after him with a certain wistfulness. His
+experience was too limited, his idea of the world beyond too vague,
+for his thoughts to follow the traveler. It was only the sudden dim
+perception of that fresh, vital, alert turning to fields beyond his ken
+that smote upon him with a sense of deprivation or of discontent, too
+subtle to be definitely discriminated.
+
+It was, fortunately, fleeting. Luther's satisfaction to discover that
+old Cap'n Lucy approved of his course, and in fact was secretly pleased
+to be rid of Kenniston's presence, dominated every other consideration.
+As the day wore on, the old man's jaunty self-importance returned.
+From various meditative pauses, in which he evidently argued anew the
+situation, he visibly derived self-justification. He was altogether at
+ease and himself again in an indefinitely short time, for the father
+was hardly more worldly-wise than the son. He considered Kenniston's
+departure final. He assumed that his taunt and his sturdy resistance
+had bluffed the man off from the design of processioning the land,
+which, being a thing undreamed of hitherto, Cap'n Lucy vaguely feared,
+albeit sure enough that he stood well within his own boundaries. As
+time went by without incident or news, he began even to speak of the
+projected hotel as a thing of the past, a sort of mental mirage of a
+crack-brained visionary.
+
+It came upon him, therefore, with the force of an unexpected blow when
+Luther one day burst into the house with a paper in his hand giving
+notice of the proposed processioning, and blurted out that he had seen
+the public notice posted, according to law, at the voting-place of the
+district, which was the gristmill on Tomahawk Creek.
+
+Cap'n Lucy, lapsed in the soft securities of peace, was stunned for
+a moment. That valiant essence, his temper, of all his faculties
+recovered its vitality first. He mounted his horse and rode to Sawyer's
+Mill, where, confronting the obnoxious notice, conspicuous upon the
+doorpost, he stood for an instant the centre of a curious group of
+idlers, frowningly contemplating it; then, with a single irate gesture,
+he promptly tore it down, in defiance of the law. He silently got upon
+his horse and rode away, leaving Luther and the kindly miller to patch
+the fragments together, and to replace the notice as before, where,
+the fractions not perfectly adjusted, it haltingly and disconnectedly
+continued to proclaim the date, some twenty days hence, when said
+Kenneth J. Kenniston designed to cause his land to be processioned,
+stating the corner at which he intended to begin, to ascertain and
+establish its boundary line.
+
+Kenniston's absence, however, Cap'n Lucy still appreciated as a
+boon. He was free to flounder about amongst the dense jungles of the
+laurel, "huntin' fur the line ez ef 'twar hid 'mongst the bushes like
+a rattlesnake, an' he mought find it by hearin' it rattle," Luther
+observed, with his first unfilial criticism. Since the full value of
+the improvements would doubtless be paid, should it be ascertained
+that the land was Kenniston's, the son could only think it a matter
+of inconvenience to be obliged to move, and a misfortune to that
+extent. But he regarded the contingency as untenable as a _casus
+belli_, having no realization of the reserves of obduracy in Cap'n
+Lucy's mind, or of that aversion to change so characteristic of the
+home-loving aged. He deemed the surveyor the fit discoverer of the
+line, and deprecated his father's long jaunts up and down the mountain
+from one "monument of boundary" to the other; for since there was no
+adversary to relish the spectacle, Cap'n Lucy's pride did not preclude
+him from daily patrolling the extent of his possessions so far as his
+strength and his horse's legs might serve. But Luther came to think
+this a frivolous objection indeed, in comparison with his view of his
+father's standpoint later.
+
+One day Cap'n Lucy rode up to the side of the cornfield, a late
+planting, where Luther, with a bull-tongue plough, was industriously
+engaged in "bustin' out the middles," since the land had been planted,
+in view of the backwardness of the season, without the preliminary
+"breaking up." The young man reluctantly came to the fence, his ruddy
+countenance shadowy, glimpsed beneath his broad-brimmed hat.
+
+"Mount an' kem along straight," commanded his father.
+
+Obedience, implicit and unquestioning, had been Luther's lifelong
+habit. He looked with desperation at his suffering corn. "Why, dad, I
+ain't got on no shoes," he ventured to urge.
+
+"I aint keerin' ef ye ain't got on no skin," the arbitrary elder
+declared. "Git on yer beastis an' kem along with me."
+
+The surprised old plough horse was released, and, with his clanging
+gear still rattling about him, and his owner on his saddleless back,
+began to take his way, following Cap'n Lucy's lead, up the precipitous
+slope of the mountain. The dark forests closed high above their heads.
+The change from the glare of the noontide of the open field to the
+chill twilight of the shade was grateful to the senses. The undergrowth
+and the jungle of the laurel seemed well-nigh impenetrable, except
+indeed for the traces in broken boughs and bruised leaves of Cap'n
+Lucy's former transits. They had journeyed nearly to the summit, and
+Luther was ruefully meditating on the loss of two good hours of farming
+weather, when the old man turned his head, glanced over his shoulder,
+and drew rein.
+
+"Luther," he said, excitement shining in his blue eyes and the color
+rejuvenating his face, "ye know that Kenn'ston 'lows his southeast
+corner air at that boulder, 'known ez Big Hollow Boulder,'"--he quoted
+from the notice with a sneer,--"ez ef it could hev been known ez a
+peegeon-aig boulder or sech."
+
+Luther nodded in surprise.
+
+"Waal, he gins notice ez he begins thar."
+
+Luther nodded again in assent.
+
+"Waal, sir, that thar boulder hev been moved."
+
+The young man stared for a moment. Then a blank alarm settled on his
+face.
+
+"Why, dad, it's onpossible!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Kem an' see! Kem an' see." And Cap'n Lucy rode on as before.
+
+Luther was never sure whether he really came upon the old landmark
+earlier than he expected to see it, or whether the anticipation of
+something novel and incongruous colored his mind. There it was,
+presently, lying on the steep slope in the midst of the wilderness,
+as he had always known it,--a vast boulder, weighing many tons,
+with a cavity in it which almost pierced through its bulk, and was
+large enough to accommodate a man standing at full height. The slope
+above was bare, for it was near the bald of the mountain, and with
+outcropping ledges of rock; athwart these several trees were lying,
+one apparently old and lightning-scathed long ago, the others freshly
+storm-riven, for the winds had raged in a recent tempest, and instances
+of its fury were elsewhere visible in broken branches in the woods.
+
+"The wind couldn't hev done it," observed Luther, as his father pointed
+at the boulder with a wave of the hand.
+
+"Wind?--ye sodden idjit!"
+
+"'Pears like ter me it air whar it always war," said Luther, seeking
+refuge in conservatism from the hazards of conjecture.
+
+"Luther," said his father impressively, "I know that thar rock war the
+fust thing my gran'dad viewed in Tennessee, whenst he wagoned 'crost
+the range ter settle. I hev hearn him say that word time an' agin. He
+said he camped by it, 'count o' the spring close by, up over thar. I
+hev knowed it familiar fur better'n fifty year, an' I tell ye ez it
+useter war around the curve o' the bend o' the mounting up over thar,
+a-nigh the spring."
+
+"Hev ye viewed that spot lately?" asked Luther, drawing his horse to
+one side, and gazing blankly at the big hollow boulder.
+
+"Nuthin' ter view,--jes' rock an' laidges an' sech."
+
+"Why, dad, how could it hev kem down hyar?" demanded Luther.
+
+Old Cap'n Lucy broke into a high, derisive laugh.
+
+"Ax Mr. Kenn'ston; don't ax me. I ain't 'quainted with them things
+he talks 'bout by the yard medjure,--'splosives an' giant powder an'
+daminite." (Thus Cap'n Lucy profanely denominated a certain cogent
+compound.) "Enny one o' them would be ekal ter fetchin' the rock 'known
+ez Big Hollow Boulder' down hyar whar he wants it to be."
+
+"Whut fur, dad?" demanded Luther.
+
+"Whut fur, ye fool? Ter make the line run ter suit him, ter take my
+house an' lot an' sech in his boundary, ter turn me out 'n house an'
+home ter suit his pleasure. He can't buy it, so he's a-fixin' ter take
+it,--take it by changing the corner fur the start o' the survey."
+
+His eyes dilated with anger, and his chin shook with the weakness of
+age and the vehemence of his emotion.
+
+Luther's face grew grave. "That's agin the law, ain't it?"
+
+"Ter move corner lan'marks or monimints o' boundaries air a felony,
+that's whut," said Cap'n Lucy, cavalierly swinging his feet in his
+stirrups. "Mr. Kenn'ston hed better gin keerful heed ter his steps."
+
+He grinned fiercely as he took up the reins, and, followed by the
+astounded, dismayed, and ruminating Luther, fared cheerfully enough
+down the mountain.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VI.
+
+
+The roof beneath which Jack Espey had found shelter was the readiest
+expression of hospitality. Its several expansions beyond its builder's
+original gambrel design were betokened by the incongruity of the
+additions, and the varying tints and fashion of the warped and worn
+old clapboards. Two shed-rooms were obviously of a later date than
+the dank and mossy covering of the main building; a queer projection
+above a modern porch exhibited an aboriginal inspiration correlated
+to a dormer window, albeit lacking the aperture; a section of the
+limited porch itself was boarded up to serve further as house-room; and
+a valiant disregard of the possibility of leakage characterized the
+intrepid domestic architect. It further differed from the conventional
+roofs of the district in its surroundings. In lieu of the bare dooryard
+and the neighboring fields, or the low tangle of peach and apple
+orchards, great forest trees loomed above it, the gigantic poplar and
+white oak of the region; for the space about it was rugged with the
+outcropping rock that sheered off further down into the great precipice
+on the mountain slope, precluding the possibility of cultivation. An
+exhaustless freestone spring burst out from the rocks close at hand,
+the reason of the selection of its vicinity as a building-site, and
+the "gyardin spot" and the cornfields were lower down the slope at the
+side, out of view amidst the clustering foliage. So little industrial
+were the suggestions that hung about this roof, so allied was it in
+its rough, gray, mossy aspect to the rugged bark and gnarled boles
+of the great trees, that it too might have seemed some spontaneous
+production of the soil, as it rose from the ledges of the rock, mossy
+and gray and rugged, too, like the rest. It had an intimation, also, of
+an aspiration toward higher things, as it, like the trees, gazed out
+upon the environing lofty seclusion of the mountains, the very inner
+sanctuary of nature; for, save the mystic mist, or the sun and the
+pursuing shadow, or the vagrant wind, naught ventured into that vast
+semicircle of mountains and intermediate valleys that lay before it,
+refulgent with color, massive, multitudinous, illimitable, the compass
+of the human vision failing to trace further than the far horizon the
+endless ranges still rising tier upon tier.
+
+Whether the inmates of the house consciously derived aught from the
+scene, from its calm, its splendor of extent that might serve to
+widen the imagination, its vast resources of suggestion, one of them
+spent many idle hours in gazing upon it. Often Jack Espey lay all the
+forenoon upon the hay in the loft of the little barn, watching through
+the bare logs, guiltless of "chinking," the shadows dwindling on the
+hazy indented slopes, blue in the sunshine, amethyst in the shade. The
+white clouds would sail when the wind was fair, or in still noontides
+would lie at anchor off the great shimmering domes. Sometimes these
+loiterings were prolonged till the pageants of sunset-tide were on the
+march along the great purple western slopes, and from the shipping of
+the skies floated every pennant of splendid color; the sun, with the
+burnished dazzling quality quenched in the great blood-red sphere,
+would go slowly dropping down behind the western ranges, leaving
+the sky of a delicate amber tint with scarlet strata, amongst which
+incongruous gorgeousness the evening star would shine with a pure,
+pensive white radiance. The loft of the flimsy little barn, but now all
+aglow with bars of gold alternating with brown shadow as the sunlight
+fell between the logs, gilding even the tissues of cobweb and the
+masses of hay, would sink into a dull, dusky monochrome. A shadow would
+seem to fall upon his spirit. The anxiety to which the contemplative,
+languorous idleness had granted surcease roused itself anew; the voices
+from the house, never silent, were reasserted upon his attention,
+and the necessity would supervene of joining the family circle,--a
+necessity sometimes infinitely repugnant to his troubled soul, craving
+solitude for its indulgence of woe, and hardly able to maintain the
+cheerful disguise which must needs screen it.
+
+So poor were his arts of deception that perhaps they would scarcely
+have served his purpose elsewhere, but here he and his peculiarities
+were given scant heed. He could not have found another domicile, in
+all the length and breadth of the country, where he could have been
+installed and have excited so little attention and curiosity. And
+indeed, to Mrs. Larrabee, the head of the house, he was only one more
+in addition to the rest of the tribe that must be warmed and fed and
+housed, or, as she expressed it, "tucked away somewhar." She always
+was equal to the emergency, although whenever Espey entered the large
+circle about the fireside it seemed to have been recruited somewhere,
+and more numerous than at his last survey.
+
+"Ye 'pear ter hev a cornsider'ble head o' humans hyar, Mis' Haight,"
+he observed on one occasion to the old grandam who sat in the corner,
+the stepmother-in-law of Mrs. Larrabee, and whose reproval seemed the
+natural incident of all that her daughter-in-law did. The world had
+gone much awry with her, after the mundane manner, and in the evening
+of her days she had neither the softening influence of religion nor the
+resources of culture to mitigate the asperities of the result.
+
+"In course,--in course!" she exclaimed rancorously, gazing at him over
+her spectacles with little dark eyes, the brighter for exasperation.
+"Thar's me an' my old man,--he's got the palsy," as if this rendered
+him more numerous; "an' thar's Jerushy, my darter, an' her chil'n,
+five, an' her husband; an' S'briny Lar'bee herself, an' her son Jasper.
+An' ez ef that warn't enough, she hearn ez Henrietty Timson's husband
+war dead, an' they war burnt out an' hed no home, so S'briny Lar'bee
+jes' wagons down the mounting an' brung 'em hyar ter stay, seben
+of 'em,--seben with thar mammy makes eight. S'briny jes' tucks 'em
+away somehows, ez she 'lows, in this hyar leetle house!" She sneered
+toothlessly, then laughed aloud. Suddenly she leaned forward, and, with
+her knitting-needle in her hand, pointed at the group of floundering
+children. "See that thar brat, the leetlest one?"
+
+Espey, turning in his chair, descried a tow-head bobbing not far
+above the floor. The significant eye of the old woman fixed him as if
+reciting an enormity.
+
+"He war a infant whenst he kem,--a ill-convenient infant in arms,
+_with the rickets_!"
+
+As the subject of this criticism scampered out of the crowd, with a
+single unbleached cotton garment on, very rotund as to trunk, very
+fat and cherubic as to legs, very loud and blatant as to voice, very
+arrogant and impudent as to manner, the young man was moved to remark
+that he "'peared toler'ble hearty now."
+
+"Course he do," she assented, "through a-gor-mandizin' of so much fat
+meat; scandalous, impident shoat,--ez well ez a bear!"
+
+She loved a quiet life, did Mrs. Haight. She had been an only daughter.
+She had had only two children. She had always had her house to herself;
+and in this congregation of incongruous elements around her widowed
+daughter-in-law's hearth she beheld only inconvenience, perversity, and
+an unfilial disregard of her own very sage advice. It had even been
+advanced to exclude her own daughter.
+
+"Let Jerushy's husband take keer o' her. She would marry him, spite o'
+all. Let her 'bide by her ch'ice."
+
+But poor Jerusha's husband was a drunkard, and the forlorn household
+had suffered hardship and very nearly grazed starvation before they
+made their happy advent into this populous haven.
+
+There were certain sensitive thrills of pride and shame in the
+fugitive's heart, as he listened to this arraignment of the numbers
+crowded about the hospitable hearth. He said to himself, in
+justification, that he was only one more among so many, but he felt
+that he was an imposition. There was no such thought, however, in Mrs.
+Haight's mind. She regarded him only as a visitor, a personable young
+man, and moreover as possessing a certain unique interest for her; for
+in her youth she had spent some days in Tanglefoot Cove, and, despite
+the wide diversity of their age, occupation, and outlook at life, they
+passed sundry companionable hours in gossiping of the people of that
+locality, and detailing the various chances that had befallen families
+known to both. During these sessions he was wont to hold her yarn for
+her to wind. She never slipped the hank across his wrists that he did
+not bethink himself of other wristlets destined for him, perchance,
+and made of sterner stuff. He was prone to be silent for a time during
+the winding of the skeins, but she improved the opportunity to talk
+to an attentive listener; for Sabrina was too liable to interruptions
+from her various charges to meet her somewhat exacting demands as an
+interlocutor, and she was at scornful variance with the other elders of
+the family.
+
+"Mis' Lar'bee 'pears ter be fond o' comp'ny," said Jack, as he leaned
+forward, with his submissive hands outstretched for the yarn.
+
+The old woman, peering keenly through her spectacles as she sought to
+find the end of the thread,--she had a cautious, skillful, alert air,
+as of a trapper,--paused suddenly, her knotted, withered hand poised
+like a claw.
+
+"'Tain't that!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Nothin' like it! Ye reckon
+enny 'oman in her senses likes sech ez that?"
+
+She nodded acrimoniously, and Jack, following the direction of her
+eye, glanced over his shoulder at the turmoil of tow-heads scuffling
+together in the flickering firelight. Supper was in course of
+preparation, and they were even noisier at this glad prospect than
+their wont. One of them, under cover of Espey's preoccupation, had
+approached, and, slipping his hand under the arm held out for the
+skein, was venturing slyly to touch the pistols in his belt, with all
+the greed of the small boy for deadly weapons. Espey, his white hat
+far back on his head, looked down upon him, his suddenly scowling face
+all unshaded, and the little mountaineer fell back affrighted and in
+dismay; for, despite his humble estate in life, he had encountered few
+frowns.
+
+"Naw, S'briny's reason ain't got no reason in it." Mrs. Haight had
+begun the winding now, and the red ball was whirling, ever larger, in
+her nimble fingers. "She jes' hed a son kilt in the wars. Leastwise the
+tale ez kem back war that he war wounded in a scrimmage, turrible; an'
+his folks war all on the run. An' he crawled ter a house nigh by, an'
+the 'oman tuk him in. An' he died in her house stiddier on the groun'
+or in a fence corner. That war the tale. S'briny never could find out
+who war the 'oman, nor edzac'ly whar it happened. But sence then, ter
+pay back her debt, she takes 'em all in, an' whenst they gits too
+crowded she knocks up a shed or suthin' an' packs 'em in; whenst like
+ez not the 'oman lef' Alvin ter die on the hard, cold groun', an' mebbe
+sot the dogs on him ter hurry the job."
+
+There was a silence for a few moments, while the firelight flickered
+upon Espey's absorbed eyes and intent, listening figure. The wrinkled,
+parchment-like face of the old woman was partly in the shadow as she
+sat in the corner, but her spectacles gleamed with unwonted brilliancy
+as she actively moved and nodded her head under her big ruffled cap.
+
+"S'briny say, too, ez old pa'son Jenks say ez ye mought entertain
+angels unaware. An' _I_ say, then agin ye moughtn't! Fur ef enny
+o' these hyar that S'briny _hev_ entertained air angels, they air
+powerful peart at hidin' it, sure!"
+
+Once more she cast a caustic glance at the group, and her sarcastic
+laughter fell upon the air, sharply treble.
+
+If celestial visitants, these were certainly well disguised. Espey
+glanced at the bloated face of the inebriate husband of Jerusha,
+tremulous, full of sudden fits and starts; at Jerusha herself,
+slatternly, slothful, and down at the heel, a snuff brush in her
+mouth, and her forlorn discontent with life in general on her weak,
+flabby face; at the old, feeble-minded man dozing and muttering in the
+corner,--he had once in his life worked in the Lost Time mine, and
+he sometimes gave Espey a sudden start by bringing out the name with
+a deep, full, blood-curdling curse. Henrietta Timson's thankfulness
+had merged into a suspicion that too much gratitude was expected
+of her, and she was prone to magnify the lighter tasks which she
+selected, and went about with an overworked drudging air, and with
+some distinct proclivity for the rôle of martyr. It was a furtive,
+jealous eye which she cast upon Mrs. Larrabee, at home, competent, and
+emphatically in command. The children, nevertheless, were disposed to
+take undue advantage of their protectress; and the smaller they were,
+the more capable, by reason of her leniency, of imposing upon her. This
+disposition characterized even an infant turkey, which had contracted
+some disease by exposure to the inclemency of the weather, and, being
+put into a basket of cotton to recuperate, found its way out, from time
+to time, with a cotton girdle adhering about its middle, and, with a
+fifelike voice, made the grand tour of the hearth, in imminent danger
+of catching fire in its cotton gear, causing her acute anguish lest it
+should be baked alive and before its time.
+
+Even Mrs. Larrabee herself,--if there were aught spiritual about her,
+it must have been in the ends of her fingers. She was much given to
+wearing a sunbonnet, in the depths of which her thin, pallid face had
+a look like marble, with its keen, straight features. Her busy eye had
+not casual observation: she looked at the children to see if they were
+sick or cold or hungry; at Jerusha's husband to descry if perchance he
+were drunk again; at Jack Espey to discover if he wanted aught, and if
+he had no want or ailment she noticed him not at all. He could hardly
+have been more free to come and go as he would, and the long hours
+when he and Larrabee were away at the still passed altogether without
+remark. It was nevertheless to her that he resolved to open his heart.
+The door was ajar, and he could see that the long, loitering summer
+night had come at last. Through the gap in the trees the stars were
+visible, glowing white above the sombre mountains in the distance;
+he could not distinguish a constellation,--only a whorl of brilliant
+stellular points of light in the scant interval where the black leaves
+of the oak, as distinct and as dark as if cut of bronze, failed to
+fill the space between the threshold and the zenith. It was not long
+now before she would be at leisure, and sleep would silence the
+juvenile members of the family, except indeed the turkey, which, though
+unclassified amongst nocturnal fowl, was wont to pipe lugubriously
+in the dead watches of the night, necessitating the uprising of the
+mistress of the house with a draught of water and a light lunch of
+corn-meal batter to compose it once more to slumber. As Espey observed
+it gadding about on its long legs, disproportioned to the size of its
+body even when begirt with the cotton batting, he sagely thought that
+Mrs. Larrabee's tolerance toward its exacting idiosyncrasies was the
+result of no sense of obligation to it or its kind. "She's a powerful
+good-hearted woman, and smart, too," he said to himself; "she's got
+enough sense ter hev some feelin's."
+
+The evening, passed in winding the yarn, wore slowly away to him after
+his resolve. He was very taciturn and still, and Mrs. Haight, finding
+so acquiescent a coadjutor, grew industrious, and hank succeeded
+hank upon his motionless and submissive wrists. His silence did not
+discourage her flow of words. On the contrary, it assumed the narrative
+form in lieu of their usual dialogue; and as the fervor of reminiscence
+waxed, her small black eyes grew brighter, her parchment-like cheek
+flushed, and, with her red "shoulder shawl" and big white cap and
+snowy hair and blue apron, she looked like some fairy godmother. And
+indeed, as she briskly wound the thread, now blue, now red, and again
+gray "clouded" with white, it might have seemed that she wielded some
+sorcery to reduce to this humble fireside utility this wild-eyed,
+defiant spirit. The young desperado, his belt stuck full of weapons,
+was oddly at variance with the solicitude which he now and again
+exhibited when a troublous tangle developed, and the thread perversely
+knotted and broke. The firelight that flickered on his face, the fairer
+from his sojourn in the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, his
+great boots and spurs, his pliant attitude and submissive gestures,
+and his aged and incongruous companion served also to show what speed
+was made in disposing of the youthful gentry for the night. With that
+perverse disinclination for bedtime which betrays the old Adam in the
+youngest infant, they severally resisted, each to the best of his
+very respectable capacity. One or two of tender years, having been
+hustled up the ladder to the loft, came down again in scant attire,
+and he who had triumphed over the rickets, and whose bed was in a box,
+resuscitated himself from amongst the bedclothes whenever he was stowed
+away, but finally was overtaken, and fell asleep on the old house-dog's
+neck as he lay snoring on the hearth.
+
+Espey was of that type of man to whom juvenility is neither comical nor
+alluring. Duty was revealed to him in graduated doses adapted to the
+age of the taker, and he was disposed to make no allowance to infants
+for delinquency. It seemed to him that Mrs. Larrabee's patience was
+much misplaced, and he now and again gazed with disapproving eyes at
+the group. He was obliged to linger long before she was at leisure and
+sitting in front of the hearth with the shovel in her hand, ready to
+heap the ashes over the coals to keep the fire till day. The two beds
+in the room were edged with the tow-heads of the children, sleeping
+crosswise; the baby's box-crib and the turkey's basket had each its
+wonted occupant; and if the dreams that went up from the conclave could
+have been materialized, what wild display of phantasmagoria they would
+have made! The door had been barred up against the possible marauder
+of the elder's apprehension, and the black bear of juvenile dread. The
+shadows of the two loiterers were on the red, dully illumined ceiling,
+two gigantic, distorted heads of dusky brown.
+
+"I war sorter waitin' fur Jasper," observed Espey disingenuously,
+having noticed that Mrs. Larrabee looked inquiringly at him. "I reckon
+he be a-visitin' down at Tems's."
+
+"Mebbe so," she acquiesced succinctly, rasping the shovel on the
+hearth. She seemed indisposed for conversation.
+
+"Mis' Haight's mighty good comp'ny," he continued, leaning sideways in
+his chair, with his elbow on its back as he supported his head in his
+hand. "Talkin' 'bout old times, an' her courtin' days, an' sech."
+
+For, according to Mrs. Haight's own account, she had been a truculent
+heart-breaker in her hey-day. There were few names that one might
+mention, native to her locality, which she could not have worn had she
+chosen. She always alluded cavalierly to the husband she had and to the
+one she had lost as "toler'ble samples o' the whole b'ilin'."
+
+Mrs. Larrabee's immobile face was more inexpressive than before, as the
+red light sought it out in the depths of her sunbonnet. She had her
+secret doubts as to this wholesale destruction of the peace of youth a
+half century ago.
+
+"Toler'ble interestin' ter me!" protested Espey suddenly. "I hev been
+sorter in love myse'f--leastwise"--He did not continue to qualify, for
+Mrs. Larrabee turned her face, illumined by maternal interest, upon
+him. "It's gin me a heap o' trouble, too," he broke out impetuously,
+divining her sympathy.
+
+She was looking at him tenderly, remembering her own youth and her
+own young lover, dead and gone this many a year. Jacob Larrabee had,
+in happier days, laughed retrospectively at his own lackadaisical woe
+and wakeful nights and anxious doubts. "Sech a _funny_ fool I
+war. Thar may hev been ez _big_ fools, but I'll swar I war the
+_funniest_." But his woe had always appealed to her commiseration,
+and she was glad she had consciously been no factor in it. "I wouldn't
+hev hed ye so tormented fur nuthin', Jacob, ef I hed knowed," she would
+say gently.
+
+Jack's young face, worn with fiercer griefs and turmoils and keener
+fears, was appealing in its anxious lines; her warm motherly heart
+went out to him. He leaned his hands on his knees, and assumed a
+confidential tone.
+
+"Now, Mis' Lar'bee," he said, "I 'lowed I'd ax ye what this hyar gal
+means. I hev done everything I knowed how ter please her,--even whenst
+she tole me ter go a-perlitin' around another gal. I done _jes' like
+she ordered_, an' what ye s'pose she done?"
+
+"What?" demanded his partisan confidante angrily, knitting her brows
+heavily.
+
+"She hit me."
+
+"Did she hurt ye?" exclaimed Mrs. Larrabee sympathetically, dropping
+her voice in contemplation of the enormity.
+
+Remembering the relative proportions and force of Adelicia and himself,
+Espey and his woe were out of countenance for the nonce. He laughed a
+little sheepishly. "Naw," he admitted reluctantly. "She didn't hurt me
+none ter speak on."
+
+Mrs. Larrabee's brow cleared. "Sonny, 'twar jes' love-licks," she
+suggested, in old-fashioned maternal phrase.
+
+"Naw, sir! Naw, sir!" Espey shook his head with grave protest. "She war
+too leetle ter hurt me, she war bound ter know. She jes' wanted ter
+hurt my feelin's. An' she done it, too."
+
+Mrs. Larrabee's face was all commiseration; and suddenly a truly
+feminine curiosity became manifest. "Whar do the gal live? Hyarabouts
+or in Tanglefoot?"
+
+However far a man may trust a woman, he never trusts her completely.
+Jack Espey caught himself sharply. "It's fur off,--mighty fur, 'pears
+like ter me," he said mendaciously. "Now, Mis' Lar'bee, I wants ter
+git yer advices. What ails the gal ter treat me that-a-way, jes' 'kase
+I done her bid an' gin the t'other gal good-evenin', full perlite like
+she told me ter do? What ails her?"
+
+"Pride," said Mrs. Larrabee sternly. She could be severe enough with
+people whom she did not see, and her mental image of a buxom termagant
+was far enough removed from the fragile and shrinking Adelicia.
+
+Espey looked at her with doubtful, troubled eyes. "Jes' turned on me
+an' smit me!" he protested. "I feel like I'll never git over that lick.
+I'll die of it yit!"
+
+"Pride!" fiercely reiterated Mrs. Larrabee. "An' ef ye wanter make
+her repent it, ye jes' perlite up the t'other gal fur true! Whenst I
+went back ter Tanglefoot Cove, I'd show sech manners ez it ain't used
+ter,--ye'd better b'lieve I would. That thar gal 'lows she kin git ye
+too easy, too powerful cheap. T'other gal good lookin'?"
+
+"Waal," drawled Espey uneasily, evidently contemplating apprehensively
+this heroic treatment for the small smiter, "nobody don't look purty
+ter me but one, an' she's plumb beautiful, ter my mind."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" Mrs. Larrabee exhorted him scornfully.
+
+"T'other gal hev got the name of it, though," he said reluctantly,
+plainly jealous for the preëminence of his lady love. "T'other gal is
+named a reg'lar gyardin lily fur beauty."
+
+"Waal, then, perlitin' 'round her won't go so turrible hard with ye,"
+said Mrs. Larrabee discerningly. "Though mebbe ye hed better let the
+'gyardin lily' inter the secret, 'kase she mought fall in love with ye
+an' yer perliteness."
+
+But Jack Espey shook his head; he had bitter cause to distrust candor.
+"I can't go 'round warnin' the gals against me," he said sturdily. "Ef
+she falls in love with me, she'll jes' hev ter fall out agin, that's
+all."
+
+He sat for a little time gazing moodily at the fire, and contemplating
+the details of this scheme of reprisal. Then, with a curt good-night,
+he rose and tramped off to the roof-room, which he shared with Jasper
+and a delegation of the larger boys; leaving Mrs. Larrabee covering the
+embers, and pausing now and again, as she knelt on the hearth, with the
+red light on her statuesque features, to ponder on the lover of her
+past youthful days, and the sensible advice she had given Jack Espey to
+reduce the inordinate pride of the arrogant, arbitrary damsel of his
+heart in Tanglefoot Cove.
+
+But the bars so stoutly made fast against the door were not destined
+to keep their place that night. The moon had long before slipped from
+the vaguely illumined limited space of the sky, which her own light
+had rendered faintly blue, down behind a jutting crag of the western
+mountains; it glowed a sombre purple as the crescent passed, with a
+pearly gleaming mist half revealed against the black summits about
+it. The white stars, whiter still, pulsated in the darkening sky. So
+pervasive a sense of silence was in their mute splendor that even the
+benighted mountain wilderness seemed to assert many voices, strange,
+murmurous, unknown to the light. Espey, stretched upon his pallet in
+the recess of the dormer window above the porch, with his wakeful,
+troublous thoughts, languidly sought to differentiate the sounds. He
+heeded the rustle of a vagrant zephyr, the twitter of a nestling,
+the murmur of the spring in the rocks near at hand, the never silent
+chirring of the cicada of the Southern summer night. But what was it
+in the insensate world of crag and forest and mountain and chasm that
+drew a long breath, and paused, and once more sighed heavily, and
+again resigned itself to silence? He could see in the rifts of the
+clapboards above his head a palpitating white star,--how its heart of
+fire beat! He felt his own pulses throb heavily, and the next moment
+they seemed to cease. A new sound intruded into the monotony of the
+mountain stillness. He heard it once far away, and then silence.
+He lifted himself upon his elbow and listened, with dilating eyes.
+Only the sense of the noiseless dewfall, the cracking of a sun-dried
+clapboard, the swift scurrying of a mouse amongst the rafters, and once
+more silence, or that mysterious voice of the night which rose and fell
+in the cadence of sighs. He was about to lie down when the sound came
+again,--distinct this time, unmistakable, so close at hand that it
+seemed the very malice of fate that he should not have distinguished
+it earlier. It was the hoofbeat of horses, and they came at a swift
+gallop,--so swift that he had hardly a moment to take counsel with
+himself, in a turmoil of doubt and fear; his foot was barely on the
+stairway when a heavy tread fell upon the little porch, and a sturdy
+fist thundered at the door.
+
+Into the dusky red darkness of the room below--for the glow of the
+embers could hardly be reckoned as light--a feeble white glimmer was
+stealing. Mrs. Larrabee, without her sunbonnet for once, had hustled
+on her homespun dress, buttoned all awry, and was striking a light for
+a tallow dip. Perhaps its dim flicker revealed the young man standing
+high in the deep shadows on the stair that led to the roof-room, or
+perhaps she only distinguished his step in the midst of the clamor at
+the door, for she called out suddenly to him, "Open the door, Jack,
+open the door, sonny, no matter who it be! Every chile in the house
+will be a-swarmin' up d'rectly ef that thar bangin' be 'lowed ter go
+on, an' I reckon we'll _never_ git the baby inter bed agin!"
+
+The turkey was already awake and alert, its piercing pipe adding to the
+confusion and nervous stress of the situation, as Jack Espey, after one
+irresolute moment, strode to the door, and Mrs. Larrabee rose from her
+knees on the hearth and stood in the dusky brown background, shading
+with her hand the timorous flame of the candle.
+
+Perhaps it was well for Jack Espey that the bars went down with so
+resolute and hearty a clangor, for, as he confronted the men at the
+door, they did not doubt that they faced the son of the house.
+
+"Widder Lar'bee lives hyar?" said a keen, tall, dark-eyed man, with
+high cheek-bones and a hooked nose, above which his thick black
+eyebrows met. His soft black hat had a sort of peaked crown, and he
+wore a suit of plaided "store clothes," as befitted one having access
+to the towns, but which were much creased, and his boots were drawn,
+country fashion, over his trousers to the knees.
+
+"Air that enny reason ter bust the door down?" demanded Espey, looking
+at the stout battens as if expecting to discern injury as it swayed in
+his hand.
+
+Mrs. Larrabee interposed blandly, "I be Widder Lar'bee. 'Tain't no use
+ter talk loud. I got some mighty fractious chil'n hyar 'sleep."
+
+The fractious turkey stood upon the hearth and piped till the end
+of its tail quivered with the energy of its vocalization. A cricket
+was shrilling keenly. The trivial sounds seemed to throb in Espey's
+brain when the visitor said, "I be dep'ty sher'ff o' this county, Mis'
+Lar'bee, an' I hear ez thar war a stranger in the Cove a-puttin' up
+hyar."
+
+The two men behind the officer looked over his shoulder, their bearded
+faces sharply inquisitive.
+
+"Naw, sir, I ain't got no stranger hyar; not but whut I would take 'em
+in,--me an' my son hev made a rule o' that,--but we-uns bide too fur
+off'n the road." She did not account Espey a stranger, so accustomed a
+figure had he become in the domestic circle.
+
+There was a definite disappointment in the officer's keen,
+high-featured face.
+
+Mrs. Larrabee turned to Espey. "Ye ain't hearn o' enny stray man
+hyarabouts, hev ye, sonny?"
+
+"Thar be a stranger down at Tems's," said Espey; "though I reckon
+he ain't done nuthin' agin the law,--saaft-spoken an' perlite an'
+peaceable."
+
+The high-featured face was contorted in a jocose grimace, to which the
+meeting of the black eyebrows gave a singularly sinister effect. Espey
+felt his heart sink as the official winked at him.
+
+"Perliteness would have been wuth mo' ter this man ef he could hev
+showed manners sooner. War mighty onpolite indeed in Tanglefoot Cove,
+Mis' Lar'bee, an' shot a man."
+
+"Kilt him?" she demanded in a bated voice, and turning pale. She held
+the candle awry, as she spoke, and the flickering light as the tallow
+melted and dripped heavily on the floor showed only her own straight
+features and masses of brown hair, dulled with gray, coiled at the back
+of her head.
+
+Espey's overladen heart thumped heavily. The cold drops stood thick on
+his face, all in the shadow, white and drawn with suspense.
+
+"In an' about,--a sorter livin' death. An' sence he hev got so much
+worse his folks want the malefactor apprehended straight. We hearn ez
+he air hyarabouts or in Persimmon Cove, one. An' ez the constable o'
+this deestric' air sick abed,--ailin' old cattle like him oughtn't ter
+be 'lowed ter hold office!--the high sher'ff sent me ter look arter
+him, ef I could come up with him. Waal,"--he was turning away,--"I'm
+sorry I hed ter roust ye and yer son up this time o' night."
+
+Mrs. Larrabee took no note of this misdescription. Her thoughts were
+engrossed by a sudden hospitable intention.
+
+"Wouldn't a bite an' a sup hearten ye up sorter, arter so much ridin'
+in the night wind?" she drawled amiably.
+
+The deputy, despite his lean, lank, ill-nourished air, was susceptible
+to the allurements of the pleasures of the table. He hesitated, and a
+very little urgency sufficed to induct him into a chair by the side of
+the fire, while Mrs. Larrabee ransacked her stores for the bite and
+sup, which were more easily promised than provided.
+
+He was new to his office, and disposed to magnify its dignities and
+difficulties, as he and his two companions waited for the refection,
+while Espey stirred up the fire and rescued the turkey, which had
+burrowed into a mound of dead ashes, still permeated, however, with the
+grateful warmth of the embers.
+
+"Ye'd be plumb s'prised, Mis' Lar'bee, at the slyness o' sech
+malefactors, an' the trouble they'll gin. Now I be a stranger ter this
+e-end o' the county, an' what with the constable sick everybody sorter
+holds back 'bout informin' the officer o' the law; turrible 'fraid lest
+the folks in gineral takes it out on them, ye know. Some 'lows I be
+a-trappin' moonshiners; an' that ain't my business at all. I got no
+mo' agin moonshiners 'n I hev agin whiskey. It's all one ter _me_.
+I don't c'lect the tax, an' I don't pay it nuther. I drinks mos'ly on
+treats, sech ez this." He held up his glass, for Espey had proffered
+the product of the Lost Time still, and it seemed to him at the moment
+that the very jug looked conscious. "I couldn't git a critter ter kem
+with me ter-night 'thout reg'lar summonsin' a posse: one man ailin';
+t'other man, sick wife; another man, sore foot; another man, lame
+horse. Course _I_ could hev _made_ 'em kem," waving the hand
+with the glass in it with a capable gesture; "but I didn't want ter be
+harsh an' requirin' with the citizens, 'kase, ye know," with a sudden
+sly geniality illumining his countenance, "I mought want ter run fur
+sher'ff myse'f some day,--that is, ef the old man was ter git done
+with the office," he added, mindful of his tenure through the favor
+of the high sheriff. "Now this hyar man," pointing out one of his
+followers, who bore with a sort of wooden equanimity the united gaze
+of Mrs. Larrabee and Espey, "he be a stranger hyarabouts, too,--kems
+from my deestric', frien' o' mine,--so o' course he warn't acquainted
+hyarabout, nuther."
+
+Mrs. Larrabee's perceptions detected something embarrassing to a
+sensitive nature in this invited survey of the silent, bearded man, who
+had not opened his mouth except to put a biscuit into it. As amends,
+she handed him the plate anew, and the second biscuit silently went the
+way of the first.
+
+"Now this hyar other man,"--the officer indicated a short, square-set
+fellow,--"he war powerful leetle 'quainted round hyar, though he kem
+from neighboring ways, the Gap; so he ondertook ter p'int out yer
+house"--
+
+The short man interposed in great haste, and with his mouth full:--
+
+"Though I hev never hed nuthin' agin you-uns, Mis' Lar'bee, an' I hope
+ye won't lay it up agin me, marm. I knowed 't war mighty safe,--'kase
+you-uns warn't the sort ter harbor evil-doers 'gainst the law an' sech
+ez that,--hevin' been powerful well 'quainted with yer husband whenst
+he war a boy; an' this hyar dep'ty war so powerful partic'lar, an' I
+didn't see how ter git out'n it, an'"--The crumbs in his throat and
+the scruples in his heart combined to choke his utterance, and as the
+climax came in a paroxysm of coughing, Mrs. Larrabee turned to the
+officer.
+
+"I got nobody hyar wuss'n yerse'f, sher'ff," she drawled, with a slow
+smile.
+
+"Waal, now, Mis' Lar'bee," said the officer, probably mindful of
+political hopes, "ef ever ye want ennything of me, ye jes' lemme know.
+I wanter show ye how I'll remember this hyar squar meal ter-night. I
+ain't one o' them ez can't remember dinner till it's dinner time agin."
+He smiled gallantly upon her from under his superabundance of brows.
+Then he turned to Espey. "I been so well treated it makes me plumb bold
+ter ax another favior. I want ye ter git on yer horse an' ride with me
+ter set me in the road ter Tems's. Nare one o' these men air 'quainted
+with the way."
+
+His dark eyes hardened under his sinister black brows, and Espey, who
+had taken heart of grace, felt his hope of escape annihilated in the
+instant. His eyes were fastened with a fixed stare on the officer's
+face; his nerves were all a-quiver; his heart seemed to stand still;
+a cold, insidious thrill crept along the fibres of his skin. The
+conviction seized him that the conversation which had seemed so
+incidental was merely a blind devised for the purpose of getting him
+apart from the women and children, that he might be captured with less
+ado or less danger to the bystanders, perhaps further from the chance
+of rescue. He thought of rescue, himself, of Jerusha's husband blind
+drunk in the shed-room, of Jasper away at the Lost Time mine. Through
+some other sense than that of conscious sight he was aware of the
+movements of the deputy's comrades: that one, seated in the chair, was
+carefully examining his revolver; that the other was standing beside
+the door with his hand on the latch. But Espey's eyes never quitted
+the face of the sheriff, who apparently took note of this fixed,
+unresponsive gaze.
+
+"Air he deef?" he demanded of Mrs. Larrabee, and was about to repeat
+his demand in a louder key, when his hostess interposed.
+
+"No deefer than them in gineral be who ain't willin' ter hear," she
+muttered. "Go saddle yer critter, Jack. 'Twon't take ye long." Then,
+in a lower aside, "Ye'll jes' hev ter guide 'em ez fur ez Tems's,
+ennyhow."
+
+Her insistence constrained him; and indeed no alternative was definite
+to his mind. He turned with a bewildered, submissive mien toward the
+door.
+
+The chill midnight air, blowing freshly on his face as he held it
+open and the draught rushed through, revived him like the very breath
+of freedom. The obvious opportunity flashed through his mind like an
+inspiration. He could give them the slip while saddling the horse.
+He would have the start of them even if by only a few paces. Let him
+but once get foot in the stirrup again, with the kindly shield of the
+darkness about him, and he would give them a good run through this
+pathless mountain wilderness. He caught up his saddle that lay upon the
+floor, and made for the door again with a sudden eager alacrity.
+
+He heard an abrupt clanging noise, as one hears a sound in sleep,
+muffled, unreal, distant. It was only when he saw one of the men stoop
+and rise again and follow him that he realized what had happened. One
+of the stirrup irons had fallen from the saddle, unbuckled perhaps in
+the unwarranted juvenile curiosity of the meddling youngsters of the
+house. The deputy sheriff also followed. "I'll put that on agin whilst
+ye air a-ketchin' an' a-bridlin' of the nag," he said.
+
+Espey heard the loud, strident tones of his hasty farewells as he took
+leave of Mrs. Larrabee,--he evidently intended to return no more,--and
+then he was by the young man's side in the barn, followed by his two
+companions. For the horse was not in the pasture lot; he had repaired
+to the shelter of the barn, and had stretched himself on his bed of
+straw. At the first indication of the prospect of journeying the roan
+struggled up, and, with a sound of greeting that was almost articulate,
+came out from the stall, ready and willing to be saddled and bridled.
+Espey experienced a sort of animosity toward the creature for his
+unreasoning alacrity. He was even denied the poor respite which the
+usual delay in catching the horse might have given.
+
+In his numbing, silent despair as he buckled the girth and slipped
+the bridle over the horse's head and the bit into his mouth, he took
+no definite heed of his surroundings, and yet they were all impressed
+upon his consciousness. He noted, uncaring, how the horse tossed up
+his head askance at the stranger's touch, when one of the men laid his
+hand on the powerful shoulder and opined that he must be a "toler'ble
+good goer." He was aware, somehow, of the blue-black, translucent gloom
+of the air, and the differing darkness with its effect of solidity,
+of the fodder stack looming close by, of the fantastic roof of the
+little log cabin against the stars, and of a vague sense of motion
+where the invisible smoke curled up from the chimney, faring off into
+the dense shadow of the foliage of the great trees. The door was still
+open, and the yellow light fell far out into the darkness; in the
+interior he could see the gaunt, tall form of Mrs. Larrabee walking
+back and forth, and in her arms the baby, who had been roused by the
+falling of the spur. The child needed little tenderness, in his robust
+self-sufficiency, and was elderly indeed for such infantile coddling.
+His fat legs stuck far out of her arms, and his bawling objections to
+the interruption of slumber attested temper rather than delicacy. Espey
+realized how her heart would go out to a real trouble,--how she would
+feel for him if she only knew! Somehow the thought of that fictitious
+anguish of sympathy soothed him for the moment, and he was resigned to
+say to himself that it was best as it was. She could have done naught.
+He was no child like the others to cling to her in a sort of fervid
+faith in her omnipotence. No; resistance would only have endangered her
+and hers. And so he was strengthened to put his foot in the stirrup
+and ride away, with the sheriff at his right hand, and the other men
+close behind, all looking alertly forward into the gloom. The roan
+horse, fresh from slumber, was beginning to feel his hay and corn,
+snuffing the quickening wind, pulling on the bit, and forging on at a
+more speedy gait. The other men noticed this, for now and again, with a
+touch of the spur, they closed up, and the roan horse was in the centre
+of the squad.
+
+
+
+
+                                 VII.
+
+
+As they went, the deputy sheriff's manner was little characterized
+by an official decorum. He seemed rather some bold roisterer who
+himself might have had ample cause to dread the law that he was sworn
+to administer. The rough humor of his sallies affected Espey as an
+incongruous sort of fun, taken in connection with his interpretation
+of their errand, and his recollection of the keen, sinister, thin
+face, with its piercing dark eyes, and its sharp hooked nose, and the
+straight, menacing eyebrows meeting above it. He had this mental vision
+distinctly before his contemplation, as it had impressed him in the
+flicker of Mrs. Larrabee's tallow dip, instead of the undistinguishable
+equestrian shadow that in the black night pressed close to his horse's
+flank, and now and again laid a sinewy hand upon his arm. For the
+officer, in a spirit of mock confidence, was detailing, much to that
+worthy's discomfort, the spectral fears of his friend from "the t'other
+e-end of the county," a believer in ghosts, and making an elaborate
+pretense of sharing them. Now and again, with a sepulchral voice and
+an agitated manner, he would conjure Espey to say if he saw nothing
+flickering, waving white, in some open stretch of the road that lay
+vacant and vaguely glimmering in the starlight before them. Then,
+hardly waiting for an answer, he would burst into a whoop of derisive
+laughter, startling the solemn silence of the night-bound mountain
+wilderness, and rousing strange echoes of weird mirth from rock and
+ravine. More than once the uncanny tumult of these wild, insensate
+cries moved the staid comrades of the deputy sheriff to remonstrance.
+
+In the distance and the night and their repetitiousness, the sounds
+seemed curiously unrelated to those that had evoked them.
+
+"That ain't no rocks a-answerin' back," said the man from the Gap. "I
+b'lieve somebody is a-hollerin' at ye."
+
+The officer turned alertly in his saddle to look back over his
+shoulder. "That wouldn't s'prise me none," said the capable deputy,
+whose large experience would seem to furnish precedent for any given
+phenomenon. "I knowed a man out our way,--mighty loud talker and a
+toler'ble active cusser,--whilst callin' hawgs, hedn't tuk no special
+notice o' the rocks answerin', till one day whenst he war 'dad-burnin''
+an' 'all-firin'' round till the very shoats looked blue. He stopped
+ter take breath, an' he hearn a voice, powerful coarse, out'n the
+woods jes' yellin' like sin, 'Fire-burn!' 'Fire-burn!' an' he knowed
+that minit who't war. An' in course he jes' hedn't no mo' interes' in
+nuthin', an' jes' dwindled away."
+
+He paused abruptly.
+
+"But--but--who war it ez said 'Fire-burn' with a coarse voice?"
+breathlessly demanded the believer in spectral manifestations.
+
+"Why, Satan, to be sure, ye fool," replied the deputy. "I useter hear
+him myself a-callin' in the woods, 'Fire-burn!' whenst Ad Peters would
+git ter cussin' his hawgs! Jes' so"--He lifted his voice in a wild,
+fantastic cadence, and throughout the long stretches of the mountain
+fastnesses the words, as of some demented incendiary, echoed and
+re-echoed, varied presently with mocking cries of unpleasant falsetto
+laughter, set astir when the officer's gravity failed.
+
+The patience of his friend had given way. "Look-a-hyar, 'Dolphus Ross,"
+he broke out angrily, "this hyar ain't no way ter go ter apperhend
+criminals, a-hollerin' like a plumb catamount through the woods."
+
+"I don't want ter s'prise nuthin'," said the crafty deputy sheriff,
+"that is nuthin' unyearthly, on its yerrands what no mortial knows
+about, an' mebbe git s'prised myself plumb down ter the doors o' the
+pit. Ye know them ez sees harnts either draps down dead or loses thar
+minds, one. They 'low now'days ez all the crazies kem so from seein'
+sperits. An' ye know yerse'f, an off'cer of the law needs brains."
+
+"Ef ye don't know yer bizness no better'n that, I be goin' ter l'arn
+it ter ye. Ye 'pear mo' like a jay-hawker'n a off'cer o' the law,"
+retorted the other tartly.
+
+But not even with this rude touch upon the sensitive nerves of official
+pride could he control the elusive and slippery deputy. "That's a fac',
+Pearce. But the truth is, I be all-fired 'feared in these hyar lonesome
+places, whar humans air seldom an' few, o' seein' suthin' or hearin'
+suthin' what no mortial eyes or ears air expected ter see an' hear. So
+I like ter hear the sound o' my own voice,--let 'em know I'm a-comin'.
+Even with two or three men with me, it's so darned fur an' lonesome!
+I 'pear less like a harnt myself, an' less apt ter meet up with one,
+ef I make myself sorter lively. I'm a mighty quiet cuss in town. I'm
+a--What's--what's that?" he broke off sharply.
+
+He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches.
+The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set,
+collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless
+proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the
+abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights
+of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven
+and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating
+white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight
+becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through
+the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the
+heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague
+moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in
+the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the
+others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments.
+
+"What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing
+horse with considerable skill.
+
+"Something white--beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law.
+
+Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood
+run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades.
+
+"Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough
+from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming
+that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming
+graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and
+the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again
+protested in a loud, broken voice:--
+
+"Beckonin'--beckonin'--Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is
+a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the
+church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,--an' he
+may escape jedge an' jury,--an' he may cheat hemp,--but in the dead
+o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a
+v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"--
+
+"Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin'
+back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the
+narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend
+crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the
+daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say."
+
+"Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my
+jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur
+from Tems's now,--air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey.
+
+With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the
+wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped
+in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly
+up alongside once more.
+
+It required, perchance, only a moment's reflection on the inexpressible
+loneliness of the miles of mountain woods, that must of necessity be
+traversed before the shelter of Mrs. Larrabee's house could be reached,
+to change the design of the deserter from the little party. The beat
+of his horse's hoofs annotated his continued presence, which was soon
+made even more indisputable by his raucous voice again lifted in
+remonstrance.
+
+"Ye mus' see, now, 'Dolphus, ez n'ise an' ribeldry an' gamesomeness
+don't purvent ye from viewin' sech ez ye air intended ter view. Sech
+goin's-on ain't lawful fur citizens, much less off'cers o' the law."
+
+"Ye ain't gone back, then?" commented 'Dolphus over his shoulder.
+
+There was no answer to this, and after a pause the facetious deputy
+went on:--
+
+"_I_ ain't fur hollerin' an' rampagin' an' sech. _I_ be a
+mighty quiet cuss in town, like I said,--a mighty quiet cuss indeed.
+The old man," he alluded thus to the high sheriff, "he sez ter me
+sometimes, 'I dunno, 'Dolphus, whether ye air in yer skin or no. Ye
+jes' 'pear ter be settin' thar, 'sleep or dead.' Wunst he tole me ez I
+warn't mo' lively 'n jes' a suit o' clothes hangin' outside the store
+door, an' a suit would cost less'n my pay ez a dep'ty. I tried ter
+brace up arter that."
+
+He had braced up considerably from the quiescent state he described
+if the sudden yell that he emitted might be received as evidence of
+his more stalwart condition. The sharp exclamations of surprise from
+the rest of the party afforded him intense delight, which was not
+mitigated by a blood-curdling shriek, as it were in response, set up
+by a catamount on the opposite heights, so close at hand by the direct
+line across the spaces above the valley through the air, despite the
+intervening miles of trackless mountain desert below, that they could
+hear the creature snarl before it lifted its thin, keen, inarticulate
+voice shrilling again into the black night.
+
+There was no definite remonstrance, for he forestalled their outbreak,
+beyond a few words, by declaring tumultuously that he saw it
+again,--something a-waving, a-beckoning.
+
+"No use talkin'!" he exclaimed. "The guilty sinner is 'mongst us, an'
+hyar he be!"
+
+He leaned out of his saddle and passed one arm around Espey, pinioning
+the young fellow's right arm to his side. Espey, startled beyond
+control, despite his expectation of this contingency, with which,
+however, hope and suspense had juggled painfully, detected with
+sharpened senses the dull clanking of handcuffs. He hardly knew how it
+came there, he had no definite intention of resisting arrest, but a
+pistol was in the hand over which the rude wristlets dangled; a jet of
+red light that showed the dark-eyed, laughing, grimacing face near to
+his own, the whizzing of a bullet so close between the officer's side
+and arm that the blazing powder singed and burned his "store clothes,"
+an abrupt report, and once more the night, rent by the sound, clamored
+with echoes.
+
+From the dense darkness the officer's voice, with a changed tone, a
+sharp note of surprise, was crying, "Look out! Look out!"
+
+The other men were stunned with amazement. They had only a vague sense
+of struggling mounted figures which the darkness did not suffer them to
+descry. And suddenly a second swift funnel-shaped glare for an instant
+invaded the gloom,--it came from the officer's pistol this time,--a
+second clamorous report rang amongst the rocks. The frightful, almost
+human scream of a wounded horse, a wild plunging on the side of the
+rocky bridle-path, and Espey and the yellow roan disappeared over the
+verge of the cliff. The three men standing in the road, hearing with
+sickening horror the dull thud far below, might judge of the terrors of
+the fall by the time elapsing before the sound reached their ears.
+
+
+
+
+                                 VIII.
+
+
+The household at the Tems cabin were keeping late hours that night.
+Except for a certain reserve of cogitation, which at times held him
+silent with a burning thought in his eye, his superficially moving
+lips framing unspoken words, and occasionally a keen, sarcastic smile
+irradiating his features with the light of some satiric expectation,
+Cap'n Lucy had resumed his wonted aspect and mental attitude and the
+habits of his simple existence.
+
+"Ye fetch yer book out'n yer pocket," he said imperatively to Jasper
+Larrabee early in the evening, when the young man had joined them
+on the porch. "The gals ain't goin' ter run away,--leastwise 'thout
+cornsider'ble mo' incourage_mint_ 'n they hev hed. They'll keep!
+Ye jes' sot awhile by that thar taller dip in thar an' read yer book,
+an' I'll listen out hyar."
+
+The penalties of the acquisition of knowledge, from the days of the
+Garden of Eden to those of the hero of the horn-book, have not been
+few. They fell somewhat heavily on Jasper Larrabee, debarred the fresh
+air, heavy with perfumed dew; the vicinage of dank vines; the glimmer
+of the firefly in the bosky gloom; the scintillating stars in the sky
+above the massive mountains; the sweet, low voices of the two girls,
+silenced now; and the trivial chatter so dear to the heart of youth.
+The room, with the low red glow of the embers, was warm to-night; the
+tallow dip melted and sputtered and cast a wan, melancholy, ineffective
+radiance into the dusky spaces, rendering the aspect of the familiar
+furnishings strange and spare and dull, instead of all ruddily
+a-flicker with the dancing firelight in which he was accustomed to see
+them. Even the dogs had deserted the hearthstone, and went in and out
+with lolling tongues, and hot, sleepy eyes, and an inattentive manner.
+Moths and strange winged fire-worshipers, unknown to his observation
+hitherto, would fly in from the cool darkness without, circle swiftly
+about the white jet of the candle, and now and then, with a sudden
+dart, would fall, shriveled cinders but for the convulsive throes of
+lingering life, on the page of the volume.
+
+He wondered sometimes, as he droned on and on, if Adelicia were
+listening, or if Julia could see him from where she sat. From the
+lighted spaces he could not distinguish their shadowy figures, albeit
+Cap'n Lucy, close at hand and with the red glow of his pipe, was
+plain enough. Sometimes Larrabee felt the vague sense of a gaze fixed
+upon his clear-cut face, all etherealized, illumined by the soft
+pallid white light within against the brown shadows. He was unaware
+of any valid embellishment of his aspect from the pensive gleam,
+the irradiated square of the window, the ascetic gravity of his
+expression, intent and pondering on the longer words, which it was his
+pride that he need not pause to spell. On the contrary, he was often
+conscious of cutting a sorry figure when Cap'n Lucy, with the rigor
+of a most rational reason and all the fervid insistence of a personal
+interest, would plunge at him, and require him to recant, to spell
+out syllable by syllable some questioned dogma, and at last, with all
+the nonchalance of a sophisticated theologian, take refuge in the
+equivalent of a plea of mistranslation.
+
+"Ye can't haffen read, boy!" he would exclaim roughly. "Ye don't
+read ekal ter what ye hev done. Keep on goin' back'ards, an' ye'll
+git thar arter a while. 'Agree with thine adversary!' My stars! ef
+ye war wuth a grain o' gunpowder, ye could see ez that air obleeged
+ter be '_Dis_-agree with thine adversary.' It stands ter reason!
+'_Dis_-agree' with him, early and often, else the dad-burned
+critter will git up the insurance ter disagree with you-uns. I know
+thine adversary! Been 'quainted with him this many a year! Read on,
+read on, Jasper; git shet o' thine adversary."
+
+Thus it was that, with the shadowy, snarling, intent old face
+vaguely visible in the dusk, just at his elbow, outside the window,
+ready to spring forward at the first intimation of an unacceptable
+doctrine; with the sense of responsibility for all the biblical dogmas
+irreconcilable with Cap'n Lucy's tenets and the tenor of his way; with
+the spectacle of glamour, lure, catastrophe, and death furnished by
+the unrestrainable moths, Jasper Larrabee found his preëminence of
+learning a comfortless pinnacle, and even the wonted sweet solaces
+of complacence in his superiority were denied him. He was forced to
+appear before the eyes of his lady love as an ignorant pretender, of
+ridiculous and inadequate assumptions,--and that by a man who could
+not read his own name,--humiliated and browbeaten; for how dared he
+answer Cap'n Lucy? More than once he wished himself back at the Lost
+Time mine, where he knew Espey thought him to be, and where Lorenzo
+Taft needed him. The work, unpalatable as he often found it, would be
+welcome indeed, and his untutored, unquestioning, often inattentive
+audience there a happy exchange from Cap'n Lucy in the character of
+polemic. He made some effort to shift the subject, to turn from the
+preceptive and doctrinal pages upon which he had chanced to fall to
+the chronicle of events in the nature of historical detail, as less
+liable to elicit Cap'n Lucy's contradictory faculties. It availed him
+naught. Cap'n Lucy's interest was fairly roused, and he imperatively
+negatived the proposition. The guest felt, still later, that it was not
+hospitality in its truest sense which so flatly declined to heed the
+suggestion of departure. And thus constrained, he read on, so conscious
+of the shadowy face at his elbow that he seemed to see it, with the
+light of excitement in the wide blue eyes, the alertness in every
+line, the lips intently parted, the glow of the pipe dying out as it
+was supported motionless by the uplifted hand.
+
+"Hey!" shrieked out Cap'n Lucy suddenly, as if he had been poignantly
+pinched. "Ef he takes yer coat, gin him yer cloak! Jasper, ye air
+demented! Ye ain't 'quainted with the dad-burned ravelings out o' the
+alphabit, let alone the weft of it! My sakes!" in an outraged falsetto,
+"ye tell me that's sot up ez Christian doctrine in the Book! Take yer
+coat, gin yer cloak! Whar's the man ez hev done it! Trot him out! Great
+Moses an' Aaron! I'd like ter look at him! Take yer corner-stone an'
+monimint o' boundary, an' gin him yer line an' yer lan'!--ha! ha! ha!
+Let him take yer rock known ez Big Hollow Boulder, an' gin him yer
+corner-stone!--ha! ha!"
+
+Luther rose precipitately. The significance of the paternal discovery
+of the removal of the corner-stone was fraught with great perplexity
+and foreboding, and he hardly knew what ill-judged disclosure was to
+follow. He had intended to interpose, albeit he scarcely had a pretext.
+It came to him at the moment.
+
+"What's that? I 'lowed I hearn suthin'!" he exclaimed.
+
+Cap'n Lucy turned upon him with the breathless acrimony of one
+interrupted in some cherished pursuit.
+
+"Hearn suthin'? Jes' the rustlin' o' yer own long ears,--that's all.
+I"--He stopped abruptly.
+
+In the midst of his strident raised tones an alien sound smote his
+attention. There was an approach of horsemen from down the road. Cap'n
+Lucy's acrimony was merged in curiosity and excited expectation. Still
+holding his pipe, filled with dead ashes, as stiffly and cautiously
+before him as if its wonted coals glowed in the cob-bowl, he rose from
+his chair, and advanced a pace or two nearer the rude steps, peering
+out into the darkness. The two girls had turned their heads toward the
+sound. Larrabee was leaning on his arms in the window, and Luther had
+started down the path to the bars. His deep bass voice sounded in a
+bated, thunderous mutter, as he rebuked the barking dogs, whose menace
+subsided into low growls, punctuated now and then by a clamorous yelp.
+Perhaps the insistent tone of these canine threats influenced the
+new-comers, for it was at a goodly distance that the party called a
+halt and hailed the house.
+
+Luther returned the halloo with a ringing response in kind, but Cap'n
+Lucy added a genial "'Light and hitch" to the unknown guest that
+the midnight had convoyed hither, his habit of broad hospitality
+all unmindful of the individuality or intent of the new-comers. "Me
+an' Luther air ekal ter all sorts," he would sturdily answer to the
+occasional remonstrance that times were not what they once were, and
+that he might thus "at sight unseen" be inviting in the marauder or the
+devil. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter 'em."
+
+The tone of this hospitality seemed a sore-needed encouragement in
+this instance. Rodolphus Ross had flung himself, metaphorically, upon
+the fraternal bosom of Luther, as he hastily sought to summarize the
+misfortunes that had befallen him; the slow young mountaineer, all
+unprepared for so dramatic a recital, staring, uncomprehending and
+amazed, at his interlocutor, hardly knowing whether to ascribe his
+fluent diction to drink or to histrionic talents; as fact he did not
+take it into account.
+
+"Yes, sir!" the wild-eyed Ross was saying as he came up the steps,
+"flung over the bluffs, horse an' all,--dead or alive, I dunno!
+Cap'n Tems, yes, sir; plumb proud ter shake hands," mechanically
+acknowledging the introduction to the head of the house. "Jes'
+purtendin' ter handcuff the fool,--jes' fur fun,--an' he fired at me!
+Yes, sir, fired at the off'cer o' the law! I dunno what ailed him,
+'thout he thunk I war in earnest. But Lord! he war bound ter know I war
+arter another man. I tole him so. I hed nuthin' agin this hyar Lar'bee.
+I war jes' purtendin' ter handcuff him, jes' shuck the bracelets at
+him, jes' fur fun,--ye know, Cap'n Tems, it's powerful dull an' drowsy
+a-ridin' so stiddy arter malefactors 'thout no sort'n entertainment
+or enjyemint,--an' this hyar Jasper Lar'bee jes' ups an' fires at the
+off'cer o' the law, jes' scorched my clothes." He held up his arm, and
+caught the pallid light of the candle on his coat and powder-singed
+sleeve. "Not that I keer fur the josie, 'ceptin' it's too durned near
+the meat fur thar ter be enny fun in shootin' through it."
+
+He laughed in a constrained falsetto tone,--his wonted laugh, but with
+all the mirth eliminated from it. It had a sort of wooden quality, and
+ended with a nervous catch in his throat. The light falling through the
+window showed his dark eyes, set a trifle too close together, and the
+straight black brows meeting above them. His teeth gleamed, for the
+laugh left his lips mechanically distended. Larrabee, leaning on his
+folded arms in the window, a mere silhouette upon the pallid lustre of
+the aureola of the candle behind him, gazed silently on the stranger's
+face.
+
+One is apt, in thinking of a man of experience, to associate
+sophistication with the idea. But life presents varied aspects of
+mental development, and the caution, the silence, the reserve of
+judgment, with which Cap'n Lucy hearkened might have seemed gleaned
+from the observation of the juggle of cause and effect in a far wider
+sphere. The two comrades of the deputy sheriff said not a word, and
+once more the officer began to elaborate the justification of his
+conduct.
+
+"It takes a toler'ble stiff backbone ter set on a saddle an' let a man
+shoot at ye fur nuthin'. It 'stonished me powerful. I war jes' funnin',
+an' purtended ter be aimin' ter handcuff this young rooster, an' he
+jes' whurled roun' an' let the bullet fly. I b'lieve he 'lowed I war in
+earnest, yes, sir. This hyar Lar'bee hev been up ter suthin' agin the
+law,--moonshinin', I reckon,--else he wouldn't hev been so dad-burned
+handy with his fi'crackers."
+
+"Why--why"--blurted out Luther, amazed at the lack of symmetry in the
+situation, and incapable of the paternal wisdom of silently awaiting
+developments, with the incongruity of the sight of Larrabee in the
+window mutely hearkening to the reflections upon the "Larrabee" who
+took so vehement a part in the officer's reminiscences--"'twarn't
+Lar'bee, mebbe; some other fellow."
+
+"Naw, sir," returned the deputy. "This hyar man," laying his hand
+on his bulky companion's shoulder, "knowed whar Lar'bee's mother, a
+widder lady, lived, an' we-uns called him 'Lar'bee' an' 'Jasper,' an'
+he answered ter 'em both; an' his mother called him 'Sonny.' He's a
+wild-catter, sure. He's"--He caught himself suddenly, remembering the
+prepossession against the revenue force which often animates even
+law-abiding citizens of this region. "But he needn't hev fired at
+_me_! I got nuthin' agin moonshiners. I b'long ter the County, not
+ter the Nunited States,--to the County!"
+
+"Whar's this man now?" demanded Cap'n Lucy circumspectly.
+
+The alert, sinister face of the deputy changed. But he sought to bluff
+off the anxieties and conscious criminations which crowded upon him. He
+swung his hat, which had a bullet-hole in it, gayly in his light grasp,
+and his dark eyes twinkled as he met the gaze of his host.
+
+"Ye air a powerful good hand at axin' riddles, but this'n air too
+hard fur me! I _dunno_, an' these men _dunno_! I fired back
+in self-defense at the miserable fool--I hed been funnin' all along,
+cap'n. I shot his horse, I know, an' the critter slipped, an' the whole
+caboodle went back'ards over the bluffs--an'--an'--he mought be dead or
+alive--Air--air that a cheer?"
+
+He had suddenly lost his self-control; he sank back into a seat and
+seemed gasping for breath.
+
+The details of their immediate errand thus devolved upon his
+comrades,--a lantern and a guide to search the slope where the victim
+of the deputy's pleasantry had fallen.
+
+"'Dolphus air sech a turrible bouncin' wild buck," said his friend
+from "the t'other e-end o' the county," who had begun to resume
+his remonstrant air, as of "I-told-you-so." He was a slow and
+serious-minded man, with a scant appreciation of even the most
+symmetrical jest, but when the joke seemed furnished with such
+distortions of sequelæ his gravity grew aggressive. "'Dolphus kin crack
+a toler'ble funny joke wunst in a while, but this hyar one air goin'
+ter make him laff on the t'other side o' his mouth."
+
+"Who war it ez ye war arter, sure enough?" asked Cap'n Lucy.
+
+"A stranger what they 'lowed war puttin' up with you-uns, Cap'n Tems."
+
+"Hey?" cried Cap'n Lucy, with a high quaver of excited delight. "He hev
+gone; but, my stars! what a hearty welcome ye mought hev hed with him!"
+
+"What's he done?" demanded Larrabee, speaking for the first time,
+addressing the friend of the deputy.
+
+"Shot a man in Tanglefoot Cove," he replied, looking somewhat intently
+at the silhouette in the window.
+
+"What did ye 'low his name war?" asked Larrabee, placing one hand
+behind his ear as if he had not heard what indeed they had not
+disclosed.
+
+"Espey,--John Espey from Tanglefoot, o' course. He hev been hidin' out
+cornsider'ble time."
+
+There was a sudden significant silence which the stranger felt, but did
+not comprehend. Then Cap'n Lucy, recovering his poise, remarked:--
+
+"Waal, the stranger ez we-uns hev hed hyar air named Kenneth Kenn'ston,
+from Bretonville. He air a town man, an' aimin' ter build some sort'n
+tavern in the Cove."
+
+The three men--for the officer was himself again--looked at one another
+with the pathetic helpless disgust of hunting dogs on a false trail.
+
+It seemed that their quest was hopeless from the beginning, and in its
+interests they had deeply involved themselves in the toils of the law
+which they sought to aid.
+
+"Waal," said the deputy's friend, "we-uns hed better git the lantern,
+an' take ter the woods agin an' find the corpse,"--the deputy winced at
+the word so palpably that even his sturdy, literal-minded companion
+was moved to seek some euphemism; "leastwise find out what's the damage
+we-uns hev been an' done."
+
+His stolid, unflinching shouldering of such responsibility in the
+matter as might fall to his share was oddly contrasted with the nervous
+excitement and agitation of the man from the Gap, who had served as
+guide to the party to Mrs. Larrabee's house.
+
+"Waal, _I_ ain't done none o' the damage," he protested, nodding
+his head emphatically. "I thunk I hed ter kem along o' the off'cer o'
+the law whenst required. I hed no idee o' junketin' 'roun' with the
+wildes' buck this side o' hell, a-caperin' like a possessed lunatic,
+an' a-shootin' of 'spectable citizens off'n the bluffs. Jasper Lar'bee
+done nuthin' ter me,--never laid eyes on him afore. _I_ done none
+o' the damage. I call ye ter witness, Cap'n Tems, ez I hed nuthin' ter
+do with his takin' off."
+
+Cap'n Lucy, always adorning the opposition, gave a high, fleering
+laugh. "_Me ter witness!_ Me! Why, man, I been settin' hyar sence
+dark, a-readin' o' the Holy Scriptur's. I hev no part in yer ridin' an'
+raidin'."
+
+That repulsion to the idea of taking life, and all its ramifications of
+moral responsibility, apart from the legal consequence, natural to the
+civilized man, had yielded in the deputy sheriff to his habitual mental
+impulses. His wild, fierce, shallow personality was in the ascendant
+once more.
+
+"I'll guarantee ye, Bob," he declared, with his wonted swift smile of
+dark eyes and red lips and lifted meeting eyebrows. "Ef the g'loot is
+dead, he died resistin' arrest by the off'cer o' the law. Ef he be
+'live, I be durned ef he don't hev cause ter resist the off'cer o'
+the law, fur I'll swar ter glory I'll nose out what this hyar Jasper
+Lar'bee hev been a-doin' of ter be so monst'ous afeard o' the bracelets
+bein' put onto him,--murder or moonshinin', it's all the same ter me.
+I'll set the bloodhounds o' the law onto him, sure! He hain't gin me
+sech a skeer ez this fur nuthin'!"
+
+As the blood came surging hotly along its accustomed channels, his fury
+mounted higher. It jumped with his humor to threaten as living the man
+who he feared was dead. He sought to spurn that possibility from his
+consciousness. It renewed his confidence in himself, too, to protest
+so jauntily that if the man had lost his life it was in resisting the
+law legitimately enforced. He reviewed, with a burst of anger, the
+fright of the other two men and his own anxiety that had suffered this
+lapse of attention to his own interest, and allowed the true detail
+of the case to be rehearsed here publicly. Naught could obliterate
+this; naught could justify him save to prove that the surprised Jasper
+Larrabee had been guilty of some offense against the law, and was
+resisting arrest legally attempted.
+
+"I'll fix him! I'll follow him like a bloodhound! I'll nose him out and
+pull him down! Bless God, I will!" he cried out with sudden vehemence.
+Then he turned roughly to his two companions. "Kem on, ye two
+mud-turkles! Ye got jes' about ez much life an' sperit ez a couple o'
+old tarripin. Stir yer stumps, bubby," to Luther. "Git yer lantern, an'
+bring yer slow bones along ter aid the off'cer o' the law! An' ye, too,
+my frien' in the winder, ez quiet ez a cat stealin' cream; ye 'pear ter
+be young an' able-bodied. I summons ye ter kem an' aid the off'cer o'
+the law!"
+
+The tallow dip, which had been for some moments sputtering in the
+socket of the candlestick, suddenly flared up with a wide illumination,
+then sunk as suddenly almost to extinction, feebly rose again, and,
+in a gust of wind, was extinguished, leaving a tuft of red sparks
+on the drooping wick, and a pervasive odor of burning grease in the
+room and porch. Perhaps it was because of the brighter light for the
+moment, perhaps because of the keener observation of the officer, whose
+faculties were once more well in hand, but no one else had noticed a
+strange stillness in the figure of Adelicia, as she sat in her wonted
+place on the edge of the floor of the porch, leaning back against the
+post.
+
+"One o' yer darters hev fainted, I b'lieve," he said to Cap'n Lucy.
+"Suthin' ails her." Then, turning away, "Kem on, fellers; mount an' git
+out'n this. We-uns hev been hyar too long now."
+
+As Jasper Larrabee rode away in the little troop toward the scene of
+the disaster, to search for the body of the supposititious Jasper
+Larrabee, his mental faculties began to recover from the torpor of
+surprise which had benumbed them. That cautious self-control which
+sometimes seems an added faculty in a certain type of law-breaker had
+held him mute as he watched the development of events. Now, as he began
+to take cognizance of the disclosures of the evening, he adhered of
+sober intention to the policy he had intuitively adopted. He feared
+the acknowledgment that he had received and harbored Jack Espey, a
+fugitive from justice, more than the acrimonious search of the deputy
+sheriff for the misdeeds of Jasper Larrabee. This, indeed, might result
+in his apprehension for the violation of the revenue laws, and the
+discovery of the moonshiner's lair, and this would mean many years of
+imprisonment; but the other might involve him, and possibly his mother
+as well, in a trial for murder, as accessories after the fact. It might
+be impossible to establish their ignorance of Espey's crime, and their
+lack of connivance in his escape. He had that pervasive terror of the
+law, as of technical and arbitrary construction of crime, common to
+the unlearned. His heart burned with rancor against his whilom friend.
+He would not recognize Espey's share in these ignorant terrors of the
+law. He argued that if his friend had been open with him, he would at
+least have been a free agent in receiving him, have had some voice in
+the degree of responsibility he assumed. As it was, his open-handed
+hospitality had been grossly imposed upon, and as a return he was given
+the choice of the jeopardy of a charge as accessory to a murder, or
+of an infringement of the revenue laws. He realized the whole drama
+as it had been enacted. He understood that Espey, conniving at the
+officer's mistake, and allowing him to suppose him to be Larrabee, had
+thus shielded his own identity as the fugitive from justice whom they
+sought. And this ruse Espey fancied was discovered, when the deputy,
+in his wild horse-play, had facetiously endeavored to handcuff him; he
+had therefore strenuously resisted, and thus had possibly come to his
+death. This possibility did not soften Larrabee toward him; perhaps
+he did not altogether accredit it at once, for death is difficult to
+realize even when a certainty. He dwelt upon his own danger, even more
+upon his mother's possible jeopardy; upon her untiring and laborious
+hospitality; upon his own labors which had rendered such entertainment
+practicable, for the money earned without her knowledge at the still
+went, much of it, to this pious use.
+
+The sharpest sting of ingratitude is often the sense that the giver
+has been a fool. Larrabee harbored a surly grudge against himself as
+he rode silently on, and Luther, uncomprehending his friend's reason
+for not disclosing his identity, and suspecting that Jack Espey was
+the man they sought, was silent too. The loud voices of the others in
+acrimonious criminations and recriminations accented the stillness of
+the night, and the sound of their horses' hoofs as they filed along the
+mountain passes, multiplied by rock and ravine, and far echoes from
+distant heights, might have seemed the march of squadrons of cavalry.
+
+The skies had taken on that unfamiliar aspect of the hours which
+straitly precede the dawn. Far, far, on their pauseless way the
+constellations fared. Stars were low in the west, which on these summer
+nights had seemed the familiars of the meridian. A strange sense
+of loneliness, of silence, pervaded the firmament. The breathless
+pause that heralds the miracle of dawn bated the pulses of nature.
+No more song of cicada, no more stir of wind. Once a meteor, with
+an incongruous irrelevance of effect, shot athwart the sky with its
+gleaming trail as of star-dust; the motion was like a sacrilege in the
+holy stillness and breathlessness of the world.
+
+And suddenly in the midst of the myriad scintillations a brilliant
+white jewel was ablaze, which Jasper Larrabee could have sworn was not
+there before; pellucid, splendid, tremulous, a star of stars. He knew
+the skies only as the herder or the shepherd knows them in lonely,
+lowly paths of earth, but even an ignorant man may feel that the
+circuit below is narrow and the ways above are wide, and the heart is
+lifted up. Not the name of one of the stellular glories visible to the
+naked eye could he syllable, but he had marked them all; he was wont
+to dwell for hours upon their contemplation; he knew the contour of
+their most brilliant whorls and scintillating arabesques as he knew
+the intricacies of the woodland ways in the wilderness. He had drawn
+his horse hastily back upon the haunches, and again his eyes sought
+the alignment of the stars as his fancy had marshaled them. There was
+one more,--one that he had never before seen; one unknown to all the
+splendid nights that had ever shone upon the earth.
+
+The voices of the men patrolling the slope below the point, where they
+had paused, rose excitedly on the still air. The horse was found, he
+gathered vaguely, dead, shot through the brain. The man was gone. The
+officer, in a frenzy of energy, beat the bushes far and near, lest the
+fugitive, wounded and disabled, might have crept away in the midst of
+them, and still lay hidden in the leafy covert. The hour wore away; the
+dawn came on apace, and, with the quest still fruitless, the officer
+presently mounted his horse and rode speedily off, fearing less,
+perchance, the review of his conduct by his superiors in the county
+town than the arbitration of the few citizens of the scantily settled
+region, who might take an inimical view of the disappearance of the
+guide of the jocose officer.
+
+Only when the gray day came with the tremulous wind over the mountains,
+and the craggy ranges grew darkly distinct, and the unpeopled wooded
+valley distinct and vaguely drear, and the deep blue sky faded and was
+colorless, and one by one the stars noiselessly, invisibly slipped away
+without a trace, like some splendid promise never to be fulfilled, did
+Jasper Larrabee turn rein, perplexed and disquieted and greatly awed.
+For in his unlettered ignorance he had never heard of that simple fact
+known to astronomy as a temporary star.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IX.
+
+
+In the days that ensued, no trace of the fugitive was developed. Cap'n
+Lucy experienced a certain relief in the fruitless result of the
+extended search instituted by the friends that Espey had made in the
+Cove. In their opinion the conclusion was inevitable that, despite
+the lack of his horse, he had made good his escape, and did not lie
+wounded or dead in the jungle of laurel, awaiting their humane succor,
+or burial at their hands. He was glad that Espey was gone, doubtless
+never to return, and that the matrimonial problem was gone with him.
+He was not quite frank with Adelicia in regard to this expectation.
+Her constitutional hopefulness instantly adopted the general belief of
+Espey's safety as fact, and she fixed her expectant eyes on the future
+with such fidelity of certainty that it seemed they must constrain the
+return she so definitely awaited.
+
+"He'll find out ez them off'cers 'lowed 'twar Jasper Lar'bee, an' never
+knowed they hed _him_. An' then, uncle Lucy, he won't be 'feared
+ter kem back," she said many times a day.
+
+"Course not," assented Cap'n Lucy. "He'll be hyar afore long, jes' ez
+good lookin 'ez he knows how ter be."
+
+It was perhaps a pious fraud, for the girl's despair and grief had been
+so wild that Cap'n Lucy was glad for her optimism to be reasserted on
+whatever terms and to have the pleasant thing in the house once more.
+
+Luther had necessarily been enlightened by the recent events as to the
+sentimental phase of the matter; for Cap'n Lucy had hitherto sedulously
+kept it secret, since he did not favor a fugitive from justice as a
+suitor for his niece, and was determined to break off the affair at
+all hazards. Luther looked with disapproval upon his father's crafty
+methods.
+
+"I dunno what ails ye ter make Ad'licia b'lieve ez Espey will kem
+back," he once ventured to say aside to his father. "He air sure ter
+'low ez they never tuk him fur Lar'bee, else he wouldn't hev tried ter
+break away."
+
+"Luther," said Cap'n Lucy, "I hev noticed ez a man air obleeged ter hev
+a powerful strong stommick ter be able ter tell the truth at all times.
+An' ez I git old, I hev sorter got the deespepsy."
+
+The son merely gazed at him with a sort of literal-minded bovine
+stare, as he sought to entertain this statement of the moral effect of
+debility.
+
+"An' then, whenst I war a leetle boy," continued Cap'n Lucy, "I war bit
+by a rattlesnake; an' sometimes whenst I hear myself sayin' sech ez air
+agin the actial fac' it don't s'prise me none, fer I know it air jes'
+a leetle meanderin' o' the venom o' the sarpient in me yit, 'kase, ye
+know, he war a deceiver from the beginning."
+
+What impression the strange and unexpected events had made upon the
+impassive and reserved Julia, none had taken thought to observe. The
+demonstrative, expressive characteristics of the other members of the
+household filled the domestic stage. It was only when the poignancy of
+Adelicia's grief and anxiety had given way to a resolutely patient and
+hopeful waiting, and Cap'n Lucy's vehement interest had subsided into
+a trivial occupation with the passing details of life, that it chanced
+to be noticed that Julia was wont to sit idle at her spinning, the
+thread in one hand, the other lifted as if to regulate the whirl of the
+motionless flax-wheel; her wonderful blue eyes fixed upon the distant
+purple mountains, glimpsed through the parting of the gourd vines above
+the porch; her head, with its smooth plaits of glossy hair, held up and
+alert; some unspoken thought upon her marble face that filled every
+still line with meaning.
+
+"Ye 'pear ter be palsied, Julia," said the unobservant Luther, smoking
+his pipe on the porch one evening. "Ye hain't moved hand or foot fur a
+solid hour."
+
+She started slightly at the sound of his voice, fixing her attention
+on him with obvious effort. Her mind was evidently coming back
+from distant removes, and Adelicia, with vague curiosity, demanded
+suddenly,--
+
+"What air you-uns studyin' 'bout, Julia, whenst ye air lookin' like
+that?"
+
+"Studyin' an' a-studyin'," said Julia, dropping her hands in her lap
+and leaning back in the chair, her eyes once more turning to the
+high, massive mountains afar off as if they possessed some magnetic
+attraction, "'bout'n whar pore, pore Jack Espey kin be now, an' how
+powerful cur'ous 'twar ez ye wouldn't marry him whenst he axed ye."
+
+The fore-legs of Luther's tilted chair came down to the floor with a
+thump. With a hand on either knee, and the cinders and burning tobacco
+dropping from his pipe unheeded to the floor, he sat fixedly staring at
+his silent sister. To his comprehension she was speaking her mind very
+unequivocally now. Despite the vaunted feminine quickness, Adelicia
+heard in it only personal upbraiding, for a certain remorse had made
+her sensitive on this score, and prone to protest her constraining
+dutifulness.
+
+"I hed uncle Lucy's word agin it!" she exclaimed, with a rising flush
+and angry bright eyes.
+
+Julia slowly shook her head, her eyes, her thoughts, far, far away.
+"I wouldn't hev keered fur no 'uncle Lucy's' word," she declared
+iconoclastically. "I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, dad hisself
+married ter suit his own taste. Leastwise, I ain't never hearn o' no
+old uncle or aunt or dad, or sech kinfolks, ez ondertook ter make a
+ch'ice in marryin' fur him."
+
+"Waal, sir," Luther interposed, in a tone of shocked propriety,
+"settin' up hyar an' talkin' by the yard medjure 'bout marryin' an'
+men-folks, an' I'd bet my best heifer that Jack Espey ain't gin
+air one o' ye a single thought sence he lef' hyar. No, nor nare
+'nother man. Ef the truth war knowed, ye hain't got a haffen chance
+apiece,--without it air 'Renzo Taft, down yander at the Lost Time
+mine, an' he can't make out which air the hardest favored 'twixt ye!
+Ye hed both better go ter work. Jack Espey'll never kem back agin. Dad
+jes' say he will ter pledjure Ad'licia. An', Julia, ef ye don't spin
+up that thar truck,"--he pointed with fraternal imperiousness at the
+wheel,--"ye'll be toler'ble scant o' new clothes, an' ye'll look wuss
+like a skeercrow 'n ye do now."
+
+Julia received this taunt to her beauty with the equanimity of one
+whose title is unimpugnable; but Adelicia, all unheeding any subtler
+sense than the obvious meaning his words conveyed, protested against
+even this conjectural banishment of poor Jack Espey. He would come
+back, she declared. He had doubtless found out by this time that he was
+mistaken in supposing the officers cognizant of his true identity, and
+that they were jesting, thinking him still Larrabee. And now that the
+nine days' wonder had blown over, and people were interested in it no
+more, and so much was going on in the Cove to usurp public attention,
+she looked for him any time just to slip back in his old place. "I
+never kem out on the porch but I look ter see him in that thar cheer
+whar Luther be. I hev 'peared ter see him thar."
+
+"That ain't the way I 'pear ter see him," said Julia suddenly. "I
+dreampt he war a-kemin' on his claybank horse, a-lopin' down the road,
+a-wavin' his big white hat at we-uns like he done that day he kilt the
+wolf an' fotched home the pelt. That's the way I view him ever sence I
+dreampt that dream."
+
+"Then ye hev the nightmare," said Luther, surly and helpless to stem
+the tide of sentiment, "an' ye hain't got no mo' sense sleepin' than
+wakin'; fur that claybank roan will lope down these rocky roads no mo',
+partly through bein' dead, an' partly through old Miser Miggins hevin'
+gone down the gorge an' tuk off the critter's shoes. Ye better content
+yerself with the claybank roan ez a nightmare, fur ye ain't goin' ter
+view Espey an' the critter a-lopin' round no mo', no matter how much be
+a-goin' on in the Cove."
+
+For the Cove was indeed in a phenomenal ferment. To the astonishment of
+the leisurely and dilatory mountaineers, the work on the new hotel had
+begun, and was being pushed forward on parallels inconceivable to their
+ideas of progress.
+
+Cap'n Lucy, his mind recalled to his more immediate personal interests,
+watched it with a sort of avidity of observation from the porch of
+his own house, where he was wont to sit with his pipe. His sneer, his
+silent laugh, his acrid enigmatical phrases, grew frequent as the
+blasting for the cellars proceeded, and the flying fragments of rock,
+which had elicited such formidable prognostication, fell far short of
+his cabin or his inclosures, indeed seldom coming to the ground beyond
+the jungle of laurel at the base of the great natural terrace, the site
+of the work.
+
+"He didn't git the edzact range, Luther," he would say in affected
+surprise; or, sarcastically, "This hyar Kenn'ston would hev made a
+powerful spry gunner in the old war times,--sech a eye for distances!"
+
+Adelicia, observing the circumstance, also remembering Kenniston's
+expressions of fear for their safety, only saw cause for gratulation.
+
+"Mr. Kenn'ston 'lowed ez we-uns mought hev ter move an' leave home
+whilst the blastin' war goin' on!" she exclaimed. "An' he made a
+powerful mistake, uncle Lucy."
+
+"So he did," said Cap'n Lucy, with a twinkling eye. "He air a great man
+fur movin' ginerally. He b'lieves in movin' things."
+
+Luther, remembering the peripatetic corner-stone and the impending
+processioning, understood the allusion, but he had a foreboding of
+trouble, and his heart sunk within him. He was glad when the blasting
+was concluded, which it was shortly; for he feared a premature or
+ill-advised accusation, and it seemed to him that the meaning of those
+thinly veiled sarcasms must presently be revealed to others as well as
+to himself. The foundations were laid, and the framing of the building
+followed promptly; soon the gaunt skeleton of the hotel, an outline
+of modern frivolity and summer pleasuring and flimsy vastness, was
+incongruously imposed upon the silent, solemn mountain behind it, with
+the rugged, austere crags below it; with the unfamiliar mists shifting
+through it and drifting along corridor and ball-room and scaling the
+tower; with its prophetic shadow, like a line engraving, flung by the
+moonlight on the dark surface of the top of the dense forest below.
+More than once furious mountain storms assailed it; but its builder's
+philosophy had taken account of these inimical forces, and it held fast.
+
+The unbroken mountain wind, however, played havoc with the light
+shanties of the workmen in this exposed situation on the promontory of
+rock, and when rebuilt the camp was moved below the terrace, down in a
+sort of gorge, shielded and safe, albeit the distance from the work was
+a matter of some inconvenience.
+
+They proved civil folk, the town mechanics, and answered gravely
+many a queer question put from a vast distance in civilization and
+sophistication, albeit at arm's length from the natural body; for from
+far and near the mountaineers visited the unfinished structure. Often
+a wagon with a yoke of oxen would stand, the patient beasts humbly
+a-drowse, for an hour or so in the sandy road, while the jeans-clad
+owner would patrol the new building, solemnly stepping from timber to
+timber over the depths of the cellar, or with the utmost simplicity
+of assurance make a critical circuit about the whole, and offer
+suggestions looking toward improvements. Sometimes the visitor was of
+shyer gentry: a red fox was glimpsed early one morning, with brush in
+air, speeding along the joists of the ball-room; it might seem they
+would never know the weight of aught more graceful or agile; a deer,
+doubtless a familiar of the springs, was visible once, leaping wildly
+down the rocks in great elastic bounds, evidently hitherto unaware
+of the invaders of these preëmpted sylvan wilds. Others, too, of the
+ancient owners of the soil came on a more prosaic quest, but in the
+dead hour of darkness or the light of the midnight moon. A young bear,
+who had long harbored predatory designs upon a certain fat shoat, a
+denizen of that pig-pen of Cap'n Lucy's upon which the owner and Mr.
+Kenniston looked with such differing eyes, was brought to a pause,
+in a cautious reconnoitre, by the fragments of food, scraps from the
+workmen's dinner, which might be found by nosing about among the
+shavings. Perhaps it was this alone that led him about the angles and
+turns of the building; but as he went between the sparse substance of
+the timbers and their scant linear shadows that, in the sorcery of the
+moonlight, appeared hardly less real, he seemed as censorious a critic
+as Cap'n Lucy himself. Sometimes he would pause in his clumsy shamble,
+and, with the moonlight a-glitter in his small eyes, lift himself on
+his hind feet and gaze about the solitary building, indescribably
+melancholy in the loneliness and the wan, pensive sheen; grin with his
+white teeth, a-gleam with a sarcastic, snarling contempt; fall to all
+fours again; and, shrugging his heavy shoulders to his ears, scud along
+with the aspect of clumsy sportiveness common to his kind.
+
+It chanced that a light, portable forge had been in use that day,
+in the process of the work; the foreman had himself looked to the
+extinction of the fire, albeit the scene of the operation was upon the
+solid rock, and far from any possible communication with the building.
+The wind could never have turned over the low apparatus set in the
+hollow of the ledges, but the bear could, and did. Then he sat down
+suddenly to lick his singed paw, for the metal was still hot. The fuel
+had been charcoal; it still sustained heat, and even combustion. There
+was a steady spark in a few of the scattered cinders, quickening,
+reddening, as the eager night air touched them. The shavings amongst
+which they had fallen, further down the slope, were slightly astir
+for a moment; then a timorous blaze sprang up along the more tenuous,
+lace-like, curling edges.
+
+How the destructive element fared, whether by slow, insidious, fearful
+degrees, as of conscious but furtive evil intent, or as animated by
+a wild, tumultuous, riotous impulse, more and more rapacious with
+impunity, as of some turbulent, maddened thing escaping control, none
+but Bruin might say, for, save the impassive, neutral night, the event
+had no other witness. Before the flames had fairly taken hold of the
+studs and joists his cowardly fears had gained the ascendency over his
+gluttony. More than once he paused, in gnawing his trophy of a beef
+bone, to growl fiercely, his remonstrant, surprised eyes illuminated
+by this alien flicker. As the skies began to redden, and the pale
+moonlight to fail, and the great massive mountains to appear, dark and
+weird, from the deep and silent seclusions of the night, he left his
+booty and retreated toward the verge of the woods, pausing now and
+again in the dun-colored shadows, all veined with shifting pulsations
+of red and white, to look with eyes aglow, reflecting the fire, upon
+its ravages, growling fiercely at times; then, with his recurrent
+fears, setting out once more on a lumbering run.
+
+Perchance the reflection flung upon the clouds, all lurid and alight,
+before which the stars shrank away invisible, apprised the traveler
+journeying in far-away coves and ranges, or the herder of the lofty
+solitudes of the balds, or the hunter in distant coverts, of the
+disaster in progress before the nearest neighbors were roused. The
+angry glare of the conflagration seemed to pervade the world, like the
+vivid searching terrors of the red day of doom, when the workmen, down
+in their sheltered nook beneath the crags and the dense shadows of
+the forest, discovered the untoward fate of their handiwork. Into the
+crevices of the batten shutters of Cap'n Lucy's glassless windows the
+keen rays at last pierced, like some sinister, pestilential, dazzling
+sunburst, illuminating the homely scenes with an uncanny flare, and
+displacing the broken dreams with a terrified awakening.
+
+Naught could be done. It might be accounted a spectacle in some
+sort,--to watch the airy acrobatic feats of the lithe flames leaping
+from beam to brace, from joist to rafter, of the three tall stories,
+seeming of vaster proportions with all their detail illustrated in
+these living tints upon the subsidiary, flickering night. There was a
+series of wild, dancing, tangled blazes a-whirl in the lengths of the
+ball-room, white and red and orange and blue, an uncanny rout. High up
+on the battlemented turret a vermilion banner flaunted suddenly out to
+the moon, and then it was struck amidst a myriad of sparks, and the
+echoes clamored out against the crashing of the tower.
+
+For days thereafter the smoking, charred ruin was the terminus of many
+a pilgrimage amongst the simple folk of the region, who had never
+beheld wreckage on such a scale. The idle workmen hovered about it,
+dispirited and anxious, awaiting orders. There was much mysterious
+talk of incendiarism, and a rumor pervaded the Cove that the matter
+had already been reported in this light to the authorities, and that
+Rodolphus Ross was on his way to the scene of action.
+
+Cap'n Lucy, seated on the rocks about the limpid spring, at a
+comfortable distance from the hot, smouldering mass, smoked his pipe,
+as he contemplated it, in more placidity of mind than had for some
+time fallen to his share. He was not a man who would deliberately
+seek to injure his enemy in person or property; but Cap'n Lucy was
+eminently human, and he could but admire the wisdom of the uncovenanted
+dispensations of Providence, through which Mr. Kenniston's game was, as
+he conceived it, so handsomely blocked. He had a most buoyant sense of
+irresponsibility in the matter.
+
+"I ain't so much as once spoke to the Lord 'bout'n that man," he said
+privately to Luther, as if his prayers must needs have been inflammable.
+
+He was not the only one of the spectators who thought, in view of the
+magnitude of the ruin, that the whole project was necessarily ended,
+and who looked on Kenniston's invasion of the Cove as a thing already
+of the past. It was a matter of very general surprise when the "town
+man" suddenly reappeared upon the scene in a bounding fury, and, in
+the metaphorical phrase of the mountaineers, "primed and loaded for
+b'ar." They little dreamed how literal a reason he had to hold a grudge
+against Bruin.
+
+
+
+
+                                  X.
+
+
+The season seemed full of menace to the troglodytes of the Lost Time
+mine. The work went on about the still as hitherto, but with added
+precaution--various and vain, for the limits of their ingenuity had
+already been reached--and with a heavy sense of presage. The old moods
+that had prevailed here were gone, whether of brag and bluster, or wild
+hilarity, or jocose horse-play, or the leisurely and languid spinning
+of yarns to help the hour to pass. Even the industry of old Zeb Copley,
+the veteran of the force, was mitigated by sudden long pauses and a
+disposition to hearken fearfully for unaccustomed noises, and by eager
+and earnest urgency that the work should be pretermitted for a time.
+The youngest moonshiner of all felt it a dreary world to look at with
+sober eyes, and, despite his morose abstinence and surly staidness, a
+less discerning judgment than Taft's might have foreseen the brevity
+of this enforced drought and the danger of a relapse, with all his
+reminiscences at his thick tongue's end, were he free to fare about the
+world without. Espey's vacant place was ever significant of the reason
+for it, and Larrabee would sit for hours brooding over the untoward
+chances of his own fortunes; his gloomy eyes on the ever-glinting line
+of light playing through the furnace door, his motionless pipe full
+only of dead ashes in his heedless hand.
+
+"Ye air a toler'ble dangersome neighbor," Taft remarked one day; for
+the complication of the mistaken identity had come to his ears during
+a sortie from his stronghold, and the threats of the deputy sheriff
+against the supposed Jasper Larrabee coupled with his suspicions as to
+moonshining.
+
+Larrabee looked up fiercely. "Move, then, ef ye don't like yer
+neighbor."
+
+He was like a fox run to earth; he had no further resource. His
+one idea of dealing with the law was by evasion and subterfuge and
+concealment. He had no remote expectation of justification. By a series
+of deceits he had persuaded his mother to go on an immediate visit to
+a bedridden great-aunt who lived in an adjoining county. The horse
+she rode belonged to a neighbor of the aged relative, who chanced to
+be in this locality, and who was taking home with him a led horse, a
+recent purchase. Jasper himself was to go after her in the indefinite
+period when the corn should be laid by and her own horse at leisure.
+The infant conqueror of the rickets went with her, mounted behind her,
+his chubby arms stretched at their utmost length clasping her gaunt
+waist, and with as unchastened a vainglory and pride in the earnest of
+this great journey and the envious wonderment of the other children as
+if his bourne were the north pole. Thus Mrs. Larrabee set out, with
+the grim-visaged neighbor of the aunt in advance, and with a frisky,
+dapper colt--already _en rapport_ with the pilgrim youth by reason
+of mutual juvenility, irresponsibility, and frivolity--kicking up his
+admired heels in the rear. And Henrietta Timson reigned in her stead
+under the queer little sylvan roof that seemed no more made with hands
+than the cups of a triple acorn.
+
+Thus it was that Jasper Larrabee was roofless for the nonce, save for
+the strata of the Lost Time mine.
+
+That Lorenzo Taft would fain be rid of him he saw grimly enough, and
+this he grimly refused to heed. He had incurred the suspicion of
+moonshining by reason of Espey's choosing to wear his name for an hour
+or so. He had incurred it through no fault of his own. The infringement
+of the law was common to them all, and involved a danger which they
+should share.
+
+At all events, there would be nobody to answer for harboring the
+fugitive, should Espey's true identity become known to the law, and
+Rodolphus Ross find his way again to the little house on its airy
+perch. Taft had thought it wise that Larrabee, already tainted with
+suspicion in the mind of the officer of the law, and thus a source of
+great danger, should follow Espey to parts unknown. But the world, to
+the unlodged of earth, is doubtless of aspect like the face of the
+waters to the dove when first loosed from the ark, without foothold or
+friendly sign.
+
+Larrabee replied even to the innuendo:--
+
+"Go whar? An' leave you-uns a-cuddled down hyar so snug in the groun'
+that the devil hisse'f will sca'cely nose ye out on the Jedgmint Day?
+Naw, sir. I see nuthin' but resk fur me on all sides, but less hyar
+'n ennywhars. I hev stood in ez much danger ez enny of ye. I hev tuk
+my sheer o' the resk 'thout wingin', but I won't be kicked out like a
+stray dog an' gin up ter the law 'kase you-uns air 'feared 'Dolphus
+Ross 'lows I be a moonshiner. He can't find or hear o' me hyar. I got
+ez much right hyar ez you-uns, 'Renzo Taft. I own my sheer in the
+business, an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."
+
+The other two moonshiners, Copley and young Dan Sykes, regarded him
+askance and with sullen eyes. This minority might seem to be fraught
+with no small danger. His chief fear lest Espey should be overtaken,
+and the details of his refuge with the Larrabees be elicited, involving
+himself and his mother as accessories to the crime, he never mentioned.
+It so absorbed his thoughts, however, that for a time he did not
+observe a symptom of the antagonism of his confrères which deeply
+augured its seriousness.
+
+A shaft hard by the still-room, if such the nook where the apparatus
+was worked might be called, which was sunk into the very deepest
+limits of the mine, came near relieving them of their perplexity on
+this score, one day. Larrabee's foot slipped in the rotting refuse of
+pomace on the verge while he was handling the bags of grain, and as he
+came heavily to the floor, barely saving himself, he saw like a flash
+a sudden irradiation of hope on the flushed, foolish face of the boy,
+a keen expectation in Taft's eyes, and even in the elderly drudge's
+wooden wrinkles a sort of disappointed resignation as he scrambled to
+his feet, that daunted him more than the immediate danger.
+
+His precious book he read no more by the light of the furnace
+flicker, after this. Not that he now brooded over his cares, but his
+watchfulness never flagged. Whether the accident suggested the idea to
+Taft, or whether it were the flimsy fiction of the inimical atmosphere
+and his own alert apprehensiveness, Larrabee thought that he was given
+several opportunities to take leave inadvertently of the world. Once,
+in cleaning a pistol said to be unloaded, the ball in the last chamber
+whizzed sharply by his head. Again and again he was set to handle the
+heavy bags of grain on the slippery verge of the shaft. After a time
+a new cause of alarm was developed. Despite his crafty vigilance in
+his determination to remain at all hazards, he did not notice, until
+it became very marked, their unwillingness that he should leave the
+still at all, and Taft's expertness in disallowing every pretext. The
+truth dawned upon him at last, with its most valid reason. Although
+they would be glad were he to quit the country, yet, since his
+permanent absence could not be compassed, any chance excursion into
+the Cove or neighborhood was fraught with danger, as he might be seen,
+identified as Larrabee, and followed by the man who had spotted him
+as a moonshiner to Taft's house, where, spending days and nights, the
+mystery would soon be unfolded.
+
+Larrabee came upon this discovery with a suffocating sense as of a
+prisoner. Instantly he was possessed by a wild urgency for the outer
+air and the freedom beyond that seemed as if its own impetus might
+break through the barriers of a thousand feet of the solid ground. He
+almost felt the wind blow in the strength of his keen desire; and when
+he set himself instantly to compass his deliverance, eagerness outran
+tact in his first demonstration.
+
+"Hello, 'Renzo," he said in a cheerful, incidental voice, strikingly
+at variance with the gruff tones that had of late served him in the
+absolutely essential colloquies between them touching the work.
+
+Taft's keen senses instantaneously apprehended the difference. He
+glanced around with a quick eye, illumined by the feeble white gleam of
+the lantern in his hand, for he had but just emerged from the tunnel.
+He did not simulate. He looked as he felt, interrogative, expectant, as
+he sat down on the side of a barrel without pausing to extinguish the
+lantern. Its pallid glow suffused his florid face and yellow beard, and
+brought out the tint and effect of translucency in his blue eyes. They
+were fixed steadily on Larrabee, who was suddenly out of countenance.
+He had intended a more casual disclosure of his project than the
+impending interview permitted,--a sort of unpremeditated announcement
+of his determination, as of being free to do as he would. He felt
+that his face had changed, and he knew that the change was noted. A
+new rush of alarm seemed to surge through his nerves. For, guarded as
+Taft evidently was, he too had betrayed somewhat the importance which
+he attached to the plans, even the words, of his employee, or his
+partner, or his prisoner, as Larrabee might be variously regarded. It
+daunted Larrabee: the latent ferocity that lurked in Taft's character,
+repudiated in his burly good comradeship of manner and in his florid
+face,--save for a certain beaklike outline of the nose that gave a
+rapacious, cruel intimation,--was instinctively known to the young
+mountaineer, who was not skilled in the craft of a knowledge of his
+kind, and had no habit of analysis. He somehow flinched to be made
+anew so definitely aware that he was a factor, and a troublous one, in
+Taft's schemes. He felt no match for the elder tactician. He wished
+he had gone long before, when the moonshiner sought so openly to be
+rid of him. At all events, he would go now, and without chicanery or
+subterfuge. He blurted out his plan, which he had intended to trench
+upon with great care and circumspection, and which should have appeared
+a natural evolution and outcome of the conversation.
+
+"'Renzo," he said, with a distinct abatement of his former genial
+inflections, but still with a pliable, amiable tone,--and for his life
+he could not suppress an intonation of appeal,--"'Renzo, I'm a-studyin'
+'bout takin' yer advice. Ye air old'n me an' hev got mo' 'speriunce
+an'"--
+
+"What advice?" Taft interrupted succinctly. The sentence seemed very
+short in his big, mellow, sonorous voice; it was like a key struck
+inadvertently on some great organ; the heavy vibrations in themselves
+seemed to promise continuity.
+
+"'Bout goin' out'n the Cove. I been studyin' it all out, an' I 'low
+'twould be safer fur all consarned ef I war ter cut an' run."
+
+Taft remained silent. His illumined eyes were glassy and fixed;
+somehow, the absorbed, introspective thought seemed to eliminate their
+expression.
+
+"Jes' cl'ar out," said Larrabee, as if in explanation; he could not
+repress the manner of asking a permission, although he raged inwardly
+at himself.
+
+"Whar'bouts?" Taft's great voice boomed out once more as it were
+inadvertently.
+
+"Ter Buncombe County in old Car'liny, whar I got some kinfolks
+a-livin'," said Larrabee. "That's what I war a-studyin' 'bout," he
+added, still striving for a more incidental effect.
+
+The furnace door was open, for the fire was low, the still but just
+emptied, and the work intermitted for the nonce. The bed of red coals
+filled the place with a dull glow. In its dreamy light he saw suddenly
+the broad, flabby face of Dan Sykes, the youngest of the moonshiners,
+distorted with silent mirth, like the face of a caricature. He sat upon
+a billet of wood in a lowly attitude, frog-like with his upturned head
+which was supported by his two hands, his elbows resting on his knees
+drawn high under his chin. His distended grin of evident delight in
+Taft's answer showed that it was not unexpected.
+
+"Why, law, Jasper," exclaimed Taft,--but the unctuous tone would not
+mix with the lie of the intent, and floated in its midst like oil
+on water,--"I couldn't make out _now_, jes' _now_, 'thout
+you-uns. I be short-handed now, 'count o' Espey, an' I got word ter-day
+from the cross-roads fur two barrels o' corn juice quick ez it kin be
+got thar. Yer kin in Buncombe,"--his eye twinkled, for he suspected
+the kin in Buncombe to be of that airy folk known only to dreams and
+deceits,--"they'll keep. Ye'll hev jes' ter put off goin' fur a leetle
+spell,--bein' so short-handed, ye know."
+
+"What air they aimin' ter pay fur them bar'ls?" demanded Larrabee
+calmly.
+
+Thus he drew the conversation aside to the commercial aspects of the
+situation, as if he acquiesced in Taft's view, and recurred to his
+proposition no more. He controlled his voice, but his heart sunk like
+lead. He had not dreamed but that they would be glad to let him go if
+he quitted the region. He had not even feared that this resource was
+in jeopardy. He could not imagine the turn of events which must needs
+preclude his flight abroad, as well as his familiar appearance in his
+wonted haunts about the Cove. He cursed his fatuity again and again
+that he had not escaped when he could. What were the dangers of the
+world at large in comparison with the mysterious menace that environed
+him here? He dwelt continuously on these thoughts for a time, and it
+was only gradually, and chiefly by reason of Sykes's leering grin and
+secretly gleeful eye, that he became aware that this Benjamin amongst
+them had been specially deputed to watch him. In the days of his own
+terrors of the world without, he had ceased to go out for his meals or
+to sleep. He subsisted on "snacks" which Taft fetched down from his own
+table,--which abstraction caused no surprise to his small housekeeper,
+for Miss Cornelia Taft had long since exhausted her capacities for
+astonishment at any prodigies of food consumption on the part of her
+father, who took such big bites in comparison with old Mrs. Jiniway's
+custom,--and he slept at broken intervals, as his uneasy thoughts
+permitted, on the empty meal sacks in the shadow of the piles of
+barrels. This life continued now of necessity, as formerly of choice.
+Larrabee's apparent acquiescence, he had a vague idea, surprised and
+perturbed the others. They were evidently prepared for resistance
+and harsh measures. They had lost their balance in some sort; their
+attitude was like that of one who makes ready for a running leap,
+and stops short of the jump. Thus, their unsteady, balked surprise
+bore scant relation to their persistent, unchanged purpose, for their
+watch upon him was not for one moment relaxed. Even in the network
+of wrinkles about the sunken eyes of the elder distiller, a sort of
+staggered, dumfounded suspicion expressed itself, in conjunction with
+an observant heed of Larrabee's every movement which hitherto would not
+have been allowed to absorb so much of the attention he was wont to
+bestow on the still.
+
+At first the discovery came near to breaking down Larrabee's reserve of
+endurance. His heart thumped so loudly, so heavily, that he sometimes
+thought they must hear its treacherous clamors as he sat and smoked in
+the dull red glow, assuming a calm and somnolent, satisfied aspect.
+Occasionally, with that terrible sense of the key turned, the door
+closed, the realization of restricted liberty, so overwhelming to the
+free habit of the mountaineer and the woodsman, with a charter to
+wander as wide as the wilderness, the blood would surge to his head,
+the copper boiler spin round and round, his companions slowly wheel
+about in that dim space of shadow and light; and he thought he lost
+consciousness at these times. But always when he came to himself he
+was sitting as before, calmly smoking in his wonted place, seeming
+a trifle disposed to shirk his work, perchance; and latterly he had
+begun to drink heavily, as it were upon the sly. He could not have
+said how the idea had come to him: it was not gradual; the scheme
+was full fledged in an instant. He knew that his every movement was
+under surveillance, and that he was under the special guard of the
+young drunkard, who had been longer sober now, perhaps, than for many
+a month. Dan Sykes watched with glistening eyes Larrabee's furtive
+hand reaching for the jug of whiskey, the trick of the hasty swallow
+aside, and presently Larrabee had a companion in his covert potations.
+He trembled lest the young fellow's scanty powers of self-restraint
+should not be adequate to conceal long enough to serve his plan the
+swift ravages of drink in his recent abstinence. He seemed insatiable
+and frantically keen of thirst, and the necessity of concealing his
+indulgence from Taft, who had evidently sent forth some fiat against
+it, developed an almost incredible deftness of craft. On the day that
+the liquor was barreled and removed, Sykes had been drinking almost
+without cessation. His share in the work was scant, his duties as guard
+serving in substitution. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because of
+the absorption in the enterprise, neither of the two elder moonshiners
+noticed his condition; and indeed he had become singularly skilled
+in assuming a sort of veneer of sobriety. It passed muster in this
+instance.
+
+Taft got away early in the night with his load, taking note,
+apparently, of nothing beyond some extra hazard of the enterprise, as
+Larrabee gathered from the caution with which he loaded his revolvers
+and his frequent conferences aside with Copley, who enjoyed his special
+confidence, being his near kinsman as well as coadjutor. The barrels
+were to be concealed in the wagon under bags of feathers, dried fruit,
+ginseng, and other strictly rural commodities of barter. Two barrels of
+innocent and saccharine sorghum found themselves, too, in the unholy
+company of those barrels that the still had furnished forth. It was
+somewhat difficult to make out the load. Copley was eager for it to be
+off, notwithstanding, but Taft persisted until all the probabilities
+had been satisfied. There was much passing back and forth in the
+tunnel; through its long lengths Larrabee could hear the commotion
+in the room beneath the store. When the preparations were completed
+at last, he knew as well as if he had seen it how the great white
+canvas-covered wagon looked, standing with its two stanch mules before
+the door of the store, under the early dusky night sky and the burly
+overhanging purple heights, the yellow light streaming out from the
+open door upon it, and all the cheerful bustle of departure rife as it
+were in the very air. Taft came back at the last moment for his coat.
+As he swung himself alertly into it, and crushed his big hat down on
+his big yellow head, he had all the breezy impetus of one who is about
+to start on a pleasant and successful journey.
+
+"All loaded!" he cried cheerfully. "A kentry merchant a-goin' ter buy
+goods can't be too keerful--oughter take along all the gear he kin ter
+trade--ha! ha! ha! Good-by! Take keer o' yerse'fs!"
+
+And thus he strode out with his light, elastic tread. Larrabee listened
+as it beat on the dirt path, and then to the echoes that duplicated its
+progress, till it ceased to sound.
+
+Somehow the void about the circle was not without melancholy
+intimations, the normal incident of departure, whether it be regretted
+or cause for gratulation. Perhaps because of the sudden disordered
+quiet and loneliness in the quitted scene, the unoccupied mind must
+needs always reach forward into the unknown journeyings, meeting in
+speculation the varied events denied to the home-abiding. Larrabee sat
+still for a time in the low red glow of the furnace fire, exchanging
+now and again an incidental comment with his companions on the subject
+of the journey and its chances. The intervals of silence grew longer;
+the shadows gathered and deepened; the younger man's head occasionally
+nodded grotesquely in sleep, but more than once, as Larrabee was about
+to rise to his feet, he saw in the obscurity the large bloodshot eyes
+opened and fixed soberly upon him. He had waited long; long for the
+certainty that Taft would not return on some forgotten errand; long
+for the drunken sleep that must needs overcome the inimical vigilance
+of the young moonshiner. He could wait no longer. With an abrupt,
+shrill cry like that of a savage panther, he flung himself upon his
+elder companion. Copley was a man of powerful physique, and his every
+muscle was developed by the heavy labor in which it was exercised. In
+his undiminished strength his age gave no advantage to his adversary,
+whose slight bulk he might have flung from him with a single arm but
+for the surprise and suddenness of the attack in which he was borne to
+the ground. All Larrabee's strength hardly sufficed to hold him there
+for a moment. There was a fierce struggle; a pistol ball whizzed by
+Larrabee's head, and the narrow precincts were filled with the echoes
+and with Copley's hoarse calls upon Sykes for help. The young fellow
+rose in response, stupidly echoing the cries of his own name, took
+one tottering step forward, and fell like a log, flabby, nerveless,
+helpless, on the floor. Larrabee wondered afterward that it could all
+be so quickly done. It was by virtue of surprise, desperation, sleight
+of hand, deftness, and quickness rather than by strength or courage. A
+meal bag served as a gag, and a rope, used in transporting the heavy
+barrels up the steep incline to the store, to pinion the arms and
+shackle the feet. Larrabee was almost exhausted by the capture of the
+first prisoner, and it was perhaps auspicious for his freedom that
+the young drunkard, beyond an ill-directed blow or two, could make no
+resistance. The rope was made fast around the solid masonry of the
+furnace; and as Larrabee contemplated his work, he felt sure that the
+two prisoners, one yet vainly struggling, the other already sleeping
+the sleep of the very drunk, would find no means of deliverance till
+Taft's return the next day.
+
+Again and again in his durance Larrabee had prefigured how swift would
+be his flight along the tunnel to the free outer air. Now he feebly
+plodded, and trembled, and faltered, and again went groping along
+the densely black way, essaying to keep a straight line, but feeling
+himself continually touching the wall, now on the right, and again on
+the left, in his zigzag course. Once he paused with an alert start. A
+sound of human voices had struck his ear, and at the merest possibility
+that his escape was not complete, certain, every flaccid, exhausted
+muscle was tense again. He lifted up his head, hardly breathing, that
+he might listen, but heard only the uncontrolled motion of his own
+heart plunging like an unruly horse. All else was silent in the black
+stillness of the deeps of the earth, save for the slight purling of the
+thread of a stream which farther on intersected the tunnel. No stir,
+no sound from the still-room, his late prison-house, where his jailers
+lay bound hand and foot; and yet he had thought he heard voices--human
+voices--words--he could almost have sworn it. And suddenly the sound
+came again. This time he recognized it,--louder than its custom, more
+distinct, for he had heard it before,--the sound of the strange,
+unexplained voices that at long intervals were wont to reverberate
+along the tunnel of the Lost Time mine, and that were accounted by
+the moonshiners echoes from their own wrangles or mirth or talk as
+they toiled. He was certain that it did not come now from the still;
+his fear that his work had been slack, and that his comrades were
+liberated, was without foundation, but an earthly rational fear is a
+wonderful exorcist of a ghostly terror. Otherwise, when he thought
+of it afterward, he felt that he must have been struck dead with the
+horror of it, when he suddenly heard, close at hand, the sound dulled
+by the dense medium of the earth, a word of command, as it were, in a
+queer, strained, false-ringing voice, and then the regular strokes of
+a pick cleaving the earth with a workmanlike steadiness and precision.
+His blood ran cold; for his credulity harbored no doubts. It was the
+sound of the drowned miners, lost in the flooded shafts, still vainly
+digging the graves that the niggard earth denied them. The thought
+mended his speed; he flew like a shuttlecock from side to side of the
+narrow passage, where he could but grope, for the lack of a lantern;
+and although he often put forth his hands expecting to touch the boards
+of the partition at the further end, he thrust into his palms a score
+of the hairy splinters of the reverse side of the rude puncheons long
+before he could have reasonably expected to reach his goal. He observed
+none of the precautions and silence common to the moonshiners in their
+exits from the still; and indeed the feat was hardly expected to be
+attempted in the dense darkness. He dropped one of the boards, and the
+deep, cavernous, clamorous echo coming up from the hollow vaults below
+almost overwhelmed him, as it resounded again and again. He had lost
+control of his nerves. He stumbled over the empty boxes and barrels in
+the room beneath the store, tumbled up the ladder, and as he clambered
+from the door beneath the counter he realized for the first time that
+the room was built, as were many of the meaner cabins of the region,
+without a window, depending on the door for ventilation and light. This
+was a matter of precaution with Taft, and being a not uncommon feature
+in the district occasioned no surprise; but Larrabee trembled as he
+remembered that it was Taft's cautious habit to lock the door when
+he himself was not in the store. Feeling that the bars were in place
+against the battens, he was apprised that it had been thus secured
+by the worthies down at the still, and perchance the key was now in
+Copley's pocket. His only resource would be to retrace his way, all the
+toil and risk of his escape to be repeated. But no, the bolt turned
+in his hand, and as he stepped into the passage outside his eyes were
+dazzled almost to blindness by a tallow dip blazing in the hand of
+little Cornelia Taft, summoned by the noise to investigate its source.
+Behind her, looking over her head, was Joe's round, careless, plump
+face. Larrabee was little less staggered by the monition that there
+might be other persons at hand in the house than by the expression
+of Cornelia's prim, disapproving, unfriendly, intelligent little
+countenance. The next instant he cared for neither; a salient change
+in the aspect of the cabin claimed his attention. The open passage
+between the two rooms had been boarded up, and a stout door fitted in,
+barred and bolted, on which gleamed a strong new lock. There was no key
+visible. He gazed at the lock with greedy eyes, silent, till the girl's
+question had been twice repeated.
+
+"Me--doin' hyar? Oh, I been doin' some work fur yer dad," he said,
+more at ease, for he had seen her occasionally as he came and went,
+presumably in the character of customer, and he detected recognition in
+her calm and non-committal countenance. "I got shut up in thar,--mought
+hev been noddin',--an' I war 'feared the door war locked." He advanced
+upon the outer door.
+
+"Ye can't git out'n that one," said the little girl coolly; "hit's
+locked on the outside, an' dad hev goned away ter the cross-roads with
+the key in his pocket."
+
+Larrabee's first impulse was to try his strength to burst it open, and
+once more that salutary monition of the probable presence of others in
+the house controlled him. He turned toward the door of the opposite
+room, partly to settle this doubt, and partly to discover--it had never
+before occurred to him to notice--whether it had a window. The room was
+vacant, and his eager eyes ranged the walls in vain for an aperture.
+
+"It's like a trap," he muttered, as he sunk exhausted into a chair.
+"What ails 'Renzo ter lock up the house an' make off with the key, an'
+leave you-uns inside by yerse'fs?" he demanded.
+
+The two children had followed him into the room. Joe stood by the
+door, holding by the frame, swaying back and forth, attempting some
+distortion of attitude impossible to the human configuration; but the
+little girl had seated herself staidly in a chair opposite, and showed
+herself not averse to conversation.
+
+"'Kase thar be sech a lot o' strange, idle folks in the Cove," said the
+prim Miss Cornelia, with an expression of strong disapprobation.
+
+Larrabee could not restrain an exclamation of surprise. It was indeed
+like a new world, the familiar Cove, so long he had been shut out of it.
+
+"What folks?" he asked succinctly.
+
+"Them ez hev been building the new hotel," said Sis. "Them, in course."
+
+"What they doin' now? Ain't they buildin'?" he hazarded tentatively.
+
+"Naw,"--the small Cornelia Taft pursed up her lips
+contemptuously,--"jes' a-roamin' round the Cove in gangs, a-foolin' an'
+a-idlin', an', my sakes, a-drinkin' whiskey, thick ez bees!"
+
+A new light was breaking in on Larrabee. Taft had at first desired
+that he should leave the Cove,--slip away quietly; now, since it was
+infested with a troop of scattered workmen, apparently out of a job,
+all of whom had doubtless spent an idle hour agape over the story
+of the supposed Jasper Larrabee, the last nine days' wonder of the
+Cove,--the facetious freak of the pretended arrest, the miraculous
+escape of the fall from the cliffs, the mysterious disappearance, the
+suspicion of moonshining, and the threatened vengeance of the deputy
+sheriff,--it was scarcely probable that he could get away without
+exciting notice which might lead to recognition, pursuit, and arrest.
+He was safer at the still,--this he himself admitted now,--far safer in
+the depths of the earth; except, indeed, for Taft and his fellows.
+
+"Did you-uns see the fire?" demanded Joe suddenly, still writhing and
+twisting against the door frame. "_I_ did!" in triumph.
+
+"Ye wouldn't ef I hedn't a-woke ye up," said Sis, with acerbity. "I
+'low ye didn't see much nohows, bein' so sleepy-headed."
+
+Larrabee sat looking in surprise from one to the other, his questions
+anticipated by their eager relish of the subject.
+
+"Dad never seen nuthin'!" cried the boy triumphantly.
+
+"Dad wouldn't b'lieve thar war a fire till he went an' viewed the
+cinders of the hotel," said the girl.
+
+The hotel! A sudden suspicion smote Larrabee, a recollection of
+the threat to burn the building which had originated amongst the
+moonshiners before a stone was laid in mortar or a timber lifted. He
+did the craft injustice in this instance; Taft and his associates
+had no part in the conflagration. But with Espey out of control, and
+Larrabee touched with the suspicion of moonshining, a chance word might
+fix upon the distillers this far more serious crime known to them both
+to have already been broached here. There was much reason for his
+detention,--too much. He must be going, and that shortly.
+
+"I wonder ye all ain't 'feared o' burnin' up in hyar, locked up," he
+said suddenly, the catastrophe seeming to render the danger of fire
+more imminent, although he knew it to be the habit of the country folk
+to lock small children in when convenient to leave home without them.
+
+The little girl's thin lip curled.
+
+"Ef we-uns hain't got no mo' sense 'n ter set the house or ourse'fs
+afire, I reckon we'd be wuth ez much roasted ez raw," she replied.
+
+"Dad, he locked the door so we-uns kin tell them stragglers ez he be
+gone, an' they can't git in ter trade fur drink," put in Joe.
+
+Larrabee said nothing more. He knew full well that the children were
+not so alone as they seemed, since Copley, who was their mother's
+half-brother, was wont to be in the store, in Taft's absence, often
+enough to be at hand should he be required to suppress any disturbance;
+and being a near relative, he had a personal interest in their safety.
+Miss Cornelia Taft was a fine combination of her father's shrewdness
+and her grandmother's preciseness. As Larrabee felt her small,
+discerning eyes studying him, he became conscious that he was looking
+about wildly and with manifest anxiety as to his next step. He made an
+effort to allay her dawning curiosity.
+
+"Things look powerful nice an' cle'n up in hyar," he remarked casually.
+
+He was unprepared for the effect of his words. If Miss Cornelia Taft
+had a soul, it was expressed in her housewifely instincts. In a dozen
+frantic and funny juvenile misconceptions, the precepts brought from
+Mrs. Jiniway's domicile were put into practice here. The basis of
+them all, cleanliness and an effort for order, was plainly apparent,
+and Sis spent the better part of her days in seeking to impress upon
+Joe's unwilling mind the value of an occasional dish-washing, and
+the utility of wood ashes in scouring. An evil day, Joe considered
+it, when she came into his ragged, soapless, happy-go-lucky life; but
+Taft connived at their wranglings over their primitive housekeeping
+and Joe's subjection. "Keeps Sis busy, an' lets me git on her blind
+side,--ef she hev got enny blind side," he added grimly.
+
+Her pallid face flushed, her eyes sparkled; she cast a glance of
+triumph at Joe, who had seated himself in a chair, and was twisting his
+bare feet in and out of the rungs in a way painful to witness, if not
+to experience, writhing his body to and fro, and rolling his head from
+side to side over the high back of the chair in a restless frivolity of
+motion that certainly had no family resemblance to the staid "manners"
+which Mrs. Jiniway's disciple exhibited.
+
+She had entered volubly upon a detail of her exploits here in reforming
+Joe's misrule amongst the pots and pans and kettles.
+
+"Dad's so 'way from home, an' Joe's so tur'ble shif'less," she
+complained.
+
+The task of redding up the Augean stables was slight in comparison, one
+might believe, to judge from her show of horror now and then, and there
+was considerable difference between the size of Sis and of Hercules.
+She had succeeded in reaching some sense of culinary propriety in
+Joe, or pride, for he now and again became sufficiently still to look
+poutingly sullen, and to ejaculate, "'Tain't true!" "'Twarn't!" and
+similar disaffected negations.
+
+"I l'arnt all that whenst I lived with my granny," she concluded her
+exposition of the true methods of dealing with the trivet and the
+skillet and setting the house in order. "An' when we war done, we'd
+knit stockings an' tell tales."
+
+"Tales 'bout what?" asked Larrabee, seeking to conciliate her, for he
+began to have a shrewd suspicion that she could aid him if she would.
+His interest was the more easily simulated, for he had a literary taste
+himself.
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a little bounce forward, not unlike Joe's
+elasticity, "them in gineral we-uns hearn the rider read,--'bout Sam'l."
+
+"I hev read 'bout Sam'l," said Larrabee quickly, with an air of playing
+willingly to her lead; and indeed she had struck him on his strong
+suit. "An' old Eli. Eli war an able man, but he never 'peared ter me
+ter hev much jedgmint."
+
+"I jes' _lo-o-oved_ ter hear 'bout leetle Sam'l an' his mother,
+an' her a-bringin' of him new clothes. He wore a white shut, an' she
+brung him a leetle coat every year," continued Sis, with placid eyes
+shining with the delighted reminiscence of the little prophet's fine
+gear.
+
+"Eli never could hev led the children of Isrul through the wilderness
+like Moses done," said Larrabee meditatively, reverting naturally to
+the elder character; whereas with Sis the _personnel_ of the Bible
+was chiefly juvenile, rarely attaining a greater height than four feet.
+
+"Jes' ter think," she cried, "they put Moses whenst a baby in a leetle
+dug-out, an' anchored him 'mongst the willows under the ruver bank, an'
+lef' him by hisself! Don't ye know, he hollered an' hollered! An' he
+wondered whar all the folks war gone."
+
+"An' Dan'l I hev read about," continued Larrabee.
+
+"In the painters' den! Oo--oo!" The little girl shivered with a sort of
+enjoyment of the terror of the situation, drawing up her shoulders, and
+holding both hands over her mouth.
+
+"He warn't 'feared. I reckon he mus' hev been a powerful hunter whenst
+young. I wonder ef he ever hed enny 'speriunce with wolf an' bar, an'
+sech?" Larrabee speculated.
+
+"Them bars! Warn't that awful,--plumb turrible!" exclaimed Sis
+suddenly, her scanty brows knitted as she frowningly recoiled into the
+back of her chair, and her small eyes grew large. "Them two bars what
+eat them forty childern,--though 'tain't manners, an' it never war, ter
+make game o' yer elders."
+
+"'Tain't true! No two bar ever eat forty childern. They'd hev bust!"
+Joe interposed realistically. "Sis jes' made that up out'n her own
+head."
+
+"It air true," protested the little Biblical student. "I hearn the
+rider read it myself."
+
+"Them childern war obleeged ter be sorter sizable ter hev quit bein'
+bald-headed tharse'fs, ef they war able ter run an' p'int thar fingers.
+An' shucks! I hev been sassier 'n that a many a time, an' no bar hev
+eat me yit," said Joe hardily.
+
+"Ye air savin' up fur Satan, I reckon," retorted Miss Taft, with
+acerbity. "I hev a heap o' trouble with this boy," she added, turning a
+dreary, disgusted little face toward Larrabee.
+
+Their unity of literary interest had fostered a degree of sympathy for
+her. "Ye oughter go down sometimes an' set at Tems's," he suggested.
+"He hev got a darter an' a niece, though they air older 'n ye be."
+
+"I don't mind old folks," said Cornelia, evidently with no idea of the
+gradations of age. "I be used ter granny. I wisht dad would marry one
+of 'em at Tems's," she added.
+
+Larrabee glanced keenly at her.
+
+"What ails ye, ter say that?" he asked jealously.
+
+"I'd like ter see a tuck took in Joe," said Sis bitterly.
+
+She obviously spoke without further information or meaning. Larrabee
+rose restlessly, the interest of the literary symposium at an end.
+
+"I wisht ye could let me out'n hyar somehows," he said, glancing
+uneasily about. Then, with a sudden recollection, "Ain't you-uns got a
+key ez would open the sto' door, what ye brung from yer granny's house?
+Mebbe 'twould open t'other."
+
+"Dad took it; he didn't want the sto' do' opened whenst he hed locked
+it."
+
+"Hain't you-uns got no mo' keys, no kind o' keys?"
+
+She hesitated, but he had won upon her somewhat obdurate predilections;
+his acquaintance with the heroes of the tales that she had learned at
+her grandmother's home was a pleasing and fresh bond of interest. She
+divined his sympathy, and had seen his approval of the works she had
+wrought in the service of order and cleanliness; he saw in her little
+prim face that she had keys at hand, and presently she nodded brightly.
+
+"Let's try 'em," he urged, as if the experiment had a mutual interest.
+
+It was a bunch of two or three rusty old keys which she produced,
+held together with a rough leather string, but they meant liberty
+and life to Larrabee. He could hardly be still long enough to clean
+and oil them before the attempt which should be decisive. The little
+girl rubbed one with a will, while he busied himself with the other.
+She held the candle as he knelt tremulously on the floor and applied
+them successively to the lock. One slipped in and turned futilely all
+round,--too small. The other would not even enter the keyhole.
+
+As he knelt there, the tallow dip showed a white, set face. He was
+remembering his comrades, bound hand and foot down at the still, and
+prefiguring Taft's alarm,--which was in itself formidable in its
+valiant disregard of all but his own safety,--his resentment and
+revenge, when their imprisoned estate should be discovered to him.
+Whatever might betide in the world without, it was death, indubitably,
+to remain. He rose suddenly, almost overturning the child at his
+elbow, starting toward the door of the store to get some implement to
+serve to break the lock.
+
+"Try a file," said Sis reasonably, misunderstanding his intention.
+
+She was still holding the candle as he came back, its white light on
+her precise little face and smooth hair put primly behind her ears,
+and a tall womanly caricature of her aped her gestures as her shadow
+stretched up on the new poplar weather-boarding of the partition.
+
+Her suggestion worked like a charm. A few moments of a sharp, rasping
+noise, while she set her little teeth, a second essay at the lock: the
+bolt slipped back as if made for the rusty old key that had worked no
+miracles before save that of opening old Mrs. Jiniway's "chist;" the
+door swung open. A glimpse of the windy night, the clouds, the tossing
+woods, and Sis, putting up the bars again, heard the last echo of
+Larrabee's swift step as he strode away.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XI.
+
+
+The day fixed for processioning Kenniston's land dawned with an element
+of perplexity all its own to add to the troublous questions which it
+was expected to decide. The weather was the aptest illustration of
+uncertainty. The first gray light came with a rolling cloud and a dank
+wind sweeping along quick gusts of rain; then the sun rose, diffusive,
+promissory, with a great lavishness of red and yellow suffusions, a
+range and degree of rank, heavy color that seemed nearer to the hues
+of sunset than to the luminous purity and delicacy of wonted matutinal
+freshness. The slate-tinted clouds were massed once more, the beams
+failed, the wind brought the rain anew, and when it ceased at last,
+light mists were stealing along the heavy purple mountains, and rising
+from every chasm and depression; even far away amongst those vague
+contours, gray and dun-tinted and brown, that were like the first
+lifeless sketch of the dazzling azure ranges that the sunny days were
+wont to paint with such brilliant softness upon the fair field of the
+horizon, these vapors, white, soft, opaque, flocculent, could be seen.
+So from the furthermost reaches to the nearest limits invisibility was
+visibly garnered.
+
+As Kenniston, perturbed because of the weather signs, turned ever
+and anon in his saddle, as he rode up and up the mountain to the
+tryst at the Big Hollow Boulder, he saw now the great outward bend
+of the mountain, with heavily wooded green slopes under the gray
+sky, all the coloring heightened by the impending tufty white of the
+masses of silent approaching vapor; the surly crags of the terrace
+dark with the moisture and the shadow; and the great black mass of
+the charred wood still sending up a slow, melancholy thread of smoke
+where the hotel lay in ruins. And again, looking over his shoulder to
+verify some half-forgotten detail of the scene, the trees twenty feet
+away were barely visible in the encompassing medium, so fleetly did
+the impalpable cloud press upon them. To him, unversed in mountain
+weather, the enterprise of the day seemed impracticable; and he was
+half surprised to see the surveyor, with his Jacob's staff and his
+chain-bearers, already waiting at the boundary corner. The figures
+of the group of men, with their horses picketed hard by, stood out
+against the inexpressive whiteness about them with the distinctness
+of sketches on otherwise blank paper. They were easily recognizable
+even from a distance, and Cap'n Lucy's slim proportions and grace of
+movement further served to differentiate him from the burlier forms of
+the others.
+
+"Ah, colonel," called out Kenniston as he dismounted, "you here?"
+
+It might hardly be believed by one who had experienced its causticity,
+but Cap'n Lucy's tongue was blunted of much of its capacities under
+his own roof-tree by the exactions of hospitality. Now he felt the
+franchise of the free outer air.
+
+"I'm a mighty confidin' young critter, I know," he replied, advancing
+a few paces with his hands thrust in his pockets, "but this hyar
+man"--he nodded at the surveyor and affected to lower his voice
+confidentially--"hev got the name o' bein' sorter tricky, an' I 'lowed
+I hed better kem along like a good neighbor ter holp ye some, else he
+mought cheat ye out'n a passel o' lan'."
+
+The surveyor, a tall, saturnine, businesslike body, took not the
+slightest notice of this fling, but his two young chain-bearers grinned
+their appreciation, and the other men laughed outright with evident
+enjoyment, notably a tall, dark-eyed fellow, whom Kenniston presently
+recognized as the deputy sheriff, with whom he had already had some
+slight colloquy touching the possibly incendiary origin of the fire
+that had destroyed the new building. The recollection furnished him
+with a retort. He had flushed darkly, and his eyes were angry.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised to be ill treated in any way now in the
+Cove--after what _has_ happened."
+
+The laughter was checked by his tone. The men glanced at one
+another constrainedly. Before his coming, the event had promised
+to the volunteer assistants an episode of sociability affording
+the interchange of ideas and jocular converse, the interest of the
+developments sufficiently great to repay them for the hardship of
+the steep scramble down the mountain side. The significance of the
+proceeding was reasserted, and the silence was unbroken until the
+surveyor, busily adjusting his compass, remarked to Kenniston that he
+had noted one or two blazes indicating an old line, as he came up the
+mountain.
+
+"Ye won't go a-nigh them blazes!" cried Cap'n Lucy sarcastically,
+waving his hand along an imaginary line. "Ye take my word fur it, ye
+won't see them blazes 'twixt hyar an' the mounting's foot."
+
+Kenniston detected a covert meaning in the tone, and glanced keenly
+around at the speaker. But Cap'n Lucy's face was as enigmatically
+satiric as his laughter; and as Kenniston's questioning stare sought
+out the son, Luther turned away to avoid meeting his eyes, lowering,
+anxious, and it seemed somehow conscious. Conscious, too, was the
+hang-dog manner with which the usually bluff young mountaineer spoke to
+the deputy sheriff Ross, observing that he did not see how the surveyor
+could get his bearings such a shut-in day as this.
+
+The deputy sheriff had found it easily compatible with his
+interpretation of his duty to spare the time to assist as idle
+spectator at anything promising so much interest and excitement as
+the processioning of the Kenniston tract. For the antagonism between
+the disputants had already been noised abroad, and Rodolphus Ross,
+albeit a "peace officer" within the meaning of the statute, was not
+so attached to the service of the white-winged goddess that he did not
+cherish a lively expectation of whatever sport could be extracted from
+Cap'n Lucy's and Kenniston's belligerent idiosyncrasies. He protested
+now so clamorously that it might seem he feared that this unique
+opportunity would be wrested from him, and, assuming the rôle of a
+trustworthy weather prophet, maintained that whenever it rained before
+twelve o'clock, noon, an early clearance was the certain sequel. The
+discussion and the aspect of the weather diverted the general attention
+from Cap'n Lucy's singular words, and from Luther's unwillingness to
+proceed and surly disaffection.
+
+But Kenniston, whose already keen observation was whetted by the
+appreciation of the enmity he sustained and the magnitude of the
+disaster that had befallen him, followed Luther's motion with an alert,
+apprehending eye, and hardly lost sight of him even when the mists
+swept between them and gave him but a distorted looming presentment
+of the young mountaineer; though thus caricatured, Luther never lost
+for a moment his uncharacteristic and already significant demeanor.
+Small as the group was, the figures of two or three were now and again
+abstracted from it, as if literally caught up in the clouds, slowly
+materializing again as the mists shifted. The horses hard by were
+sometimes invisible in the dense white medium, and anon only their
+heads would appear here and there in various attitudes, like studies
+for a cavalry subject. Even the Big Hollow Boulder, the corner of
+the lines, seemed to recede, and again was near at hand, in a manner
+altogether inconsistent with its accepted attributes of immovability as
+a monument of boundary. The great felled trees, lying close by athwart
+the outcropping ledges of rock,--traces of the mountain tempest,--were
+obliterated and invisible in the encompassing whiteness. The chilly
+sound of the rain beating heavily below in the valley rose on the dank
+air, and more than once the white gauzy suffusions of the encompassing
+vapor were pervaded with a transient yellow glow, broad and innocuous
+reflections of the lightning of the storm-cloud of the lower levels.
+
+The surveyor was a tall, well-knit man of forty-five or fifty, with a
+square, short, grizzled beard decorating his chin, high cheek-bones, a
+blunt nose, a far-seeing gray eye, and a quid of tobacco that seemed to
+render him indifferent to the joys of conversation. His high boots were
+drawn to the knees over his trousers,--a style affected by the rest
+of the party; Kenniston's correct equestrian garb being sufficiently
+dissimilar to give him that air of peculiarity and modishness that
+somehow seems so unworthy and flippant among plain and humble folk, as
+if they cared for better things than fashion. It made him a trifle ill
+at ease, and he had a sense of being out of his sphere, added to the
+conviction of the vicinage of enemies. He stood with his riding-whip in
+his hand beside the surveyor as he adjusted his instrument, conscious
+of sustaining the curious attention of the chain-bearers, two stalwart
+young fellows arrayed in brown jeans and heavy boots, amply competent
+for the task of carrying the chain through that rugged wilderness;
+conscious, too, of Cap'n Lucy's brilliant, laughing, handsome eyes, the
+doubtful, furtive glances of the others, and Luther's anxious, troubled
+gaze.
+
+Suddenly, with an infinitely light, elastic effect that permeated
+all its vast area, the cloud began to uplift; the great grassy bald
+of the mountain towering above them showed its vast green dome as it
+were between precipitous white cliffs of still higher cloud mountains.
+An eagle's wing caught the sunlight as he soared above, beyond rifle
+range, and as he felt the rising wind his keen, exultant cry floated
+down to them. A tempered white glister suffused all the clouds about
+them; the sun was out, and as the illumined masses parted, the blue
+mountains afar off now glimmered with a dusky section of the quiet
+valley below, and again were veiled with the gleaming gauze. Between
+its shining folds a glittering green avenue opened out down the woods,
+as the surveyor, bending first to take sight, then holding his Jacob's
+staff stiffly before him, set out from the Big Hollow Boulder with a
+fair start and a long, elastic step; the two chain-bearers in file
+alertly followed, alternately bowing down and rising again, while the
+chain writhed through the grass between them like some living sinuous
+thing, ever and again drawn out tense and straight, and the echoes
+rang with the strophe and antistrophe of their sudden short cry,
+"Stick!" "Stuck!" "Stick!" "Stuck!"
+
+It might seem that all the oreads of the Great Smoky were set to flight
+by this invasion of their sylvan haunts, so many a flitting white robe
+fluttered elusive among the dense shadows of the trees, gone ere you
+could look again; so often a glistening white arm was upflung in the
+deepest green jungle of the laurel. They sprang up by every shadowy
+cliff and lurking chasm, by every hidden spring and trickling stream,
+and fled with tattered white scarfs streaming in the wind behind them.
+All the way the rout continued as Science came down the slope, led by
+a compass rather than the sun or the shadow, and with her votaries to
+mete out the freedom of the wilds, and the grace of the contour of the
+slopes, and the beauty of herbage and flowering growth, and the largess
+of the gracious earth, and to reduce all to an arbitrary scale, and
+judge it by the rod or perch or pole.
+
+The grizzly old surveyor saw naught of this,--not even when, in
+advance of all the company, he threaded the sun-glinted green glade,
+and strode almost in the midst of a bevy of white gauze-draped
+fleeing figures. Nor his chain-bearers, young though they were,
+and presumably impressionable,--not even when they rose from their
+alternate genuflections, and their sudden call "Out!" resounded on the
+air, though they stood idle and looked about them while the surveyor
+paused to mark the "out." Nor Cap'n Lucy, as light and swift on his
+feet as the youngest, fierce, jaunty, with his clear, defiant eye. Nor
+Rodolphus Ross, finding great opportunity for mirth behind Cap'n Lucy's
+back as he scuffled along amongst the knot of spectators, keeping up
+as best they might, skirting the barriers that the surveyor and his
+chain-bearers, constrained by duty, went over, and tumbling, pulling,
+and struggling with each other now and then for the best and foremost
+place. "Look at old Cap'n Tems!" cried Ross. "Ain't he the very model
+of a game rooster? He ain't big, an' he ain't strong, an' he ain't
+heavy, but Lord! how he thinks he is!" Nor Kenneth Kenniston, beginning
+to pause now and again,--albeit he did not flag, despite the hard pull
+over the impracticable ground, for he was a man of stalwart physique
+and a practiced pedestrian,--to look instead at the memorandum of the
+calls of the title-deed, which original paper the surveyor held in his
+hand, in doubt at first, in growing dismay, then in hot and mounting
+anger. At the next "out," when the surveyor set down his Jacob's staff,
+Kenniston strode over and tapped him somewhat imperatively on the
+shoulder.
+
+"My good friend," he said, with an evident effort at self-repression,
+"are you not making some mistake? You surely are not following the
+calls as they are set forth in these papers?"
+
+To the professor of an exact science the suggestion of mistake is an
+imputation of incapacity. The claims of the quid of tobacco were
+disregarded for the nonce. The surveyor spoke, albeit with his mouth
+full, and spoke to the point:--
+
+"I reckon I know what I'm about, Mr. Kenn'ston. If you don't like the
+way I'm runnin' this line, run it yerse'f."
+
+"The blazes on those trees on the side of the mountain, that you called
+my attention to, indicating the old line, are away over yonder on that
+sharp ridge." Kenniston waved his hand with the paper in it toward
+a high rocky crest to the left; then he fixed insistent eyes on the
+surveyor, and stroked his full brown whiskers mechanically with the
+other hand.
+
+The surveyor followed with perplexed eyes the direction pointed out. He
+gave a little puzzled sniff, as if he sought to smell the line. Then he
+reverted to that prop of common sense, his Jacob's staff.
+
+"D'ye want me to run the line according to the compass and the calls
+of the title papers, or by the old blazes scattered about in the woods
+on the trees?" he demanded. "You don't know whether they ever were
+intended to mark the line, nor who put 'em thar, nor for what. I know
+they ain't no kin ter the line I'm runnin' now, 'cordin' ter the calls
+an' the compass."
+
+Once more he took his bearings, and, holding his Jacob's staff before
+him, walked steadily forward into the deeps of the wilderness; the two
+sworn chain-bearers, who had listened with indignant, sullen brows to
+the wrangle, and reflection on the work, again began diligently to bow
+down and rise up, as they ejaculated their "Stick!" "Stuck!" "Stick!"
+"Stuck!"--the clanking of the chain sounding loud and metallic in the
+sylvan quiet. The other men, with their shadows, all pressed forward in
+a close squad, for the pause had given the stragglers time to gather.
+
+Kenniston was aware that Cap'n Lucy carried the sympathies and good
+wishes of all the company, save perhaps the impartial surveyor, who
+would suffer himself to be influenced by nothing less just than his
+compass. He realized that he was looked upon as the "town man," and a
+rich one, desirous of wresting, by a slight technicality of the law, a
+very little land from a poor man who had in good faith built his house
+upon it. He had grown extremely bitter in his sentiment toward the
+people of the section because of the fire in which so much of value had
+perished, for he believed its origin incendiary. He was conscious of
+sustaining much antagonism, and he had fiercely resolved to deserve it.
+He had, in his first uncontrolled rush of anger, declared that he would
+punish somebody,--the true culprit, if possible; but _somebody_
+should kick his heels in jail for a while, and go to the penitentiary
+if might be. He did not in reality go so far in feeling as in
+expression, but his was not a prudent tongue. He earnestly desired
+success in the matter of the processioning; the scheme of the new
+hotel had grown very close to him; it seemed to him that one log cabin
+might serve the mountaineer as well as another, and that, moreover,
+in justice to himself, he should claim his own. He had felt sure,
+perfectly sure, that his deed called for the land that Cap'n Lucy held.
+For the first time, as he clambered with the rest down the rugged
+slopes, a doubt of this entered his mind. It made him wince from the
+probable result. He was not prepared to occupy the position of having
+sought to despoil a man, and a poor man, of his own, his very own, and
+fail. He knew that if he succeeded the countryside would wish that he
+had failed, and Cap'n Lucy would be a popular and picturesque object of
+commiseration. But he could not endure the idea of the rejoicings in
+his failure. To work a hardship to another was bad, indeed, and he had
+never contemplated it without the salve of an ample money compensation.
+To futilely seek to work a hardship was far worse. Again and again he
+knit his brows, as he gazed at the treacherous annotations in his hand,
+while the interchange of glances behind him commented on his attitude
+and his evident state of mind. Cap'n Lucy, who could not have read a
+word of the notes, strode on, apparently indifferent to fate, the "very
+model of a game rooster," esteeming Kenniston's show of anxiety the
+merest subterfuge; for would that monument of boundary known as the Big
+Hollow Boulder have become so nimbly peripatetic, despite its tons of
+weight, if the line run out therefrom were not to be materially altered
+for the betterment of the claimant at whose instance the processioning
+was held?
+
+And still the chain clanked and writhed its length along the ground,
+and the cries "Stick!" "Stuck!" of the chain-bearers alternated as
+before, until the sudden call "Out!" resounded, and the surveyor paused
+to mark the "out" once more.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XII.
+
+
+As the surveyor planted his Jacob's staff anew he drew a long sigh of
+fatigue, and gazed out discerningly at the weather signs from over a
+craggy, jutting precipice at one side, which in its savage bareness
+disclosed from the midst of the dense forest a vast expanse of the
+tremulous mountain landscape below. The uncertain flicker of the
+sunshine was now on the green of the wooded valley, which presently
+dulled to the colorless neutrality of the persistent shadow, albeit the
+summits of the far horizon line gleamed delicately azure, as if the
+tint possessed some luminous quality and glowed inherently blue. To the
+right hung masses of vaporous gray; and beneath, fine serried lines
+were drawn in myriads against the darker tints of half-seen slopes,
+where the rain was falling. Still beyond, a great glamourous sunburst
+appeared in the mist, with so rayonnant an effect of the divergent
+splendors from its dazzling focus that it might seem a fleeting glimpse
+of the actual wheel of the chariot of the sun. It rolled away speedily.
+A rainbow barely flaunted its chromatic glories across the sky, and
+faded like an illusion, and all the world was gray again; from a dead
+bough starkly thrust out of the wooded slopes half way to the valley a
+rain crow was calling and calling.
+
+The other men, too, were looking over the valley, so long obscured by
+the dense forest trees and still denser undergrowth through which they
+had taken their way. It seemed much nearer than when they had last seen
+it from the dome, even allowing for the distance they had traversed,
+and they noted, with that interest always excited by a familiar scene
+from a new standpoint, the aspect of the well-known landmarks, all
+changed and strange. Kenniston had drawn near the verge; he stood
+sharply outlined against the sky, a field-glass in his hand, which
+again and again he brought to bear upon the smouldering black mass on
+the cliffs far below that once was the new hotel, only to be located
+now by the thinly curling smoke from its ruins. The instrument was
+familiar enough to the mountaineers, who had most of them observed its
+use during the war; but to a certain type of rustic an affectation of
+ignorance is the prettiest of jests.
+
+"Say, mister," Rodolphus Ross adjured him, with a show of eager
+anxiety, "air yer contraption strong enough ter view enny insurance on
+that thar buildin'?"
+
+The echo caught his laughter and blended it with the rain crow's call.
+He was not sensitive himself, and he could not appreciate sensitiveness
+in others. The fact that the building had perished in the flames,
+without insurance, was well known to the community; and how could it
+help or hinder that he should sharpen his wits by a little exercise on
+the theme?
+
+Kenniston made no reply, still sweeping the landscape with his glass.
+As the surveyor bent to take sight, Kenniston suddenly turned.
+
+"Stop," he said; "you will stop this farce right here. This is a
+conspiracy!"
+
+The surveyor, still in his stooping posture, looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Hey?" he exclaimed, as if he did not believe his senses.
+
+"A conspiracy!" Kenniston reiterated.
+
+The surveyor, in the course of his brawny career, had been offered
+few insults, and these he had promptly requited with stout blows. But
+the sight of a man who has lost reason, temper, and policy together
+has sometimes a steadying effect on the spectator. Besides, he was in
+the performance of a sworn duty, and, being a faithful and efficient
+officer of the county, he had a high ideal of the functions of his
+office. He was nettled by Kenniston's self-magnifying attitude, but
+it was obviously in order to give him the correct measurements, not
+of himself, but of his land, and although he retorted, it was in good
+enough temper.
+
+"Conspirin' with the meridian line?" he demanded, with a sneer,
+thrusting his quid of tobacco into his leather jaw with a tongue
+grown expert by long practice in thus clearing the way for its own
+utterances. "Or maybe ye think the points o' the compass have got in a
+mutiny against ye?"
+
+Cap'n Lucy came alongside the Jacob's staff, and gave Kenniston a
+rallying wink, sly, malicious, sarcastic, and altogether unworthy of
+the fine eye that it eclipsed. "Conspirin' with a monimint o' boundary
+knowed ez Big Hollow Boulder?" he said.
+
+Luther turned away suddenly, with an accession of hang-dog furtiveness
+in his manner, and Kenniston's fury was stemmed for the moment by his
+surprise and doubt and bewilderment. Still with choleric color mantling
+his face, his eyes bright and wide, his white teeth pressing on the
+lip which he was biting visibly despite the thick abundance of beard,
+with all the fire eliminated from the angry facial expression that he
+yet retained, he stared silently at Captain Lucy, who was scornfully
+laughing. The surveyor took advantage of the seeming lucidity of the
+interval to seek to rehabilitate pacific relations.
+
+"I can't help _how_ ye expected the line ter run out, Mr.
+Kenniston. I'm runnin' it 'cordin' ter the calls an' the compass. Ye
+an' Cap'n Tems are here as owners o' the adjoinin' tracts, ter see it
+done fur yerselves."
+
+"Not me!" cried Cap'n Lucy. "I ain't looked at yer durned bodkin" (thus
+he demeaned the magnetic needle) "sence I kem out. It mought waggle
+todes the north pole, like ye sez it do,--'pears onstiddy enough fur
+ennything,--or it mought waggle todes the east pole. I ain't keerin'.
+It may know the poles whenst it sees 'em,--though I dunno ef that
+needle hev got an eye. My main dependence air in that monimint o'
+boundary knowed ez the Big Hollow Boulder--corner rock--corner o' the
+lines--oh my!--yes!"
+
+The significance of this was hardly to be overlooked.
+
+"See here, Cap'n Lucy," said Kenniston, suddenly dropping his
+aggressions even to the unusual point of giving the old man his
+accustomed title, "what do you mean by that?"
+
+Cap'n Lucy gave him a broadside of big bright eyes.
+
+"Why, don't you-uns know that monimint o' boundary knowed ez Big Hollow
+Boulder--corner mark--been thar so long?"
+
+"Well, what about it?" demanded Kenniston impatiently.
+
+"Why, it's _known_ ez Big Hollow Boulder, 'cordin' ter yer own
+notice posted up at the mill," said Cap'n Lucy tantalizingly.
+
+Kenniston still stared, and the surveyor, seeking to cut short a futile
+waste of time, bent once more to take sight. "The only way ter git
+things settled is ter run out the line 'cordin' ter the calls an' the
+compass, an' I'm a-doin' of it fair an' square."
+
+"There is something radically wrong," persisted Kenniston angrily. Then
+turning to Cap'n Lucy, he continued vehemently, "I know--and _you_
+know--that Wild Duck River is on my land, and doesn't touch yours in
+any of its windings; and look there!--Wild Duck Falls!"
+
+He pointed diagonally across a ravine, where, amidst the dusky depths
+of green shadows, and close to a gray cloud that came surging through
+the valley, a narrow, gleaming, white, feathery mountain cataract, with
+an impetus and a motion like the flight of an arrow smartly sped from
+the bow, shot down into the gorge.
+
+It transfixed Cap'n Lucy. He stood staring at it, motionless, amazed,
+it might seem aghast. For the boundary line that the surveyor was
+running according to the compass and calls had thrown within his tract
+this mountain torrent, this wayward alien, which he had known for many
+a year as the native of the Kenniston woods.
+
+"It makes no difference, gentlemen, what ye hev 'lowed ye owned, an'
+what ye didn't," interposed the surveyor: "this boundary line I'm
+runnin' out will show ye the exac' extent o' yer possessions." And once
+more he bent to take sight.
+
+Then he rose and stalked forward, his Jacob's staff held before him,
+his eyes intent and fixed, the links of the chain once more dully
+clanking as it writhed through the grass, and the chain-bearers, with
+their cabalistic refrain, "Stick!" "Stuck!" bowing down and rising up,
+as they ever and again drew it out taut to its extreme length between
+them.
+
+The spectators followed on either hand, plunging into the deeper
+forest, which, as it interposed before the cliffs, cut off the view
+of the wide landscape, that seemed lifted into purer light and more
+transparent color by the contrast with the bosky shadows as it
+disappeared, and again was vaguely glimpsed between the boles and
+hanging branches, and once more vanished, leaving the aspect of the
+world the bare breadth of the herder's trail through the laurel.
+
+Two of the men--shaggy of beard and of hair, and shabbier far of
+garb than the others--gazed at the proceeding with the eyes of deep
+wonderment and reluctant acceptance, as if it were some formula of
+necromancy which revolted credulity. They were denizens of a deeply
+secluded cove near by, lured hither by the report of the processioning,
+and looking for the first time upon the simple paraphernalia of
+land-surveying,--the chain, the Jacob's staff, and the compass; even
+the surveyor and the chain-bearers were only the verification of wild
+rumors that had reached them. They were not unintelligent; they were
+only uninformed. The knowledge and experience of the commonplace
+process which the others possessed might hardly be considered an
+adequate set-off against such fresh and illimitable capacities of
+impressionability. Few people can so enjoy a day of sight-seeing as
+fell to the share of these denizens of "Painter Flats."
+
+Kenniston lingered for a few minutes, still sweeping with the
+field-glass the rugged ravine where Wild Duck Falls gleamed white,
+swift, amidst the deep, dusky green shadows: disappearing beneath the
+approaching gray cloud as its filmy gauzes expanded and floated into
+the larger spaces of the ravine, then piercing its draperies with a
+keen, glimmering shaft of white light, and vanishing again as the cloud
+thickened and condensed in its passage through the narrowing limits
+of the gorge. He turned away at last, the glass still in his hand,
+following hard on the steps of the surveyor, marking all the successive
+stages of the proceedings with a keen, alert, inimical observation. He
+wore a grim, set face, and his manner expressed a sustained abeyance,
+watchfulness, and a dangerous readiness.
+
+The landmarks were such as were easily common to any line. When the
+deed had called for four hundred and fifteen poles northwest to a white
+oak-tree, the chain-bearers had brought up, without a link amiss, at
+the gnarled foot of one of a cluster of such trees. A half-obliterated
+indentation upon it the surveyor accepted as the specific mark of
+identification, although others considered it an old "blaze" indicating
+an ancient trail, and Kenniston declared it merely a "cat-face." Again,
+the line, diverging, ran due north eight hundred poles to a stake
+in the middle of Panther Creek. The chain found the middle easily
+enough, though not the stake, which was, of course, in the nature of
+things, a temporary mark, and liable to be carried away in a freshet,
+or broken down by floating logs or other obstruction. The stream,
+however, kept an almost perfectly straight line--barring the slight
+sinuous meandering inherent to a natural channel which did not affect
+the general direction--for more than a mile through a grassy glade
+almost free of undergrowth, purling along under the shadow of the great
+trees and rocks. Thus, if the previous markings were correct, this of
+necessity depended upon them. The surveyor had a stub driven down, in
+place of the missing stake, in the middle of the stream, re-marking the
+line according to the law. Once more the chain-bearers, dripping like
+spaniels from their excursions into the water, began their series of
+genuflections and their ringing outcry, "Stick!" "Stuck!"
+
+All had observed Kenniston curiously during the halt, and the doubt
+and discussion as to the missing mark, expectant of some wrathful
+demonstration. If he did not coincide with the surveyor's opinion, he
+made no sign. In one sense, his demeanor balked them of the amusement
+which they had ravenously looked for. He made no protest, which,
+reasonable or unreasonable, they would have relished. His attitude,
+his face, his words, were constrained to a stern neutrality and
+inexpressiveness. He seemed only grimly watchful, waiting. The change
+itself afforded food for speculation, an entertainment more subtle
+and of keener interest than his previous outbreaks, although less
+alluring to the maliciously mirthful spectator. It seemed, however, to
+disconcert the surveyor more than active interference and aggression.
+Submissiveness is so abnormal a trait in a man of Kenniston's type
+that its symptoms indicate a serious moral crisis. Now and again, the
+surveyor, pausing to mark the "out," appealed directly to him. To be
+sure, the remark was in relation to the weather, for the clouds were
+gathering overhead, a slate-tinted canopy, seeming close upon the
+summits of the tall trees, till a white lace-like film scudding across
+it in contrary currents of the wind served to show, by the force of
+comparison, the true distance of the higher vapors. Kenniston had only
+monosyllables for reply, and the man of the compass could but mop his
+brow, and listen anxiously to the distant rumblings of thunder, and
+wish this troublous piece of work well over, and take his bearings
+anew. When the call in the deed for a girdled and dead poplar-tree was
+found to have no correspondent mark on the face of the earth, being,
+as he observed, a mark bound to be obliterated in the course of time,
+since the tree was dead when the deed, which was of remote date, was
+written, Kenniston's silence had evidently an unnerving effect.
+
+"Why, look here," the surveyor broke out in self-defense at length. "I
+ain't got no sort o' interest in the line except to run it according
+ter the calls an' the compass. I'll git my fees, whether or no. 'Tain't
+nuthin' ter me which gits the most lan', you or Cap'n Tems."
+
+As Kenniston still continued silent, he looked appealingly at Cap'n
+Lucy, and, receiving no encouragement, set his teeth, addressed himself
+to his work, and communed thenceforward with naught more responsive
+than his Jacob's staff.
+
+But what, alack, had befallen Cap'n Lucy? Did ever a gamecock, that
+had never so much as felt his adversary's gaff, drop his feathers so
+suddenly? He was all at once old, tired, anxious, troubled. He tugged
+along at the rear of the party, lagging and flagging as he had never
+done on certain forced marches that had seemed a miracle of endurance.
+For Cap'n Lucy's frame had been upborne by his spirit in those ordeals,
+and now that ethereal valiance had deserted him. For what mystery was
+this? The moving of the monument of boundary "known as the Big Hollow
+Boulder"--he thought of it thus for the first time without the sneer
+of inscrutable offense which the rotund phrasing had occasioned--had,
+instead of stripping him of his possessions, resulted in throwing much
+land, which he doubted not belonged to his neighbor, within his own
+lines. That Kenniston had himself moved the corner landmark or connived
+at the commission of this felony, if not otherwise preposterous, was
+thus rendered absolutely incredible. But who, then, could have moved
+it? When? How? For what unimaginable reason? How strange that he should
+have discovered the change! And what mad freak of fate was it that it
+should be he, he himself, who should profit by it, acquiring the legal
+title to hundreds of acres at Kenniston's expense? Cap'n Lucy was
+an honest man, and the thought made him gasp. Had it been possible,
+he would at that moment have flung all the Great Smoky Mountains at
+Kenniston's feet. No recantation was too bitter, no renunciation was
+too complete, rather than be suspected, with any show of reason, as
+he had suspected Kenniston. Not that he cared for the groundless
+suspicion, but for its justification. This consideration summoned his
+tardy policy. He must needs have time to think. Were he bluntly to
+declare the corner-stone to have been moved, it might seem to criminate
+himself; for albeit the line was running to his advantage here, who
+could say how its divergences might affect his possessions lower down
+on the mountain? "Windin' an' a-twistin' like the plumb old tarnation
+sarpient o' hell!" Cap'n Lucy vigorously described it in a mutter to
+his beard.
+
+Moreover, even if the later results were also to his benefit, as it
+had been notoriously contrary to his wishes that the land should be
+processioned at all, it might seem that moving the boulder had been
+his scheme to thus thwart any definite establishment of the line of
+boundary,--and this was a felony.
+
+Cap'n Lucy experienced a sudden affection of the spine which seemed
+to him abnormal, and, at the moment, possibly fatal, so curious, so
+undreamed of heretofore, were its symptoms. A cold chill trembled along
+its fibres; responsive cold drops bedewed his forehead. His hand had
+lost its normal temperature, and was cold to the touch. For the first
+time in all his life Cap'n Lucy's nerves were made acquainted with
+the shock of fear. He did not identify it; he could not recognize it.
+He was spared this acute mortification. He only felt strangely ill
+and undecided and tremulous, and he doubted his survival. He began
+to wonder if Kenniston suspected aught. He no longer questioned the
+genuineness of his enemy's demeanor earlier in the day, when each
+unexpected divergence of the line had seemed by turns to perturb and
+to anger him. Cap'n Lucy noted the cessation of the protestations, the
+grimly set jaw, the smouldering fire of the eye, the attitude of tense
+expectancy and waiting. He wondered if Kenniston were "laying for" him
+now as he had been "laying for" Kenniston. He thought of the intention
+deferred from "out" to "out" to loudly proclaim his discovery of the
+removal of the corner landmark, of his relish of his enemy's fancied
+security in outwitting him. He had only given Kenniston a little line,
+a little more, as it were, that he might hang himself with it, and now,
+forsooth, this noose was at his own service.
+
+He felt a moderate and tempered gratulation that he had not been
+precipitate in the matter, that as yet no one knew of his discovery;
+but suddenly he remembered his ill-starred confidence to Luther. For
+the first time he marked his son's furtive, skulking, downcast manner.
+
+"Like a sheep-killin' dog!" said Cap'n Lucy to himself, in a towering
+rage. "What ef he do know it's been moved: did I move it?"
+
+He remembered, too, his reiterated allusions to the perambulatory
+boulder, and Kenniston's amazement, which then he had thought
+affectation, but which he now believed to be quite genuine. Were they
+the exciting cause, so to speak, of that grim air of abeyance and
+biding his time?
+
+"The boulder can't be put back," said Cap'n Lucy to himself, suddenly
+on the defensive. "Nobody could make out whar it kem from fust, 'kase
+it never lef' a trace on the rock; an' a dozen horse couldn't haul it
+up sech a steep slope. It mus' hev been blowed down by dam-i-nite."
+
+It was a fine illustration of a moral descent, impossible to be
+retraced; but Cap'n Lucy did not think of that. His mind was full of
+the complications of his position, the dangers of disclosure, and
+the impossibility to him of accepting the boundary line, thus taking
+possession of another man's land, even if the owner would compose
+himself to sleep upon his rights. Judging from Kenniston's looks, it
+was easily to be argued that he would prove very wide awake in this
+emergency.
+
+But for the changing weather signs the old man's altered demeanor might
+have encountered other notice than Kenniston's keen watchfulness.
+Now and again the thunder pealed among the mountain tops, and the
+slate-colored cloud had spread until it overhung all the visible world,
+when they once more drew so near to the verge of the precipice as to
+have glimpses of the densely wooded cove and the circling mountains.
+The ranges were all sombre gray or deeply purple, save far away, where
+some rift in the clouds admitted a skein of sunbeams suspended in
+fibrous effect over a distant slope that was a weird yellowish-green
+in this scant illumination which had fallen to its share, rendered
+more marked by the dull estate of its dun-tinted and purple compeers.
+Nearer at hand, the shadows were deepening momently in the forest.
+Once or twice, when the sharp blades of the lightnings cleft them, the
+lifeless bronze aisles of the woods sprang into a transient glare of
+brilliant green that was hardly less dazzling, and again the thunder
+pealed.
+
+Two or three of the mountaineers left the party, evidently with no
+mind to be drenched. A man with a hacking cough remained, animated by
+that indisposition to self-denial, that avidity of enjoyment, that
+determination to seize all which niggard life holds out, characteristic
+of a type of consumptive invalids. "'Tain't goin' ter rain," he
+declared buoyantly. It might seem that nothing less potent than powder
+and lead could wean from the sight of processioning the land the two
+denizens of Panther Flats. They patrolled every step that the surveyor
+took. Whenever he paused, they came up and stared, fascinated, and at
+close quarters, at the Jacob's staff. They counted the chains from
+"out" to "out." As one of them observed to the other, he "was just
+beginning to get the hang of the thing." He could keep under shelter at
+a more convenient season.
+
+A sudden flash that seemed to pierce the very brain, so did it
+outdazzle the capacity of vision, a simultaneous deafening detonation,
+beneath which the mountains appeared to quake and to cry out with
+a terrible voice, while again and again the echoes repeated the
+thunderous menace, and then all the air was permeated by a swift
+electrical illumination, visibly transient, but so instantly succeeded
+by a similar effect that it seemed permanent,--in this weird glare the
+surveyor bent once more to take sight.
+
+"Old man sticks ter his contrac' like a sick kitten ter a hot brick!"
+cried Rodolphus Ross to one of the chain-bearers.
+
+But the chain-bearers had scant sympathy for the spectators, and
+visited upon the company in general their displeasure because of the
+reflections upon the "old man's" work, for which Kenniston alone was
+responsible.
+
+"Whyn't ye wear yer muzzle, 'Dolphus?" the one addressed retorted
+gruffly.
+
+Most of the party had now deserted the spectacle, in deference to a
+timely admonition as to the fate of the horses picketed on the "bald,"
+and their peculiar susceptibility to the fear of lightning. When the
+progress of the surveying again brought its adherents to the verge of
+the mountain and an extended outlook over the valley, there remained
+only the two men from Panther Flats, Rodolphus Ross, Cap'n Lucy, the
+chain-bearers, the surveyor, Luther, and the owner of the tract at
+whose instance the processioning was made.
+
+As they looked out over the gray valley, distinct under the sombre sky,
+as though only color, and not light, were withdrawn,--Cap'n Lucy's
+cabin, the inclosures, the grim black crags beyond, the smouldering
+mass of the ruins of the burnt building, even the shanties of the
+workmen in the gorge at the foot of the cliffs, all perfectly
+distinguishable in their varied interpretation of gray and brown and
+blurring unnamed gradations of neutral tones, all overhung by the
+storm-cloud definitely and darkly purplish-black, with now and again,
+one knew not how, fleeting lurid green reflections,--Kenniston, brisk
+and dapper, lightly tapping his spurred boots with his riding-whip,
+smiling debonairly, but with a dangerous sarcastic gleam in his fiery
+eyes, stepped up to the surveyor. He carried his field-glass in one
+hand.
+
+"Now, if you will come a few paces this way,--and you, colonel," in
+parenthesis to poor Cap'n Lucy,--"and use your telescope, you are
+obliged to see that if you run out the line seventeen hundred poles
+to the north, according to the deed, you will go beyond the site of
+the hotel. I seem to have built my house on the colonel's land. It was
+_your_ house that was destroyed, colonel. Let me beg you to accept
+my condolences,--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+A flash brighter than all that had preceded it, and his satiric
+laughter was lost in the roll and the reverberation of the thunder.
+A sudden darkening overspread the landscape, like a visible
+thickening of the clouds; the form of a horse darted along the verge
+of the precipice, so swift, so gigantic, defined against the green
+suffusions of that purple-black storm-cloud, that it seemed like the
+materialization of the hero of some equine fable. A wild cry went up
+that the horses had broken loose, and were stampeding through the
+woods. A terrible wrenching, riving sound followed another flash,
+and they could see a stricken tree on the slope below, in the instant
+before the blinding descent of the torrents. The wind rose with a wild,
+screaming cry; the forests bent and writhed; no one of the party could
+discern his neighbor's face; and, despite the pluck of the surveyor,
+the processioning of the Kenniston tract remained unfinished.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XIII.
+
+
+Cap'n Lucy enjoyed in his own family an immunity from interference,
+criticism, and filial insurgency that was truly patriarchal. His word
+was law; his every thought was wisdom; all his dealings embodied the
+fullest expression of justice. Until his unlucky disclosure to Luther
+of his discovery of the strange removal of the Big Hollow Boulder,
+and the interpretation he placed upon it, imputing to Kenniston a
+crime of such importance, involving consequences so grave, his son had
+never entertained a moment's doubt of the sufficiency of his prudence,
+the absolute infallibility of his judgment, the integrity of all his
+prejudices, notwithstanding his arbitrary temper, his high-handed
+methods, and his frequent precipitancy. Such remonstrance as ever was
+ventured upon usually emanated from Adelicia, in the interest of her
+pacific proclivities; or to sue uncle Lucy's clemency for some object
+of his most righteous displeasure; or to prevail upon him to blindly
+consider some untoward chance a blessing in disguise. Now and then,
+too, she indulged in some solicitude lest the affluence of his courage
+should lead him into danger. But to his own children "dad" had always
+seemed more than capable of coping with all the forces of nature,
+animate and inanimate; and as the day of the processioning of the land
+wore on, Julia listened, with her silent smile of sarcastic comment,
+to Adelicia's monologue of argument of alternate fears and reassurance
+for uncle Lucy's sake. First, lest Mr. Kenniston succeed in unjustly
+wresting some of his land from him. "But," she declared buoyantly, "the
+surveyor won't let him!" Then, lest a personal collision ensue, to her
+bellicose relative's injury. "But uncle Lucy ain't been often tackled;
+ennybody kin see he'd hev a mighty free hand in a fight." And again she
+was reduced to fear simply that things in general might fall out to the
+magnate's dissatisfaction. "But uncle Lucy's been mighty mad a heap o'
+times before, an' 'tain't set him back none," she argued blithely. And
+so the atmosphere within cleared as the sky without darkened, and the
+domestic industries went forward apace.
+
+It was during one of the deceptive withdrawals of the lowering
+storm-cloud, revealing great expanses of blue sky, when the sunshine
+was a-flicker once more over the landscape, albeit somewhat wan and
+tremulous, and a wind had sprung up, faint and short of breath, and
+disposed to lulls and sighs, but still setting mists and clouds astir,
+that Julia went forth upon an errand some distance up the Cove. It had
+chanced that a hen, with the preposterous hopefulness of the species,
+had gone to "setting" in the orchard upon an unremunerative assemblage
+of fallen apples, in default of more appropriate material; for, in
+ignorance of the fowl's intention, Adelicia had fried the last eggs
+for breakfast. Her momentary dismay was dispelled by the recollection
+that Mrs. Larrabee had promised her a "settin' of special an percise
+tur-r-key aigs," and, equipping Julia with a basket, she sent her forth
+to claim this pledge.
+
+But in lieu of the hospitable welcome and the eager fulfillment of
+the promise, the reminder of which Mrs. Larrabee would have regarded
+in the light of a courtesy and a favor, Julia encountered at the door
+of the queer little house Henrietta Timson, her snuffbrush, her small
+unlighted eyes, her narrow discontented face, and her little brief
+authority oppressively in evidence.
+
+"Waal, I do declar'," she said, regarding Julia sourly, when the errand
+was made known. "I dunno what Sist' Lar'bee means,"--for Mrs. Timson
+was unfailing in the appellation of church-membership, and enjoyed no
+closer relation to Mrs. Larrabee. "She done gone off a-pleasurin' an'
+a-jauntin', an' lef' me hyar with this whole houseful ter 'tend ter,
+an' ter work fur, an' ter feed, an' ter mend, an' the neighbors ter
+pervide with aigs--an' tur-r-key aigs at that!"
+
+Julia Tems's experience of life had been crude and scanty and
+monotonous. She had lived the successive uneventful years since her
+infancy at the little cabin down in the Cove in the humble domestic
+routine, without education of any sort, except perchance such as might
+be gleaned from the sermon of a stray circuit rider; without the
+opportunity of observation; with the simplest, most untutored, most
+limited association. It was to be doubted if she knew a score of people
+in the world. But this was her first encounter with discourtesy.
+
+She flushed scarlet under the shade of her brown sunbonnet, not with
+anger, but with shame: she was ashamed for Mrs. Timson. She hardly
+felt the affront to herself at first; the flout at the proprieties
+in the abstract nullified for the moment all personal consideration.
+She was not conscious of a retrograde movement, for her instinct was
+to terminate the interview. She found herself murmuring, "It's jes'
+ez well,--jes' ez well," in an apologetic cadence which would have
+befitted Mrs. Timson's voice, and moving backward continuously, in her
+eager haste to be gone. Rather than prolong the ordeal for a moment she
+could with philosophy have beheld every hen that had ever owned the
+Tems sway in the grotesque catastrophe of patiently seeking to hatch
+apples.
+
+But Henrietta Timson had hardly anticipated routing the invader so
+promptly. Noting Julia's eagerness to be gone, she perversely thwarted
+it by stepping briskly down out of the door, remembering to put her
+hand to her side, with a suffering look and an affected limp.
+
+"I 'lowed ez I hed _hed_ tribulation, but I never seen none sech
+ez now. Sist' Lar'bee gone,--tuck one o' my chil'n with her!" She shook
+her head with a dolorous accusation that might have become her if
+"Sist' Lar'bee" had been a kidnapper, and if the hero of the rickets
+had gone for aught but to insure being properly fed and provided for.
+"Jasper Lar'bee's disappeared; an' old man Haight I do b'lieve hev gone
+deranged,--sets an' cusses the Lost Time mine all day; an' Jerushy's
+husband's drunk,--'pears like a rat-hole, ye can't fill him up;
+an'--hev ye seen Jasper Lar'bee down yer ways?"
+
+"Not fur a long time," faltered Julia, still retreating a few steps at
+intervals down the rocky, ledgy dooryard.
+
+"Waal, I'll tell him ez ye war hyar, an' 'lowed it 'peared like a long
+time sence ye seen him," said Mrs. Timson perversely, with the air
+of taking a message. "An'"--her small eyes narrowed--"ef I find enny
+tur-r-key aigs, I'll let ye know."
+
+She looked with a sour smile after the girl's light figure, for Julia
+was now fairly routed.
+
+"I'll let ye know, too," she muttered, "ez we ain't got none o' Mis'
+Lar'bee's slack-twisted ways hyar now,--givin' away a settin' of
+tur-r-key aigs, I say! Ef I find enny tur-r-key aigs, I'll send 'em
+down ter the store ter trade. I be mos' out o' snuff now."
+
+Then she meditated swiftly upon her theory that Mrs. Larrabee had
+reasons of her own for all her good works; that they were subtle
+investments, as it were, sure of a return in better kind, and
+quadrupled in value. She could evolve no view in which the promised
+"settin' of tur-r-key aigs" could figure as assets save for a general
+conciliatory purpose; and then she remembered that Cap'n Lucy was
+a widower. A sneering smile stole over her face, arrested suddenly
+by a grave afterthought; if for this reason the family were worth
+conciliating for Mrs. Larrabee's sake, surely more for her own. "Lord
+knows, I need a house, an' home, an' land, an' horse critters, an'
+cows, an' sheep, an' hawgs--he hev jes' two childern, an' them growed,
+an' that niece gal could be turned out" (she hastily went over the list
+of Cap'n Lucy's earthly gear, omitting only that important possession,
+himself)--"a sight more 'n Mis' Lar'bee do, ennyhows."
+
+With a sudden change of heart, she ran to the road, holding her hand
+to the level of her eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun; but
+look as she might, there was not a flitting vestige to be seen of the
+dark brickdust red, the color of the dress which Julia wore. She called
+again and again without response. She thought the girl must surely have
+heard; then she reassured herself by the reflection that the wind was
+blowing a gale, and doubtless the sound of her voice went far afield.
+
+Its shrill pipe might have been easily enough distinguishable to ears
+that would heed, although the surges of the wind beat loud on every
+rock and slope. Julia took angry note as she went swiftly on and on,
+her skirts flying, her bonnet blown back, her heart hot with wrath
+against Mrs. Timson, against herself, against Adelicia who had sent her
+on so ill starred an errand. Her eyes and her gesture were singularly
+like Cap'n Lucy's, as, threading the narrow path above the precipice,
+she paused and flung the empty basket into the wilderness below,
+and then walked on less swiftly, her tense nerves relaxed by this
+ebullition of rage. Like Cap'n Lucy, too, she felt the better for it,
+albeit she realized as he never would have done that the basket would
+be sorely missed at home. With the riddance she somehow discharged her
+mind of the thought of the Larrabee threshold, of her inhospitable
+reception there, of the whole ignoble episode. She looked out with a
+sort of enjoyment at the muster of the clouds, the gathering of rank
+after rank; ever and again her unaffrighted eyes followed the swift
+yellow lightnings darting through the gray masses, and she seemed to
+be just opposite them as she stood on the verge of the precipice on
+the mountain side. Lower down on the wooded slope across the narrow
+valley, she could see the track of the wind, which never touched those
+silent, vaporous congregations, motionless, or coming with contrary
+currents from opposite directions. The trees below bent and sprang
+back into place, and she could hear the sibilant shouting of the
+leaves. It was like a myriad of shrill tiny voices, but they combined
+into a massive chorus. The growths hard by were adding a refrain; the
+wind was winning new territory as it came up the mountain. She could
+see far away a cloud torn into fringes, and presently the rain was
+falling. It was coming nearer and nearer; she would meet it long
+before she could reach home. She quickened her steps at the thought.
+Sometimes the growths intervened on both sides of the path, and shut
+out the observation of the coming storm. Whenever she emerged, she
+noted the darkening aspect. More than once the thunder shook the very
+mountains. Suddenly, a searching, terrible illumination, the rising
+of the tumultuous wind, a frightful succession of peals, brought her
+to a pause. She hardly dared to face a storm like this, shelterless,
+and the store at the Lost Time mine was close at hand. Nevertheless
+she hesitated for a moment. Cap'n Lucy's well-worn jest as to the
+"perfessional widower" was hardly so funny to her as to him. She stood,
+disconcerted, conscious, averse, in the teeth of the storm, her dress
+fluttering, her bonnet tossed back from her shining coiled hair, her
+eyes bright and wide and wistful, and the breath almost blown back
+from her lips. Then she noted suddenly the portal of the Lost Time
+mine. She did not pause to reflect; to dread the long, darkening,
+solitary afternoon in its dim recesses; to remember the terrors of
+its traditions, and what ghastly presence she might meet, and what
+sepulchral voices she might hear, in the awful isolations of the coming
+storm, when all the laws that govern the outside world seemed set at
+naught; for if ever the supernatural should break bounds, it might be
+at a place like this. She ran against the wind as swiftly as she might;
+skirted the water on the stones in the channel at the mouth of the
+cave, now more deeply submerged than their wont, for the stream was
+rising visibly, its underground tributaries already fed by the rains
+falling elsewhere; felt with a shiver the chill of the place, as the
+high, grim, rough-hewn rocks towered above her head; climbed up on the
+inner ledges; and as the first floodlike outbreak of the torrents came
+down with a crash of thunder, and a glare of lightning, and a wild
+shrieking of swirling winds, she sat down, high and dry, and drew a
+breath of relief.
+
+The next instant her heart gave a great plunge, and then seemed to
+stand still. She was not alone. A man in a further recess appeared
+suddenly, approaching cautiously. He evidently had not seen her. Her
+entrance into the place had preceded his appearance only by a few
+seconds. He was watching the rain with intense interest. She would have
+said that he had been apprised of it by the rise of the water within.
+He bestowed an eager, careful, calculating scrutiny upon the stream
+below the high shadowy point where he stood; then he looked toward
+the portal where the descending sheets of rain cut off all glimpse of
+the world without. He was turning away, with the furtive, skulking,
+cautious air that had characterized his approach, when his eyes fell
+upon her. He dropped out of sight as if he had been shot.
+
+She sat there, silent, trembling, her eyes fixed upon the spot where
+he had disappeared, her heart beating wildly. She heard the flow of
+the stream below, its volume and momentum continually increasing, and
+the foaming turmoil where the currents met the dash of the rain at the
+outlet of the mine; now and again she was conscious that lightning
+flashed through the gray and white descending torrents without, and lit
+up this dreary subterranean recess with its uncanny glare for a space,
+till distance annulled its power, and she heard the thunder roar. But
+she did not withdraw her eyes, and she wondered if he had known her in
+that short moment as she had recognized him. For it was Jack Espey.
+
+It seemed so long while she sat there, waiting for some sign, or token,
+or further intimation, that she might have thought the apparition
+a mere illusion, had she ever heard enough of the tricks of the
+imagination to learn to doubt her senses. She was trembling still,
+although her voice was calm enough as at last she called his name.
+
+"Jack Espey!" the echoes cried out, as promptly as if it were a
+familiar sound and long ago conned. They fell to silence gradually. She
+did not call again, but, with her slow and composed manner, she waited
+for him to answer.
+
+When he finally approached, apparently ascending an incline from depths
+below, he met her intent gaze fixed upon him; but she seemed to him as
+impassive and as unmoved of aspect as if this were a daily occurrence
+in her life.
+
+"I war in hopes ye didn't know me, Julia," he said, dully sad, as he
+came up near her.
+
+He stood leaning his elbow on one of the shelves of rock, looking up
+at her, mechanically shielding himself behind the jagged ledges from
+observation without, although it might seem naught could stand in the
+storm that raged beyond.
+
+His plight was forlorn. His clothes were worn and torn, and miry with
+clay; it adhered in flakes and smears to his long boots, incongruously
+spurred. His face was lined and white. His hat was pushed far back on
+his black hair, as of yore, and his long-lashed grayish-blue eyes had
+an appealing look which she had not seen before.
+
+"What fur ye wished I wouldn't know ye?"
+
+He looked hard at her. "'Kase it's dangersome. I'm a man hunted fur my
+life, I reckon. It's dangersome fur me, an' fur ye too, ter know I be
+hyar."
+
+"It's jes' ez well I ain't one of the skeery kind, then," said Julia
+hardily. "I be powerful glad I seen ye hyar."
+
+She seemed curiously unfamiliar to him in some sort. So alert had his
+faculties become in the suspense of jeopardy that this slight point
+perturbed him, until he bethought himself that he had hitherto heard
+her speak so seldom, and had observed her so little, that the very
+inflections of her voice were strange. It was of a different timbre
+from Adelicia's. It did not vibrate. It had a conclusive, flutelike
+quality, without a trailing sequence of resonance.
+
+"Waal, I 'lowed ez mos' ennybody mought be sorry ter see me in sech a
+fix as this," he said dolorously.
+
+The deliberate, impassive Julia was almost in haste to avert this
+apparent misconstruction. "Oh, I war glad ter view ye, 'kase a heap o'
+folks 'lowed ye couldn't hev got away 'thout yer horse, him bein' kilt,
+an' ez ye war a-lyin' in the laurel somewhar, dead, yit."
+
+She turned her head, and looked steadily at him. Her deep, dark,
+translucent eyes were full of shoaling lights of variant blue, like
+the heart of some great sapphire. The long, curling lashes flung a
+fibrous shadow on her cheek; its texture, as the light fell upon it,
+was so fine, so soft, its tints so fair, its curve so delicate. Her
+lips, chiseled like some triumph of ideal beauty, but that no sculpture
+could express their mobile sweetness, parted suddenly in her rare and
+brilliant smile.
+
+Many a man, under its glamours, might have taken heart of grace to be
+glad that he was alive; but Espey's face hardened.
+
+"'T would be jes' ez well, jes' ez well, lying dead in the laur'l,"
+he said bitterly. Then, with an afterthought, "Let them folks stay
+'feared. They won't spile thar health quakin' an' shudderin' 'bout
+me," he added cynically. As he marked her expression change, her smile
+vanish, he realized the necessity to please, to propitiate. He knew
+her so slightly; his temper must not be too savage and surly with so
+complete a stranger, and perhaps earn her antagonism, especially since
+he and his refuge were at her mercy.
+
+"Course," he went on, with a clumsy effort at amends, "I don't mean
+Ad'licia. Ye knowed we-uns war keepin' comp'ny?"
+
+She nodded gravely.
+
+"I know Ad'licia hev quaked an' shuddered 'bout me a heap mo' 'n I be
+wuth," he added.
+
+Was the day darker outside, or how was quenched that subtle brightness
+of aspect that had made the girl's face radiant? It was beautiful
+still, that statuesque contour, but as chill and unresponsive as if
+indeed its every line had been wrought with a chisel. The smooth
+hair, with its sheen of silken fineness, caught the light on its
+coiled and plaited chestnut-tinted strands. One hand rested on her
+brown sunbonnet, laid on the ledge of the gray rock, and she leaned
+her weight upon it. Her head and her fair complexion--so fair that it
+transmitted to the surface an outline of the blue veins in her temple
+and throat, and even her eyelids--and the roseate fluctuations in her
+cheek were very distinct against the yellow clay of the bank of earth
+behind her. Her little rough low-quarter shoes and the brown stockings
+showed a trifle beneath the skirt of the brick-dust-colored homespun
+dress she wore, as they were placed on a boulder that stood out of the
+tawny rushing stream below.
+
+He noted the change. He could not account for it other than as a
+vicarious resentment.
+
+"I ain't faultin' Ad'licia," he said, more emphatically. "She war
+tormented powerful 'bout me, warn't she?"
+
+"A-fust," said Julia veraciously. Her voice was as inexpressive as her
+eyes. "But Ad'licia is one ez always hopes fur the best."
+
+He drew back with a sudden recoil. "Waal, now, by the Lord!" he cried
+furiously, "she's welcome ter her hope! Settin' thar in the house,
+warm, an' dry, an' fed, an' clean,"--he looked down with a sort of
+repulsion upon his miry garments,--"a-hopin' fur the bes', an' makin'
+herself mighty comfort'ble an' contented, an' _me_ hyar, freezin'
+in this cold hole, an' mighty nigh starvin', in rags an' mis'ry, an'
+sick, an' sorry, an' lonesome enough ter die, an' shet out o' the
+light! My God, ef I warn't 'feared o' my life, I'd let the off'cer take
+me! The State hain't got no sech term o' imprisonment ez this!"
+
+Julia was leaning forward, each line of her impassive face replete with
+meaning, reflecting his every sentiment, but with the complement of
+sympathy and acquiescence and responsive anger in his anger.
+
+He turned suddenly, lifting his arm with a scornful gesture toward
+the low vault with its dank, earthy odor, the ledges of barren,
+inhospitable rock, the cold stream rushing forth from the darkness
+within, seen in an appalling blackness adown the tunnel, against which
+his white-lined face looked whiter, his form taller in his closely
+belted garb and with his long boots drawn up to the knees. He waved his
+arm as if to include it all. "An' Ad'licia,--she hopes for the bes'."
+
+He broke out into a harsh laugh, which the echoes repeated so
+promptly, and with apparently so malignant an intent, that he checked
+it hastily, and the sound died on his colorless lips; but far down the
+black tunnel something uncanny seemed to fall to laughing suddenly, and
+as suddenly to break off; and again a further voice still was lifted in
+weird mirth, and the laughter failed midway.
+
+He waited for silence, and then he leaned against a higher ledge near
+which she was sitting, and, resting his elbow on it, looked at her once
+more, wondering how he might best revert to his object of propitiation.
+He was remembering that Adelicia had told him how prone was Julia to
+notice slights, and how quick to take offense. He felt hardly equal
+to the effort of repairing the damage of his outbreak against her
+relative, so spent was his scanty strength by the violence of his anger
+and his agitation. He could only look at her silently, more forlorn,
+more pallid, more appealing, than before.
+
+"I oughtn't ter think hard o' Ad'licia," he said at last. "Nobody else
+would, I know. Would they?" he added.
+
+For, with Julia's silent habit, conversation was somewhat difficult
+without a direct appeal. It was a direct appeal. She liked to remember
+that afterward.
+
+"Waal," she said, slowly and judicially, as if weighing matters
+submitted for arbitrament, "I 'low Ad'licia treated ye right mean, fust
+an' las'."
+
+"Why?" he rejoined, in genuine interest, his face resuming its normal
+expression before flight and hardship and darkness and loneliness and
+fear and privation had so marked it.
+
+"'Kase," she went on in that soft, unfamiliar voice that the echoes
+seemed hardly to follow, so complete, so indivisible, was every
+flutelike tone, "she oughter married ye whenst ye axed her--ef she
+liked ye."
+
+A faint surprise was dawning in his eyes.
+
+"Cap'n Lucy wouldn't gin his cornsent," he said succinctly.
+
+"I reckon he 'lowed 't war his jewty ter say no. But ef Ad'licia hed
+married ye ennyhows, do ye reckon dad would hev let that leetle fice
+o' the law, 'Dolphus Ross, jail _his_ nephew-in-law 'kase a man
+he fought in Tanglefoot Cove _mought_ die ef he didn't hev the
+industry ter git well? Naw, sir: ye'd hev hed dad an' Luther fur
+backers, an' they air toler'ble stiff backers, fur enny man. Dad would
+hev fixed a way out'n it fur ye, fur sure, count o' Ad'licia. She war a
+turr'ble fool not ter marry ye, an' I tole her so."
+
+The surprise, the doubt, and at last the conviction successively
+expressed in Espey's face might have been easily discriminated by one
+skilled in reading the human physiognomy. But Julia possessed no such
+craft, and when he spoke she appreciated no change in his manner,
+albeit it was not guarded; for he did not conceive it necessary to
+closely screen the discovery of a secret of which he perceived that
+Julia was herself unconscious.
+
+"Julia," he said appealingly, "ye see how I be hunted an' harried, an'
+nobody keers fur me. Jes' let the folks shudder an' quake fur a while
+longer 'thout knowin' what's kem o' me. Don't tell nobody ez ye hev
+seen me hyar."
+
+She was gazing out at the steely lines of the rain curtain, so dense as
+to be like a veritable fabric, as it swayed in the wind at the rugged
+mouth of the mine, and its foaming white fringes that seemed to trail
+upon the brown water where the continuous downfall splashed into its
+currents. The peculiarly clear, colorless light of a gray day, which,
+in its adequacy for all the purposes of mere vision, would seem to
+point the munificence and splendid lavishness of the sun's bestowals
+in the interests of beauty and growths and the gladdening of the heart
+of man, was upon her face, which responded with a sort of subdued
+glister like marble. Her eyes and the shadowy long black lashes were
+meditatively downcast. She was evidently reviewing the course of action
+which she had just sketched for him, for Adelicia, for Cap'n Lucy. He
+did not hold her undivided attention, and he realized that it was only
+a mechanical assent as she nodded, her face still reflective, absorbed.
+
+"Not even Cap'n Lucy," he urged eagerly. "Not Jasper Lar'bee"--He
+paused suddenly.
+
+The word seemed to arrest, to enchain, her elusive attention. The
+delicate roseate tints of her fair complexion deepened from throat
+to brow; her cheek was vividly red. She was remembering the Larrabee
+threshold, the greeting she had encountered there, the grotesque
+indignity of Henrietta Timson's affronts. But hers was a reticent
+habit, and she had a reserved nature. She only said, conclusively,
+slowly, "Ye may be sure I won't tell Jasper Lar'bee."
+
+Somehow Espey felt a sense of loss; and he had so little to lose,
+poor fellow, that albeit her affection was unsought, uncared for,
+unsuspected till a moment ago, the doubt of it afflicted him as if his
+heart were cruelly rifled. That flush at Larrabee's name! To him it
+was conclusive. He had no other indication by which to judge. He had
+mistaken her sympathy, her idle talk; she was wont to talk so seldom
+that it was not surprising that he hardly knew how to take her words;
+he knew so little of her and her mental processes. She cared for
+Larrabee, not for him. Nobody cared for him. And Adelicia was hoping
+for the best.
+
+"This be a mighty pore shelter an' home an' hope," he said, grimly
+looking about him. "I hed prayed I mought crope inter a hole ter hide
+or die, like a hunted fox or bar or painter be 'lowed ter do sometimes.
+That didn't 'pear ter me much fur a man ter ax of the Lord."
+
+He stood off from the rock for an instant, his big white wool hat in
+one hand, the other in his leather belt where that formidable array of
+weapons still gleamed. His head was thrown back from the loose collar
+of his blue-checked shirt; his straight hair was tossed from his brow;
+his gray eyes, scornfully bitter, surveyed the dripping walls,--so
+dark that in the recesses here and there clusters of bats hung head
+downward, dimly descried, awaiting the night,--the rugged obtrusion
+of rock through the clay, the chill, chill flowing of the brown
+water in the channel below, as ceaseless, as cold, as heedless, as
+relentless, as in the days of yore when it broke its allotted bounds,
+rose into alien hewn-out caverns, and flooded the mine, wrecking the
+humble industry of man, wresting away with its grasping currents two
+struggling human lives, and carrying not even a gruesome memory or
+token of its deeds upon its sleek waves out into the sunshine, and the
+free air, and the genial warmth of the upper world.
+
+"'Tain't much I hev axed,--this hole ter starve an' die in,--but mebbe
+it's too much!" Then, turning, with an eye alight, and a furious flush
+that made him look all at once well and strong and alert and reckless
+again, "But tell whar I be hid out--tell--tell who ye want! Tell
+ennybody--everybody! Cap'n Lucy! the sher'ff! Taft! Jasper Lar'bee!"
+
+And what miracle was this! The silent, impassive, reserved, reticent
+Julia fixed her eyes upon him for a moment, amazed, troubled, and then,
+as she suddenly comprehended, full of a keen but tender reproach. And
+until that moment he had not known how beautiful those much-vaunted
+eyes could be. The next they were full of tears, and Julia, leaning
+back against the wall behind her, had burst into sobs.
+
+"Tell! Why, Jack Espey, how kin ye think I could be made to tell whar
+ye be hid out?" She turned her head to look at him again with hurt and
+indignant amazement. "I'd die first! Powder an' lead"--she hesitated
+for hyperbole that might express this impossibility--"all the powder
+and lead the men shot away in the war times couldn't git a word from me
+o' what I hev fund out this evenin'!"
+
+"I know it!" he protested, coming up close to her, as she sat on the
+ledge. "I oughtn't ter hev said that, but ye see, Julia, I feel so
+s'picious, sometimes; I be so hunted an' harried, an' nobody keers fur
+me or whar I be--'ceptin' the sher'ff." He lifted his eyebrows, with a
+fleering laugh at his own forlorn estate.
+
+"I keer," said Julia stoutly. "I won't tell nobody whar ye be hid
+out,--not even dad, nor Luther, nor nobody, 'ceptin' Ad'licia."
+
+He gasped in haste for utterance. He caught at her hand as if he were
+drowning,--as if she might be gone before he could stay her for a word.
+
+"Not Ad'licia! Oh my Lord, no! Jes' leave her a-hopin' fur the bes'!"
+He had hardly realized how deeply he had resented Adelicia's optimistic
+resignation to his fate. His sarcastic laugh was broken off halfway in
+his eager resumption of his argument. "Ad'licia mought feel obligated
+ter tell Cap'n Lucy, an' 'bide by his word. With her a-hopin' fur
+the bes', an' Cap'n Lucy's foolin' long o' his jewty ter his orphin
+niece, I'll git the sher'ff's bracelets locked round my wrists; an'
+the jail ain't ez sightly a place ez this beautisome spot. I be a man
+fur myself, an' I can't ondertake ter cut out all my cloth with Cap'n
+Lucy's scissors. Ad'licia's contented. Leff her be! She'll hope fur the
+bes' with a twenty horse power."
+
+He did not remember Mrs. Larrabee's astute remark in the advice she
+had given him to the effect that "perlitin' round the t'other gal
+wouldn't go so hard with him," if she were really a "gyardin lily" for
+beauty. He only felt vaguely that he had not heretofore appreciated the
+radiance of the face that Julia bent upon him; he did not understand
+that it was the moment, the unrealized thought, which so embellished
+it, as she said cogitatingly, "Naw, 't won't do ter tell Ad'licia. I
+won't tell her."
+
+"See ter it that ye don't," he sternly urged her. And once more he
+was impressed with the idea that he really had not before known how
+singularly beautiful she was.
+
+"Ye see, Julia," he said, lowering his voice confidentially, "I can't
+git away, 'kase I got no horse; an' ef I hed one, I hev got no money,
+an' I'd jes' be tuk somewhar, now that the folks hev got sot onto
+the trail of me. So I 'lowed I'd hide hyarabout till I git news from
+Tanglefoot ez that man hev got better. Ye see I be hopin' fur the bes',
+too," he added, with a pathetic smile. "It's all I kin do."
+
+"How do ye git suthin' ter eat?" she asked suddenly.
+
+Espey looked embarrassed. "Oh, I makes out," he said evasively. "I gits
+out at night sometimes."
+
+She assumed that he hunted or trapped at night for provisions. He noted
+that she did not argue nor contend, as Adelicia was wont to do. She
+accepted his arrangements as intrinsically the best.
+
+"I could fetch ye suthin' wunst in a while," she suggested.
+
+He looked aghast at the idea.
+
+"Don't ye do that, Julia," he said warningly. "It mought git ye or
+Cap'n Lucy liable ter the law. Don't ye do it. I'll make out somehows."
+Then seeing her reluctance, "Ef I need ennything, or want ter git
+communication with folks outside, I'll let ye know. I'll--I'll put this
+hyar pipe in a nick in them rocks, jes' west, clost inter the freestone
+spring nigh yer dad's house."
+
+She listened, breathless, and beamed with delight at the feasibility of
+this plan.
+
+"An' whenever I pass hyar," she said, with wide, illumined eyes and a
+flickering flush of excitement,--"an' I'll kem frequent,--I'll drap
+wild flowers in the road. An' ye will see 'em, an' know I hev been by
+an' been a-studyin' 'bout you-uns. An' that will be plumb comp'ny fur
+ye."
+
+"'Twill that!" he cried. His eyes were soft and bright and dewy.
+Somehow it seemed to bind him--that chain of flowers--to the fair world
+without, which had been slipping away, away forever.
+
+He turned, and looked out toward the rocky egress of the cave as if he
+almost expected to see already a cardinal flower flaming in the sun on
+the gray rock.
+
+There was no sun. The rain fell, dense still,--dense enough, doubtless,
+to preclude all observation from without; but from among the shadows
+within his practiced eyes descried through the shifting, shimmering
+veil, now white and gray in shoaling effects, all blown aslant by the
+wind, a canvas-covered wagon lumbering by, albeit for the rush of the
+stream and the fall of the torrent she could not hear the slow creak of
+its wheels. His heart was a-flutter, although he knew that the danger
+of observation was past, as the swaying white hood had disappeared.
+
+"That's 'Renzo Taft," he remarked. "He's gittin' back late from the
+cross-roads. I reckon the storm cotch him an' kep' him."
+
+He hesitated. Then, with a sort of falter of humiliation, "I reckon I'd
+better go back ter my hidin' place, Julia. The rain's slackening so
+somebody passin' mought view me. Ye jes' set hyar right quiet an' wait
+fur the rain ter hold up."
+
+He turned away; then looked back over his shoulder.
+
+"Good-by," he said.
+
+The girl's luminous eyes dwelt smilingly upon him.
+
+"Good-by," she answered softly.
+
+He took his way along the ledges above the treacherous stream to that
+blacker recess where the way deflected and the light failed; he turned
+once more.
+
+"I'll be a-watchin' fur them flowers," he said.
+
+Her smile itself was like a bloom; he, unaware, treasured the
+recollection. He seemed to reflect it in some sort. He was smiling
+himself, as he went down into those sunless depths.
+
+He could not forbear partly retracing his way once, and looking at
+her as she sat, quite still, gazing out with her eyes of summer and
+sunshine upon the rain, and the dreary, sad, tear-stained aspect of the
+world without, whence sounded the sobbing of the troubled wind.
+
+When he came yet another time, the rain had ceased, and she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XIV.
+
+
+Lorenzo Taft's arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed
+to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is
+true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that
+emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant
+an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a
+countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance
+with certain predatory suggestions,--on the contrary, finding in them
+its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued
+ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the
+great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath
+the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he
+began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances
+he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation
+of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into
+the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles,
+cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats,--the integrity of
+all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from
+the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his
+way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half
+submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he
+entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds
+with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim
+interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual,
+save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain
+asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing
+from the eaves. The wind rushed furiously in recurrent blasts against
+the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it
+bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake
+beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of
+the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards of
+the roof. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional
+drops fell a-sputteriug into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft
+herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool
+on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a
+state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of
+a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions
+of its simple furniture distinguishable,--the table with its blue
+ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old
+warping-bars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from
+peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft's precocity did not extend to weaving.
+A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so
+conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted
+some conference,--of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces
+of recent tears on the little girl's face, and a most depressed
+expression.
+
+"Whar's Copley? Whar's yer uncle Cop?" he demanded, looking hastily
+about the shadowy place.
+
+She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the
+knitting-needles through the ball of yarn.
+
+"He ain't hyar," she said, lifting reproachful eyes; "an' he ain't been
+hyar since ye been gone."
+
+He stared down at her in silent surprise.
+
+"Ye jes' went off an' lef' me an' Joe hyar by ourse'fs, an' we been
+mos' skeered ter death," she added, with a sob.
+
+A sudden apprehension crossed Taft's face.
+
+"I lef Cop hyar. Ain't he been in ter git his vittles?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Did ye call him in the store?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Mebbe he war in the barn."
+
+"I blowed the hawn fur him; he ain't eat a mite sence ye been gone."
+
+Taft turned hastily toward the door, his florid face paling. Then he
+turned back. "Whar's Joe?"
+
+"He hev runned away!" cried Sis, with a burst of sobs. "Las' night
+we-uns hearn sech a cur'ous hurrah--somewhar--I dunno--sech cur'ous
+talk an' hollerin' 'way down in the groun'--an'--an'--diggin'--an'"--
+
+He had paused, looking amazed at her. Then his face changed, with a
+sort of aghast certainty upon it. "Jes' some boys diggin' in the Lost
+Time mine," he urged, however, plausibly.
+
+"But--but"--she protested--"Joe, _he_ say, they--they
+air--_dead_."
+
+She looked at him, hoping for some sufficient adult denial of this
+terrible fantasy; but his face betokened only its confirmation, and she
+fell to shivering and sobbing afresh.
+
+"Whenst it got so turrible in the middle o' the night, Joe, he looked
+out'n the winder upsteers, an' the moon hed riz. An' he clomb down by
+the tree. He 'lowed he wouldn't bide no mo' an' listen. So he jes' skun
+the cat out'n the winder. He war 'feared."
+
+And once more she covered her face with her hands and wept.
+Nevertheless, between her fingers, as the tears trickled down them, she
+furtively surveyed him.
+
+"Wunst," she said tentatively, "I 'lowed 'twar revenuers. An' then I
+wisht 'twar. I hed ruther hev hearn _them_ 'n--'n--dead ones."
+
+His countenance did not change a muscle.
+
+She was now alarmed by her own temerity. In the long ordeal of solitude
+and fright she had lost control of her small nerves, or she would not
+have overstepped her habitual caution so far. "Revenuers arter what?"
+he demanded. His incidental, unconcerned manner reassured her.
+
+"Arter the 'wild-cat,' I reckon," she hazarded.
+
+He affected to consider the suggestion.
+
+"Some boys _mought_ be talkin' 'bout startin' a still down thar
+in the Lost Time mine. I'll roust 'em out mighty quick, ef they do! Ef
+thar's enny whiskey sold round hyar, I'm countin' on doin' it out'n my
+store, sure. I got a license ter sell."
+
+She looked at him narrowly, suspiciously, hardly more credulous than he
+himself.
+
+"I won't hev _my_ profits sp'iled. Whiskey's the best trade I
+got," he added, as he turned about. "Waal, I 'lowed Copley would be in
+hyar ter holp me tote the truck in; but, howsever, set a rock afore the
+door ter hold it open, Sis, whilst I make a start, ennyhow."
+
+His show of industry as he toiled across the rainy yard, now with a
+keg, now with a box, on his shoulder, of anxiety for the safety of
+his goods, his sedulous care in displaying them to the best advantage
+on the shelves to lure customers, might have deceived a wiser head
+than Cornelia Taft's. Her long-cherished suspicions were gradually
+dispelled, as she ran hither and thither, carrying the lighter packages
+in her arms, eagerly helping to bestow them, making place for them when
+she could do no more. It was not until she had gone back briskly to her
+task of preparing an early supper that he ventured to descend from the
+store to the room below, and take his way along the dark tunnel to the
+still in the recess of the mine. He paused surprised at the disordered
+and careless disarray about the entrance to the tunnel: some of the
+boards of the partition were on the ground, others aslant, none as
+they were habitually adjusted. With a steady hand he rectified this,
+and went forward forthwith, his lantern swinging in his grasp. Once he
+paused to listen: no voice, no stir; only the heavy windless silence.
+As he progressed, the faint tinkling of the running water smote his
+ear, and presently he had crossed it. No sound came from about the
+still; there was no suffusion of red light on the terra-cotta walls
+that sometimes glowed at the terminus of the tunnel when the furnace
+door stood open. He could hardly be said to have had a premonition. He
+was prepared for disaster by the previous events; but he could scarcely
+realize its magnitude, its conclusiveness, when the timid flare of
+the lantern illumined the dreary walls of the moonshiners' haunt, the
+dead cold furnace, the tubs of mash,--on the margin of one of which a
+rat was boldly feeding, scarcely pausing to look around with furtive,
+sinister bright eyes,--and his two lieutenants, whom he had left to
+guard Larrabee, bound and gagged upon the floor.
+
+The craft which characterized Lorenzo Taft was hardly predicable of
+so massive an organization. It was an endowment of foxlike ingenuity,
+sinuous, lithe, suggestive of darting swiftness and of doubled tracks.
+The expression of blunt dismay on his big jowl dropping visibly beneath
+his broad yellow beard, the widening stare in his round blue eyes as
+he gazed about the dismal place, his heavy, lumbering motion as he
+carefully set the lantern down upon the cold masonry of the fireless
+furnace, gave no intimation of the speed with which his mind had
+canvassed the situation, accepted the inevitable, and fixed upon his
+future course. It was hardly a moment before he was on one knee beside
+the prostrate form of the elder moonshiner, and had drawn from over his
+head the grain sack that had served both to obscure his countenance
+and more completely secure his gag. The glimmer of the lantern, like
+a slow rill of light trickling feebly through the darkness, illumined
+the expression of eager appeal in the haggard, wild face and eyes of
+Copley. An instant longer was too long to wait, yet wait he must!
+Taft jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the other prostrate form,
+convulsed now in a frenzied effort to attract the attention of the
+new-comer, whose footsteps had brought the only hope of speedy
+deliverence.
+
+"Drunk agin?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+Copley made shift to nod his head affirmatively. Then again that
+frantic plea for release illumined his eyes and contorted his anxious
+features.
+
+Taft, regardless, rose, with the swinging motion which was
+characteristic of him, and, with the lantern swaying in his hand, made
+his way to the opposite side of the furnace, where the young drunkard
+lay--very sober now, in good truth--cramped in every hard-bound limb,
+racked with the tortures of thirst, and half famished. Taft had partly
+unbound the ropes from about the furnace and cut them in twain, thus
+dissevering the companions in misery; he swiftly knotted those that
+held the elder moonshiner, while the ends of Dan Sykes's bonds lay
+loose along the floor.
+
+"Why, Dan," he cried roughly, "what sort'n caper is this?"
+
+The prostrate young fellow made an effort to rise, so strong that the
+already loosened cords relaxed; and as Taft emphasized his demand by a
+sharp kick in the ribs, and an urgent exhortation to the young sot to
+"quit this damned fooling," the sack which Sykes had worn some twenty
+hours as hood and gag, and which, since his wakening from his long
+drunken sleep, he had strained in every fibre by his mad lurches of
+fright and efforts for freedom, rolled off, his pinioned arms were at
+liberty, and it seemed he had naught to do but to sit up and untie his
+craftily bound feet and legs.
+
+"Ye demented gopher!" cried Taft angrily, as Sykes sat up stupidly,
+blinking in the gleam of the lantern. "What ails ye? Drunk agin?"
+
+If his bursting skull were admissible testimony,--but he shook his head
+stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a
+scornful boot.
+
+"Then the worse fool you-uns! Look-a-hyar!" he cried furiously, as he
+caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering
+feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes
+about his legs. "Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer
+drunken tantrums! Murder! murder! or mighty nigh it!"
+
+He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest
+on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the
+plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended,
+as he groped bending toward it in the darkness.
+
+"Who's that? Lar'bee?" he said.
+
+"Lar'bee!" exclaimed Taft scornfully. "Lar'bee's been out'n the still
+ever since yestiddy evenin'."
+
+It was Sykes's drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft
+departed; but alack! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache
+of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on.
+Nevertheless he blurted out:--
+
+"Ye tole me ter watch him,"--he set his teeth in a sort of snarl,
+and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly
+spirituous,--"ter gyard him like, a dog. 'Hold fast!' ye said, 'hold
+fast!'"
+
+Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own
+serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows.
+
+"Sykes," he said, "this is a bad business fur you, an' ye'll swing fur
+it, I'm a-thinkin'. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter
+watch nobody. I let Lar'bee out myse'f. Ye an' Copley war lef' hyar
+ter keep sober an' run the still; an' what do ye do? Ye murder him!"
+
+As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic voice, the young fellow's
+blood ran cold.
+
+"Ye murder him, an' tie him up like that, an' then do yerse'f up sorter
+fancy with bags an' a rope. Ye'll hev closer dealin's with a rope yit;
+I kin spy out that in the day that's kemin'." His eyes gleamed with a
+sinister smile.
+
+Sykes's knees shook.
+
+"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed wildly. "Air--air he dead? 'Twarn't me! God
+A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar
+Lar'bee! 'Twar Lar'bee!"
+
+"Shucks!" Taft turned wearily away. "Ain't I tole ye I seen Lar'bee
+set out 'fore I did? Blackenin' Lar'bee won't save ye, Dan!
+_Drink--drink!_ I tole ye drink would ruinate ye; always brings
+a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n't put some water in the jug
+beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o' yer spree." He
+shook his head. "So it is! So it is!"
+
+"Oh, is he dead,--air ye sure he is dead?" cried the young fellow in a
+heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside
+the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner.
+
+Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over
+the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of
+anxiety.
+
+The boy drew back, with a shudder of repulsion. "Oh, I never went ter
+do it! I never went ter do it! I war drunk! crazy drunk! devil drunk!
+Oh"--
+
+"They say," Taft interrupted suddenly,--"leastwise the lawyers do,--ez
+a man bein' drunk in c'mittin' a crime ought n't ter influence a
+jury,--the law makes no allowance; but," with an encouraging nod, "they
+say, too, ez it _do_ influence the jury _every time_. An' the
+court can't holp it. The jury _will_ allow suthin' fur a man bein'
+drunk."
+
+The white face of the boy, imposed against the darkness with all the
+contour of youth, had hardly a characteristic that was not expressive
+of age, so pinched, so lined, so drawn, so bloodless, was every
+sharpened feature. The natural horror of his supposed deed, his
+simple, superficial repentance of the involuntary crime, were suddenly
+expunged; his whole being was controlled by a single impulse; a passion
+of fear possessed him. Jury, crime, lawyer,--these words looking to
+a legal arraignment first brought to his horror-stricken mind the
+idea of a responsibility other than moral for his deed. What slight
+independence of thought he had, what poor capacity for sifting and
+judging and weighing the probabilities his easily influenced mind might
+have exerted as he more and more recovered from his recent inebriation,
+became nullified upon the instant. He did not look once again back to
+the past, but to the future, wild, quaking, frenzied, as Taft elected
+to foretell the event.
+
+"That's why," Taft coolly said, nodding sagely, and inclining his head
+toward the breathless, frantic, almost petrified creature, "I'd leave
+it ter men."
+
+Sykes recoiled, with a shudder.
+
+"Yes," reiterated Taft, weightily and slowly. "The jury would take yer
+drunk inter account; an' on the witness-stand I'd testify ez ye war gin
+over ter the failin'."
+
+The young fellow's gray, stony face did not change as Taft ceased to
+speak. Taft felt its fixed look upon him as he stood, his head bent,
+and his big hat thrust back on his yellow hair; one hand was laid
+meditatively on his long beard, as he gazed down on the prostrate
+figure of Copley; with the other hand he held the lantern, whose spare
+white glimmers of light thrown out into the surrounding obscurity
+seemed very meagre in the darksome place, which was never cheerful at
+best, but without the roar and heat of the furnace, the keen, brilliant
+glinting from the crevice of the door when closed or the red, suffusive
+flare when it was swung ajar, the still-room was the dreariest
+presentment of subterranean gloom.
+
+"Yes," Taft continued thoughtfully, "I'd ruther leave it ter men--ter
+the courts, ye know--'n ter hev the folks round hyar ez war frien'ly
+ter Copley ondertake ter settle ye fur it; they'd--Hey?" he interrupted
+himself.
+
+For the young fellow had reached out his arm and laid his hand with
+a vise-like grip upon Taft's wrist. His head was thrust forward;
+he seemed about to speak, but his parted lips, drawn tight across
+his large, prominent teeth, emitted not a sound, although his wild,
+dilated, bloodshot eyes looked an eager protest. His voice had failed
+in framing the obnoxious words, which, however, Taft spoke patly enough.
+
+"Why, ye know, they would--they would. Jedge Lynch is the only court
+fur this kentry. What sati'faction is it ter the folks hyarabout, ter
+hev a man kerried ter jail, thirty mile away, ter stan' his trial in
+the courthouse year arter nex', mebbe, an' then arter all's come an'
+gone cheat hemp at las'? Yes, that's yer bes' chance; set out fur
+Colbury straight, an' s'render yerse'f thar."
+
+He paused, apparently thinking deeply.
+
+"Ef ye hed enny kin, though, in enny out'n-the-way place, my advices
+ter ye would be ter cut an' run, an' bide along o' them; fur this hyar
+air a mighty bad job, an' it's goin' ter go hard with the man ez done
+it."
+
+Once more the pallid, evasive light flickered in feeble vibrations
+across the long, motionless, rope-bound figure, and the stark face
+curiously distorted and painfully repulsive with the gag in its
+stretched jaws.
+
+"Ye ain't got no kin in no'th Georgy?" Taft demanded.
+
+"Naw," replied the boy huskily.
+
+The suggestion seemed to have restored his voice, albeit muffled and
+shaken; into his eyes, staring, wide and bloodshot, into the gloom,
+was creeping a definiteness of expression, as if he beheld, instead of
+the vacant black darkness, some scene projected there as a possibility
+and painted by his expectation. His grip on Taft's arm had relaxed. It
+had been close and hard, and Taft rubbed the wrist a trifle with the
+hand that still held the lantern, setting the feeble glimmer a-swinging
+swiftly about the dark walls.
+
+"That's a pity,--that's a tur'ble pity," Taft averred gloomily; then,
+with an air of rousing himself, "Waal, ye'll jes' hev ter leave it ter
+men. That's the bes' ye kin do." He was turning briskly toward the
+tunnel. "I'll ondertake ter gin ye the matter of a two hours' start of
+the folks 'bout hyar by not tellin' 'bout old Copley till then. But ye
+hed bes' ride with speed, fur they'll be hot shod on yer tracks, sure."
+
+As he went forward with his swinging, elastic stride, swaying the
+lantern back and forth, according to his wont, to illumine the path,
+his manner, his words, his expression, so tallied with the situation he
+had invented and the role he had played that even the most discerning
+might have descried no discrepancy in point of fact. The young
+moonshiner, barely sobered and wholly frightened, was easily to be
+deluded by a verisimilitude far less complete. He followed, his clumsy
+feet stumbling and stepping awry, as if his gait were still subject
+to spirituous influences from which his brain was freed. His cramped
+limbs yet felt the numbness of their long constraint and the pain of
+his bonds, for Larrabee's ropes had not been adjusted with due regard
+to the free circulation of the blood. His progress was far slower than
+his host's, who paused from time to time and waited to be overtaken.
+On these occasions it soon became apparent that there was something
+in his mind on which he had begun to ponder deeply; for whereas at
+first he had visibly hastened to join Taft on seeing him whirl around,
+the lantern describing in the distance a wheel of pallid white light
+against the dense darkness of the tunnel, he now continued to plod
+heavily, slower and slower, even when the light settled to a shining
+focus, again motionless. Taft lifted it once as Sykes approached,
+throwing its force full upon the swollen, mottled, absorbed face,
+the fixed introspective eyes, the heavy slouching shoulders and bent
+head. At that moment of careful reconnoitre a genuine expression was
+on Taft's face, keen, furtive, triumphant; it passed unobserved. He
+whirled around again, leading the way with the lantern, and it was with
+a perfectly cloaked satisfaction that he began to observe the young
+fellow's convulsive haste to depart as they neared the exit from the
+tunnel, his flimsy pretense of heed to his elder's advice, and finally
+his heedlessness altogether, no longer able to maintain attention or
+its semblance.
+
+He was gone at last, and Taft, returning to his prostrate comrade in
+the still, dismissed him from his mind, and thenceforward from his
+life, with a single comment. "That drunken shoat hev got an uncle in
+north Texas," he said, as he placed the lantern on the cold brick-work
+of the dead and fireless furnace. "I knowed that, so I fixed it so ez
+he'd light out fur them furrin parts d'rec'ly. He ain't dawdlin', I'm
+thinkin'."
+
+Then, as he addressed himself to removing the gag and cutting the bonds
+of the elder distiller, his brow darkened.
+
+"That cuss Lar'bee's work, hey?" he demanded gruffly; and as the
+liberated Copley gasped out an assent Taft growled a deep oath, his
+face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and
+his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.
+
+"That kems from sparin' powder an' lead," he declared vindictively.
+"Whyn't ye or Sykes shoot him?"
+
+"He war too suddint," gasped Copley. "Ye never see a painter so suddint
+an' sharp."
+
+"An' whyn't ye be suddint, too?" retorted Taft aggressively.
+
+Copley might have protested that in his own interest he had been as
+"suddint" as he could, and had done his best. He evidently felt,
+however, much in fault, and as, in silence, he ruefully rubbed his numb
+limbs, just free from their ligatures, tingling painfully with the
+renewal of the circulation of the blood, he gazed about, crestfallen
+and humbled, and even grief-stricken, at the scene of his wonted
+labors. It was but faintly revealed by the lantern on the masonry of
+the furnace,--the dimly white focus with divergent filaments of rays
+weaving only a tenuous web of light in the darkness which encompassed
+all. The great burly forms of tubs and barrels were but vaguely
+glimpsed as brownish suggestions in the blackness; a yellow gleam from
+the copper still gave the effect of an independent illumination rather
+than the resources of reflection, so dull and unresponsive was all else
+upon which the lantern cast its glimmer. Taft sat, according to his
+habit, upon the side of a barrel, his legs crossed, his elbow on one
+knee, his head bowed upon his hand, his big hat intercepting all view
+of his face. Copley gave a long sigh, as his spiritless glance noted
+the dejection of his friend; but his grooved and wrinkled face seemed
+as incapable of expressiveness as before, and, with its tanned tints
+and blunt, ill-cut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood
+or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of
+re-attaining his liberty, from the immediate disaster to the details of
+his drudgery which so habitually occupied his every waking faculty.
+
+"That thar mash must be plumb ripe by this time," he remarked, his eyes
+fixed upon a spot in the darkness where presumably the tub in question
+was situated. "'Twar nigh ripe whenst Lar'bee jumped up demented, it
+'peared like, an' tuk arter we-uns."
+
+Taft lifted a red face and a scowling brow. With an air of reckless
+desperation he strode to the tub, and the next moment Copley heard the
+splash as the contents were poured out down the shaft.
+
+"Laws-a-massy, 'Renzo!" with the decisive ring of anger in his voice
+and all the arrogations of the expert, "whyn't ye let me examinate it?
+Ye ain't got my 'speriunce; ye ain't ekal ter jedge like me. Whyn't
+ye"--
+
+"Ye miser'ble mole!" Taft retorted angrily. "Ye may be a jedge o'
+fermentin' an' stillin' an' sech like, but ye hev got powerful leetle
+gumption 'bout'n the signs o' the times. Thar ye sit, a-yawpin' away
+'bout yer mash, ripe or raw, an' I'm lookin' fur the shootin' irons o'
+the marshal's men under my nose every time I turn my head."
+
+He suited the action to the word at the moment, looking down with a
+sudden squint which gave a frightfully realistic suggestion of the
+muzzle of a weapon held at his very teeth.
+
+"The thing's busted!" Taft cried desperately. "It's done! Kin ye
+onderstan' that? We-uns hev got ter the jumpin'-off place!"
+
+The bewildered Copley looked vaguely at the verge of the deep shaft,
+perilously near.
+
+"That Lar'bee's loose now, full o' gredges fur bein' helt hyar," Taft
+continued. "We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An'
+the dep'ty sher'ff's on his track, 'lowin' ez Espey be Lar'bee an'
+s'picionin' moonshinin'. The dep'ty sher'ff ain't got nuthin' ter do
+with sech ez moonshinin' hisse'f, but he air tryin' ter find Lar'bee,
+an' settle his gredges with him; so he'll gin the revenue dogs the
+word 'bout Lar'bee an' distillin', an' whenst Lar'bee's tuk he'll take
+a heap o' pleasure in guidin' 'em hyar, I'll be bound. He mought even
+turn informer hisse'f, ter git even."
+
+He sunk down suddenly on the barrel.
+
+"It's powerful hard on me!" he cried. "I hev treated them boys like
+they war my own sons." He had forgotten, in this arrogation of age and
+paternal feeling, his recent youthfulness of matrimonial pretensions.
+"I hev tuk 'em in,"--he did not say in what sense,--"an' divided fair
+with 'em; an' they hev gotten mo' money out'n me than they'd ever
+elsewise view in thar whole lifetime. An' I hev been keerful an' kep'
+the place secret an' quiet. I hev tuk good heed ter all p'ints. An'
+we-uns mought hev gone on peaceful an' convenient till the crack o'
+doom, ef it hedn't been fur them. Oh, thar never war sech a place!"
+He looked round with the eyes of gloating admiration on the gruesome,
+shadowy den about him, so singularly suited to his vocation. "An' even
+the danger 'bout'n the hotel is done with, an' the lan' percessioned by
+now, I reckon, an' thar won't be no mo' packs o' strangers in the Cove;
+an' yit--an' yit--all fur nuthin'!"
+
+He took off his hat, and rubbed his corrugated brow with his hand with
+a gesture of desperation.
+
+It is a singular trait of what might perhaps be called sentimental
+economy that every individual in this world should be the object of
+the hero worship of some other. It may be submitted that there are
+no conditions so sterile as to induce a dearth of this perfectly
+disinterested, unrewarded admiration and acceptation of some embodied
+ideal. It is familiar enough in the higher walks of life and with
+worthy objects. But there may be a champion among beggars. It is a
+potent agent. Its purblind flatteries have advanced many a dullard
+to a foremost place. The plainest face has some devotee of its
+beauty; and even the most unpromising infant is a miracle of grace
+and genius to a doting grandmother. Hardly a hero of the world's
+history is more dignified on his elevated plane than was Lorenzo Taft
+in the eyes of his humble coadjutor. His wiliness was wisdom; his
+dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy; his
+self-seeking a cogent prudence; and his natural courage--with which,
+indeed, be was well endowed--the finest flower of the extravaganza of
+valor.
+
+Copley looked at him now with the respectful sympathy which one
+might well feel in witnessing the fall of a very great man. He
+scarcely remembered his own interests, inextricably involved. Every
+inflection of the mellow, sonorous voice raised to a declamatory
+pitch found a vibrating acquiescence in chords of responsive emotion.
+Every unconscious gesture of the massive and imposing figure--as
+histrionically appropriate as if acquired by labor and tuition,
+since it was indeed the nature that art simulates--was marked with
+appreciative eyes. A rat in a trap is hardly esteemed a fit object
+for sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and
+magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, consider the
+emotional melodrama within the small circuit of the wires!
+
+"Don't take it so tur'ble hard, 'Renzo," expostulated Copley, still
+seated on the floor.
+
+For Taft was standing motionless, his eyes staring and fixed, his hat
+far back on his head, exposing his set, drawn face with its teeth hard
+clenched, one hand mechanically clutching his flowing yellow beard, the
+other continually closing and unclosing on the handle of a pistol which
+he had half drawn from his pocket,--a habit of his in moments of mental
+perplexity, as if he instinctively appealed to this summary arbiter to
+decide on questions far enough removed from its jurisdiction.
+
+"Don't be so tur'ble desolated; some way out'n it, sure ez ye air
+born," urged Copley in a consolatory wheeze.
+
+The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Taft. He caught himself with
+a start and turned hastily away, looking about as if in search of
+something. He took the lantern presently to aid him in this, and when
+it came back, glimmering through the dusk, he carried a box of tools in
+the other hand.
+
+"Thar's one way out'n it, sure," he said in a muffled, changed voice,
+"though it's gone powerful hard with me ter git my own cornsent ter
+take it."
+
+He placed the lantern upon the furnace, and, as he went vigorously to
+work, the astounded Copley, still upon the ground, began to perceive
+that he was taking the apparatus carefully apart; he was disconnecting
+the worm from the neck, when his amazed coadjutor found his voice.
+
+"Hold on, 'Renzo," he remonstrated; "ye ain't a-goin' ter take the
+contraption down, surely"--
+
+"Ruther hev the revenuers do it?" said Taft, showing his teeth in a
+sarcastic smile as he looked up. "They'll make wuss slarter with the
+worm 'n I will." Then, pausing, with a frown of rancorous reminiscence,
+"I hed a still o' bigger capacity 'n this one over yander in Persimmon
+Cove, an' they cut it up in slivers, an' the worm war lef' in pieces
+no longer 'n that," measuring with both hands, "an' the furnace all
+tore up. I never seen sech a sight ez whenst I croped back ter view
+the wreck. I 'lowed I'd never git forehanded enough ter start ter
+manufacture sperits agin in this worl'."
+
+He stood idly gazing down these vistas of memory grimly enough for a
+moment; then, turning back to the still, "I'll make a try ter save the
+property this time, so when the storm blows over we kin git started
+agin another way an' another day. I'll fix it so ez when Lar'bee tells,
+his words will be cast back in his teeth fit ter knock 'em all down his
+own throat. He'll be sorry enough, sure's ye air born. They'll be hard
+swallowin'."
+
+The natural fortitude of Taft's character, the elastic quality of
+his strength, his big, bluff mental methods, combined to support him
+in this ordeal to a degree which contrasted advantageously with the
+weak, almost supine grief that Copley manifested. Perhaps, too, Taft's
+dinner was a material element which gave cohesion and decision to his
+mental resolves. Now, Copley, half starved, nervous, wild with anxiety,
+dread for the future, regret for the past, doubt of the present, would
+angrily protest, even while he aided in dismantling the apparatus;
+and then, after a word or two of argument, would admit its necessity,
+its urgency, and again lament it as futile. He almost wept when the
+object of his solicitude, which he had served as if it were a fetich,
+was finally dismembered, and he found only a partial consolation in
+being himself permitted to pack it, secure from injury, in boxes
+which Taft brought down from the store. This scanty satisfaction was
+short-lived, for, despite his objection, Taft poured out upon the
+ground the liquor which remained after the shipment of the two barrels
+to the cross-roads. The tubs were cut into pieces in true "revenuer"
+fashion, the mash was poured out, the furnace was demolished out of
+all semblance to its former proportions and uses, before Taft began to
+lay the train to blow the place up, and thus effectually silence its
+testimony forever.
+
+"S'pos'n'--s'pos'n'"--Copley shivered--"s'pos'n' somebody war in the
+Lost Time mine down thar"--
+
+Taft paused, with a lot of tow in his hands which he was arranging
+for a fuse; he glanced around, the lantern swinging on his arm, as if
+waiting for the sequel to the unfinished sentence; then, as Copley
+remained vaguely staring as if at a vision of possible laborers in the
+Lost Time mine, "Skeer 'em powerful, I reckon," he said casually, and
+bent once more to his work.
+
+"But--but"--Copley recommenced, in a tone so urgent that Taft once
+more desisted to listen, with an inquiring look on his half-turned
+face--"but--but--s'pos'n' the--a--'splosion o' the powder war--war ter
+bring down the rocks an' the timbers in some o' them tunnels an' open
+shafts, an' somebody war in thar, hey? hey?" with eager insistence.
+
+"Shut 'em in thar fur good an' all, I reckon,--git buried a leetle
+before thar time, that's all," said Taft coolly, and went on with his
+work as before.
+
+Perhaps some vague premonition, perhaps an intuition of subterranean
+proximity to an unsuspected wanderer in the Lost Time mine, perhaps
+only a morbid aversion to the whole project, induced by the lack of
+that conscience-fortifying force, dinner, actuated Copley, but for the
+third time he sought to disaffect Taft's mind toward it.
+
+"Mebbe somebody mought be passin' an' hear the 'splosion; moughtn't
+they low 'twar cur'us? What would they make of it?"
+
+Taft did not now pause in his work; he answered still bending down to
+the ground laying the train.
+
+"Yearthquake," he said composedly, "or else jes' some o' the rottin'
+timbers o' the mine settlin' an' givin' way. Besides," he added,
+straightening himself up, "nobody's passin' at this time o' night,
+nohow."
+
+"Night!" exclaimed Copley. "Is it night?"
+
+"Midnight," replied Taft laconically.
+
+He stood silent, thinking, a moment, and resting after the labor of
+cautiously adjusting the charges of powder; and then, so quiet it all
+was, not the stir of a breath, not the whisper of a word, not the
+silken rustle of a ribbon of flame in the demolished furnace, he heard,
+what he had never before heard so far as here in the still-room, the
+reiterated strokes of a pick echoing down the tunnel, and cleaving the
+ground with the regularity of a practiced workman. He said not a word
+to Copley; he walked along the tunnel toward the sound, a chill thrill
+stealing over him despite the fact that his temerity was a trifle more
+pronounced than usual because he was about to leave the place forever.
+The strokes continued, now growing louder, now more muffled, always
+accurately timed; and suddenly the faint clamors of that high, queer,
+false-ringing voice that seemed to seek out and shock every nerve
+within him. He recoiled with fright and an unreasoning anger. He turned
+himself about, and swiftly changed the position of a can filled with
+powder which was to aid in the demolition of the place, arranging it in
+a niche in the earth close to the wall whence the sound came.
+
+"I make ye my partin' compliments," he said, with a sarcastic smile and
+a mocking wave of the hand to the gruesome unknown. The next moment
+his expression changed to a frightened gravity, and he ran through the
+black tunnel as if he consciously had the devil at his heels, pausing
+not until he was safe in the cellar beneath the store.
+
+The paroxysm, if so it might be called, passed in a moment, and he
+was laughing as he stood at the aperture of the tunnel, holding the
+lantern, red-faced and a trifle shamefaced, when Copley, left far
+behind, came hobbling up slowly and painfully. Taft was quite restored;
+it was with his own assured, definite manner and elastic stride that
+he presently took his way along the tunnel again and applied the match
+to the fuse. He evidently accomplished his work thoroughly, for he had
+no doubts of its efficacy when he returned and stood leaning against
+a pile of boxes, waiting quite carelessly as here and there tiny
+stellular lights sprang up along that darksome way that was not wont to
+blossom out such constellations.
+
+Stars? No; lines of fire, vermicular, writhing, growing, serpentine,
+swiftly gliding, armed with venom, with destruction under their forked
+tongues; for suddenly a flare, a frightful clap as of thunder, a wrench
+as if the foundations of the earth were torn asunder, and the two men
+were thrown to the ground and the lantern extinguished in the jar.
+
+The reverberations were slow to die away; only gradually quiet came.
+A stillness ensued, stifling with dust, and with such strong sense of
+alternation with that moment of deafening detonation that the pulses
+quivered with expectancy, and the slightest movement set the nerves to
+jarring. Taft had groped for a light, and as the faint coruscation of
+a match, then the steadier gleam of the lantern, pierced the darkness,
+the nearest results of the explosion were open to view. The timbers
+roofing the tunnel had been shaken down, and close at hand masses of
+earth had fallen with them and lay banked at the very door. If Taft
+had been warned in a dream, he could hardly have made his defense more
+perfect. He and his one trusted adherent worked there the rest of
+the night. The old original timbers of the house, partly rotten and
+time-stained, were replaced as formerly, leaving no trace that there
+had ever been an entrance into the abandoned mine; and when at last
+Taft clambered through the aperture of the counter into the store, he
+left the door broadly flaring after him.
+
+"Trust Sis ter notice it," he remarked. "She'll git used ter it in ten
+minits, an' it'll 'pear like she always knowed 't war thar."
+
+The still was conveyed some miles away and buried in a marked spot,
+and thus the business of moonshining was abandoned at the moment when
+the project of the summer hotel, from which it had so much to fear,
+was pretermitted amidst its varied entanglements, and the Cove, which
+certainly could not have comfortably contained both, was left without
+either for the nonce.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XV.
+
+
+As Julia entered her father's house, quite fresh and dry after the
+tumults of the storm, each of the group gathered about the fireside was
+too insistently preoccupied at the moment to notice the discrepancy
+between her spotless attire and the aspects of the weather, except
+indeed Luther. The details of their attire she marked at once, and
+dimpled at the sight. These rain-lashed victims of the processioning
+had hustled themselves into their cast-off gear; and albeit the
+fashions of the day were not exigent in the Cove, very forlorn appeared
+these ancient garments, having long ago seen the best of their never
+very good days. Cap'n Lucy's brown coat was like a russet old crinkled
+leaf, as it clung, out of shape and ruffled by unskillful folding,
+about him; Luther wore one of his own of former years, far too small
+now for his burly shoulders that threatened to burst out of it at every
+seam, and his long arms that protruded their blue shirt-sleeves only
+half covered from the elbow. He met her glance with a resentful glare,
+as if he could imagine now no cause for mirth, which was untimely in
+its best estate. His Sunday coat graced the form of Jasper Larrabee,
+who sat on the other side of the fire, and who albeit not of the
+processioning party, had been caught in the rain in coming hither.
+Although as tall as Luther, he was much more slender, and he seemed to
+have shrunk, somehow, in the amplitude of his host's big blue coat.
+He gave Julia a formal greeting, and was apparently much perturbed by
+the untoward state of mind in which he found Cap'n Lucy. And indeed
+Cap'n Lucy's face seemed to have adopted sundry wrinkles from his
+coat, so old, so awry, so crinkled, so suggestive of better days, had
+it suddenly become. Julia was reminded all at once of the business
+interests at stake.
+
+"How did the percessionin' turn out, dad?" she inquired, as she stood
+with her hand on the back of a chair, and looked across the fire at him.
+
+If any eyes might watch Fortune's wheel undismayed, whether it swing
+high or low, one might deem them these surely, with perpetual summer
+blooming there, as if there were no frosts, no winter's chill, no
+waning of time or love or life. What cared she for land or its lack?
+
+The fore-legs of Cap'n Lucy's chair came to the floor with an irascible
+thump. He turned and surveyed the room; then, looking at her, "Air yer
+eyesight good?" he demanded.
+
+"Toler'ble," she admitted.
+
+"D'ye see that thar contraption?" he continued, leaning forward, and
+pointing with great _empressement_ at a spinning-wheel in the
+corner.
+
+"I see it," she said, meeting his keen return glance.
+
+"D'ye know what it's made fur?" he inquired, dropping his voice, and
+with an air of being about to impart valuable information.
+
+"Fur spinning" she answered wonderingly.
+
+"Oh, ye know, do ye? Then--mind it."
+
+And thus he settled the woman question, in his own house at least,
+and repudiated feminine interest and inquisitiveness in his business
+affairs, and spurned feminine consolation and rebuke as far as he
+could,--poor Cap'n Lucy!
+
+Larrabee had that sense of being ill at ease which always characterizes
+a stranger whose unhappy privilege it is to assist at a family quarrel.
+He was divided by the effort to look as if he understood nothing of ill
+temper in the colloquy, and the doubt as to whether he did not appear
+to side with one or the other,--to relish Julia's relegation to the
+spinning-wheel, or to resent Cap'n Lucy's strong measures; or perhaps
+he might seem lightly scornful of both.
+
+He gazed steadily out of the open door, where a great lustrous
+copper-tinted sky glassed itself in myriads of gleaming copper-tinted
+ponds made in every depression by the recent rains; between were
+the purplish-black mountains cut sharply on the horizon. He heard a
+mocking-bird singing, and what a medley the frogs did pipe! Then rushed
+out into the midst the whir of Julia's spinning-wheel, which made all
+other songs of the evening only its incidental burden. She sat near
+the door, her figure imposed upon those bright hues of sky and water
+as if she were painted on some lustrous metal. Their reflection was
+now and again on her hair; she might have seemed surrounded by some
+glorious aureola. Not that he definitely discerned this. He only felt
+that she was fairer than all women else, and that the evening gleamed.
+The bird's song struck some chord in his heart that silently vibrated,
+and the whir of her wheel was like a hymn of the fireside. He wished
+that he had never left it for Taft and his gang, and the hope of
+making money for a home of his own, since his mother's hospitality had
+well-nigh left him homeless. The thought roused him to a recollection
+of his errand.
+
+"I kem hyar ter git yer advices, Cap'n Lucy," he began.
+
+Cap'n Lucy turned upon him a silent but snarling face. He needed all
+his "advices" for himself.
+
+"I ain't got nuthin' ter hide from you-uns," Larrabee continued,
+after a pause for the expected reply. "Ye know all I do,"--a fleeting
+recollection of the still came over him,--"that I'm able ter tell," he
+added; for the idea of betraying the secrets involving Taft and the
+other moonshiners had never entered his mind.
+
+Cap'n Lucy's scornful chin was tossed upward.
+
+"We-uns feel toler'ble compliminted," he averred, "ter hev it 'lowed ez
+we-uns knows _all_ you-uns do, fur that's a heap, ez ye air aimin'
+ter tell."
+
+"I mean--I went ter say, Cap'n Lucy"--Jasper Larrabee's words, in
+their haste, tripped one over the other, as they sought to set their
+meaning in better array.
+
+"He jes' means, uncle Lucy, ez it ain't no new thing," Adelicia
+interposed to expound, touched by the anxious contrition of the younger
+man, who was leaning eagerly forward, his elbow on his knee, toward the
+elder, and to allay the contrariety of spirit of "uncle Lucy."
+
+"An' meddlin' ain't no new thing, nuther, with you-uns, Ad'licia,"
+snarled Cap'n Lucy, much overwrought. "I wish ter Gawd, with all the
+raisin' an' trainin' I hev hed ter gin ye, I could hev larnt ye ter
+hold yer jaw wunst in a while whenst desir'ble, an' show sech manners
+ez--ez T'bithy thar kin." He pointed at the cat on the hearth, and gave
+a high, fleering laugh, in which the sarcastic vexation overmastered
+every suggestion of mirth.
+
+A slight movement of Tabitha's ears might have intimated that
+she marked the mention of her name. Otherwise she passed it with
+indifference. With her skimpy, shabby attire,--her fur seemed never to
+flourish,--her meek air of disaffection with the ways of this world,
+her look of adverse criticism as her yellow eyes followed the movements
+of the family, her thankless but resigned reception of all favors as
+being less than she had a right to expect, her ladylike but persistent
+exactions of her prerogatives, gave her, somehow, the style of a
+reduced gentlewoman, and the quietude and gentle indifference and air
+of superiority of the manners on which Cap'n Lucy had remarked were
+very genteel as far as they went.
+
+Adelicia seemed heedless of the mentor thus pointed out. She noisily
+gathered up her work, somewhat cumbrous of paraphernalia, since it
+consisted of a small cedar tub, a large wooden bowl, and a heavy sack
+of the reddest of apples which she was paring for drying, and carried
+it all around the fireplace to seat herself between the two parties to
+this controversy.
+
+"Now, uncle Lucy, ye jes' got ter gin Jasper yer advices, an' holp him
+out'n whatever snap he hev got inter."
+
+Her deep gray eyes smiled upon the young man, as the firelight flashed
+upon her glittering knife and the red fruit in her hand, although her
+delicate oval face was grave enough. Ever and again she raised her
+head, as she worked, to toss back the tendrils of her auburn hair which
+were prone to fall forward as she bent over the task. There was a
+moment's silence as Jasper vainly sought to collect his ideas.
+
+"Tell on, Jasper," she exhorted him. "I'm by ter pertect ye now. An'
+ennyhows, uncle Lucy's bark is a long shakes wuss'n his bite."
+
+She smiled encouragingly upon the suppliant for advice; her own face
+was all unmarred by the perception that matters had gone much amiss
+with the processioning of the land, for uncle Lucy was a man often
+difficult to please, and sometimes only a crumple in his rose leaf was
+enough to make him condemn the queen of flowers as a mere vegetable,
+much overrated. The girl's aspect was all the brighter as she wore
+a saffron-tinted calico blouse and apron with her brown homespun
+skirt, and she seemed, with her lighted gray eyes, her fair, colorless
+face, and her ruddy auburn hair, a property of the genial firelight,
+flickering and flaring on the bright spot of color which she made in
+the brown shadows where she sat and pared the red apples. She reverted
+in a moment to that proclivity to argue with Cap'n Lucy which was so
+marked in their conversation.
+
+"An' who is the young men ter depend on in thar troubles, uncle Lucy,
+ef not the old ones?" she demanded.
+
+"On the young gals, 'pears like," promptly retorted "uncle Lucy,"
+pertinently and perversely.
+
+Then he caught himself suddenly. In the impossibility, under the
+circumstances, to concentrate his mind exclusively on his own affairs,
+his interest in correlated matters was reasserted. It occurred to him
+that it behooved him to foster any predilection that Adelicia might
+show for any personable man other than the fugitive Espey. He could
+see naught but perplexity and complication of many sorts to ensue for
+himself and his household should Espey return; and although Cap'n Lucy
+selfishly hoped and believed that this was, in the nature of things,
+impossible, still he had reluctantly learned by bitter experience
+the fallibility of his own judgment. It seemed to him a flagrant
+instance of inconstancy on Adelicia's part, but Cap'n Lucy gave that no
+heed. Few men truly resent a woman's cruelty to another man. Adelicia
+might have brought all the youth in the county to despair, for all
+hard-hearted Cap'n Lucy would have cared. And thus her appeal for
+Jasper Larrabee was not altogether disregarded.
+
+"Goin' ter set thar an' chaw on it _all_ day, Jasper?" he demanded
+acridly. "Whyn't ye spit it out?"
+
+"Why," said Larrabee, "it's 'bout this hyar Jack Espey."
+
+The apple dropped from Adelicia's hand, and rolled unheeded across
+the hearth; the spinning-wheel was suddenly silent, and Julia, all
+glorified in the deeply yellow glare about her, sat holding it still
+with one hand on its rim. Cap'n Lucy's head was canted to one side,
+as if he were prepared to deliberate impartially on some difficult
+proposition.
+
+"This Jack Espey,--I met up with him at the cross-roads store, an'
+struck up a likin' fur him, an' brung him home an' tuk him in, an' he
+hev been thar with me fur months an' months--an'--an' he never tole me
+ez he hed enny cause ter shirk the law."
+
+"He war 'feared ter, I reckon, Jasper," said Adelicia.
+
+"He never meant no harm, Jasper," the silent Julia broke in from where
+she sat in her dull red dress against the tawnily gilded glories of the
+western sky.
+
+Beyond a mechanical "Hesh up, Ad'licia," Cap'n Lucy gave them no heed,
+but Luther glanced sharply from one to the other.
+
+Jasper Larrabee replied in some sort: "Then he never treated me with
+the same confidence I done him. An', Cap'n Lucy," he continued, "ye
+yerse'f seen the e-end o' it. He purtended ter the sher'ff ter be
+_me_, an' tuk advantage o' my mother's callin' him 'sonny,' an'
+wore my name, an' went with 'em a-sarchin' fur hisse'f; an' whenst he
+got skeered, thinkin' ez they knowed him, he resisted arrest, an' kem
+nigh ter takin' the off'cer's life, whilst purtendin' ter be _me_,
+in my name!"
+
+"He never meant no harm," faltered Adelicia, aghast at this showing
+against her absent lover.
+
+"None in the worl'; he never went ter harm nuthin'," protested Julia's
+flutelike tones.
+
+"Did ye kem hyar ter git my advices fur Jack Espey?" demanded Cap'n
+Lucy sourly. "He needs 'em, I know, but"--
+
+"Naw, Cap'n Tems. I kem ter git 'em fur myse'f, fur I dunno which way
+ter turn. You-uns hyar saw the e-end o' it,--the night the dep'ty kem
+a-sarchin' fur Jasper Lar'bee, who he 'lowed he hed flung over the
+bluffs, an' I went along at his summons, knowin' 'twar Espey ez hed got
+away from him, purtendin' ter be _me_."
+
+Cap'n Lucy nodded.
+
+"Now I have hearn that dep'ty air in the Cove agin."
+
+Cap'n Lucy remembered the dark, facetious, malicious face that the
+officer had borne as a spectator of the processioning of the land. He
+nodded again. "I hev seen him hyar ter-day."
+
+"Ef I war knowed ter him ez Lar'bee, whenst he finds out 'twar
+Espey ez escaped that night, I mought be 'rested fur harborin' a
+fugitive, ez holpin' out the murder arter the fac'--an'--an' my
+mother--Espey gin me no chance, no ch'ice! Wouldn't ye 'low ez
+ennybody--_ennybody_--would hev tole me that, Cap'n Lucy, ter gin
+me the ch'ice o' dangerin' myse'f afore he tuk so much from me an'
+mine?"
+
+Cap'n Lucy changed countenance. This was a new view of the matter. He
+had not judged from Larrabee's standpoint; for he himself had had full
+knowledge of the circumstances and the fact that they were withheld
+from Espey's entertainer. This was made suddenly manifest.
+
+"Why, Jasper," expostulated Adelicia, her eyes full of tears, her
+vibrant tones tremulous with emotion, "he 'lowed ter we-uns ez he war
+sure the man wouldn't die o' the gunshot wound, bein' powerful big an'
+hearty; but he tuk out an' run, bein' turr'ble 'feared o' the law,
+and arrest an' lyin' in jail fur a long time, waitin', an' uncle Lucy
+said"--
+
+She paused suddenly, for Jasper Larrabee had leaned forward in
+his chair, scanning the faces about him with a blank amazement so
+significant that it palsied the words on her tongue.
+
+"Espey tole _you-uns_! An' Espey tole yer _uncle Lucy_! Why,
+then ye all knowed him ter be a runaway, an' ye knowed ez he war
+a-playin' his deceits on nobody but me an' my mother ez hed got him
+quartered on us, an' mebbe war liable ter the law fur it."
+
+Adelicia, trembling, leaned back in her chair. Cap'n Lucy cast an
+infuriated glance upon her, and then, with a hasty, nervous hand,
+rubbed his brow back and forth, as if to stimulate his brain that
+offered no solution of the difficulty. Jasper Larrabee still sat
+leaning forward, his clear-cut face full of keen thought, a flush on
+his pale cheek, a fire kindling in his brown eyes, and a sarcastic
+smile curving his angry lips.
+
+"My Gawd!" he exclaimed, "it is a cur'ous thing ez my mother ain't got
+a frien' in this worl'! She says she don't work fur thanks, an' I'll
+take my livin' oath she don't git 'em. That thar door o' the widder's
+cabin on the Notch hev stood open ter the frien'less day an' night
+since I kin remember. Her table's spread for the hongry. Her h'a'th's
+the home o' them ez hev no welcome elsewise an' elsewhere. An' her nigh
+neighbor an' old frien' sees a s'pected murderer quarter himself thar,
+an' bring s'picion an' trouble _ennyhow_, an' danger mebbe, on her
+an' hern. Ye mought hev advised Espey ter gin her her ch'ice, or leave.
+Ye mought hev done ez much ez that! My mother's a old 'oman; an' she's
+a proud 'oman, though ye moughtn't think it, an' the bare idee o' sech
+talk ez that,--of s'picion, an' arrest, an' jail,--it would kill her!
+it would kill her!"
+
+Cap'n Lucy sat almost stunned, as under an arraignment. He pulled
+mechanically at his pipe, but his head was sunk on his breast, and his
+face was gray and set. The circumstances so graphically placed before
+him seemed to have no relation to those of his recollection; they wore
+a new guise. He had known all his life instances of collision in which
+powder and lead had played more or less a tragic part; but the rôle of
+the law had always been subsidiary and inadequate in the background
+of the scene, sometimes represented only by an outwitted officer, and
+the jollity of details of hairbreadth escapes. This construction of
+crime was beyond his purview of facts. He did not know, or he did not
+remember, that aught that others than the principal could do subsequent
+to a crime might render them liable as accessory after the fact. Espey
+had, in a fight, shot his antagonist,--such things were of frequent
+occurrence in Cap'n Lucy's memory. He never expected to see or to hear
+of the beagles of the law on the trail of the fugitive; his care, and
+his only care, was to prevent his niece from marrying an expatriated
+man while expatriated.
+
+He thought now with a grievous sense of fault of old "Widder
+Lar'bee,"--her softness, her kindness, her life of care for others;
+and then he thought of Rodolphus Ross and his crude brutality, his
+imperviousness to any sanctions, his rough interpretation of fun, his
+eagerness to shield his own lapses of official vigilance, his grudges
+against the supposed Larrabee, and his threats. What mischief might a
+chance word work!
+
+The dusky red of the last of the evening glow was creeping across the
+floor. All the metallic yellow glare was tarnished in the sky. Instead
+were strata of vaporous gray and slate tints alternating with lines of
+many-hued crimson, graduated till the ethereal hue of faintest rose
+ended the ascending scale of color. Still the frogs chorused and still
+the bird sang, but shadows had fallen, and they were not all of the
+night. Something of melancholy intimations drew his eyes to the purple
+heights without as Jasper Larrabee spoke.
+
+"Waal, I'm her friend, ef she ain't got nare nother." And then, as if
+he felt he were arrogating unduly to his purpose, "An' I s'pose I'm a
+friend o' my own, too, an' I know _I_ ain't got nare nother. I
+kem hyar ter-night fur yer advices, Cap'n Tems; but ez ye don't 'pear
+ter have none ter gimme, I b'lieve I'll take my own. I'll settle this
+thing for myse'f. I'll find Jack Espey! I'll track him out. I'll run
+him down. I'll arrest him myse'f, an' I'll deliver him ter the law.
+An' let the door o' the jail that he opened fur me be shut an' barred
+on him!" There was a concentrated fury in his face as he said this. "I
+won't hide no mo' like a beast o' the yearth in a den in the ground,
+consortin' with wuss'n wolves an' bar an' painters. I won't skulk
+homeless like a harnt no mo' through the woods. I won't shirk the
+sher'ff no mo' fur Jack Espey's crimes, an' 'kase I done him nuthin'
+but good an' kindness! I'll find him,--the yearth can't kiver him so I
+can't find him,--an' I'll deliver him ter the law!"
+
+He stood for one moment more, and then he strode across the room to the
+door, his shadow blotting out the last red light of the day, leaving
+the circle about the fire gazing wistfully and aggrieved after him,
+except Luther, who was picking up the borrowed coat which Larrabee had
+tossed aside as he passed.
+
+Outside the night had fallen suddenly. The west was clouded, despite
+the lingering red strata, and the twilight curtailed. He looked through
+purple tissues of mists that appeared to have the consistency of a
+veil, to where yellow lights already gleamed through the shadows. They
+came from the shanties of the workmen beneath the cliffs, on which the
+ruins of the hotel had at last ceased to smoke. He hardly knew whither
+to turn. What pressure for explanations, what unbearable inquisitive
+insistence, would meet him at home, where Henrietta Timson reigned
+in the stead of his mother, he could well forecast; to venture near
+the Lost Time mine, within reach of Taft, was, he knew, as much as
+his life was worth. He hesitated now and again, as he went aimlessly
+up the road; regretting his outbreak at the Tems cabin; coveting its
+shelter, its fireside, the companionship of the home group; half
+minded to return thither; but resentment because of their half-hearted
+friendship, as he deemed it, pride and anger and shame, conspired
+to withhold him. Once again, as he ascended the mountain, he turned
+and looked down at the cluster of orange-tinted lights from the
+workmen's shanties that clung so close together in the depths of the
+purple valley, and he hesitated anew. White mists were abroad on their
+stealthy ways; a brooding stillness held the clouds; the mountains
+loomed sombre, melancholy, against them, indistinguishable and blent
+with them toward the west, save when the far-away lightnings of the
+past storm fluctuated through their dense gray folds, and showed the
+differing immovable outline of the purple heights. In the invisible
+pools below these transient flashes were glassed, shining through
+the gloom. The reflection of stars failed midway, because of the
+mist. There were few as yet in the sky, but as he lifted his eyes he
+beheld again, immeasurably splendid in the purple dusk, that sudden
+kindling of ethereal, palpitating, white fire which he had marked once
+before,--that new and supernal star, strange to all familiar ways
+of night hitherto, shining serene, aloof, infinitely fair above the
+melancholy piping mountain wilds and the troublous toils of the world.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVI.
+
+
+Jasper Larrabee stood transfixed, gazing at that tremulous, luminous
+astral presence with a strange superstitious thrill at his heart.
+It hardly seemed merely a star, so alien to his mind was its aspect
+in the erst untenanted spaces whence it blazed, so freighted with
+occult significance. Had the moment been charged with some wonderful
+apotheosis, some amplification of its pure white lustre into the
+benignant splendors of a vision of angels, the transformation could
+scarcely have exceeded the capacities of that breathless, insistent
+expectation which the ignorant mountaineer lifted toward it. For his
+was a simple faith, and his untaught mind had learned no doubts. And
+had never these nights of ours communion with celestial pursuivants?
+Did never the flutter of an angel's wing illumine far perspectives that
+darkle heavily over the earth? Was this rare fluid, which we call the
+air, so dense; were its sensitive searching vibrations, known as waves
+of light and sound, so dull, that it should feel naught, reveal naught,
+when the angel of the Lord flashed through the stars and the wind,
+through blossoming woods or bleak snows of deserts, and into the haunts
+and the homes of men?
+
+So many had come! He did not know that they were alien to the
+nineteenth century, and that the most spiritual-minded of to-day would
+account for their sudden vision as from prosaic natural causes,--as
+mental aberration, or the distortions of a diseased fancy, or the
+meaningless phantasmagoria of somnolent cerebration. To him it seemed
+that they had been with man from the very beginning; and why should
+their presence here be stranger than his own? Their very numbers
+served to coerce credibility. So many had come! To kings, to wanderers
+in the wilderness, to prophets, to shepherds, in dreams and in the
+broad daylight, they came: to stand with a gleaming sword before the
+gates of Paradise, and to sing in the starry advent of a new day,--On
+earth peace, good will toward men; to bring the immortal lilies of the
+Annunciation, and to tread the ways of the fiery furnace; to touch the
+bursting bonds of saints in prison, and to roll away the stone from
+the sepulchre of all the world; to minister to the Christ alike in the
+shadows of Gethsemane and amongst the splendors of the Mount of the
+Transfiguration!
+
+Larrabee was trembling in every limb, as the scenes trooped out before
+him in the vivid actuality of his recollections of the pages of the
+much-thumbed volume which he had left behind him when he had fled from
+the still in the Lost Time mine. He sank down upon the rocky verge of
+the precipice, amongst the clinging verdure of its jagged crevices.
+Some sweet-scented herb sent out its delicate incense under the
+pressure of his hands. A drowsy twitter of half-awakened nestlings came
+from the feathery boughs of a cedar-tree that a niche in the cliff hard
+by half nourished, half starved. The melancholy antiphony of the voices
+of the wilderness rose and fell in alternating strains, and at long
+intervals in a vague undiscriminated susurrus the night seemed to sigh.
+
+He heard naught; he heeded naught. His unwinking gaze was fixed upon
+the wondrous star in the heavens, with that thronging association
+of angelic ministrants so definitely in his mind that he might have
+thought to see an amaranthine crown expanding from the rayonnant
+sidereal points, or the outline of a nearing pinion stretched strongly
+to cleave the ether. For so many had come!
+
+But no! His imagination could compass no such apotheosis. The star
+remained a star. The exaltation of that moment of wild, vague, and
+breathless expectation exhaled slowly. A poignant sense of loss
+succeeded it. The prosaic details of the actual outer life pressed once
+more on his realization. He looked about him on the sombre wilderness,
+the black surly mountains, the itinerant mists, heedless whither, the
+steely glimmer here and there of the ponds where the water made shift
+to catch the reflection of the sky amidst the dun shadows, and sighed
+drearily with the sighing night.
+
+He was penniless, shelterless, his life at the mercy of any chance
+that might favor his crafty enemy, his confidence betrayed by the
+fugitive whom he had succored, his liberty endangered, already a
+criminal in the eyes of the law,--an outcast, in truth, within a
+league of his home. From the nullity of the begloomed landscape the
+glance naturally rebounded, and the very obscuration of the earth lent
+glister and definiteness to the wonderful precision of the march of
+the constellations, as, phalanx after phalanx, they deployed, each in
+its allotted space and sequence, toward the west. And again his eyes
+dwelt upon that new splendor in the midst of them. How strange that it
+should suddenly blossom whitely forth among these old, old stars that
+had lighted the bosky ways of the garden of Eden! How strange that the
+sight of it should be vouchsafed to him--and why!
+
+His pulses were tumultuously astir. All at once the thought that had
+been slowly framing itself in his mind took definite form. He wondered
+if it could be a sign for him, and of what!
+
+In the arrogations of poor humanity of the higher things, in the
+infinite breadth of the claim of an immortal soul, vast incongruities
+meet. The extreme might seem reached in the ignorant mountaineer,
+the moonshiner obnoxious to the law, the poverty-stricken laborer,
+seeing with the wild preëmptions of fancy this star, all newly and
+miraculously alight in the sky, as charged with some mysterious
+relation to his infinitesimally petty and restricted life. But once
+admit the idea of an immortal spirit, heir of all knowledge, made a
+little lower than the angels, to be crowned with glory and honor, the
+climax of development, and even the splendors of the star are as naught.
+
+Larrabee had no cultivated sense of comparison. His tenacious nature
+laid hold upon the idea of an intimate personal intention, a sign in
+the heavens, with a blunt and stalwart appropriation.
+
+He rose swiftly to his feet. So different a spirit animated him that it
+seemed a different path from that which he had trod as he had plodded
+slowly up the mountain, with hesitating steps and frequent uncertain
+pauses. Now he went deftly down the rugged and far darker way, brushing
+amongst bushes and vines, and be-showered with the perfumed drops that
+his hasty transit shook from their boughs; swiftly slipping through the
+shifting mists that now hid the sky, and again revealed the glister
+of that great star amidst a myriad others at the vanishing point of a
+perspective of seemingly precipitous white ascents, as the uncertain
+light cleft the glimmering vapors. He looked up to it, as it were,
+through a defile between these impalpable white cliffs, from the
+dark abysses of the night; and then the gauzy medium interposed, and
+without the faint light of the stars the night was black again. His
+pace did not slacken. He went forward as confidently in the darkness
+as if he were led by the definite capacity of sight, trusting to that
+instinct of woodcraft almost as keen as sense itself. Sometimes,
+indeed, his foot struck against a branch, torn by the wind from the
+trees and left to wither in the rugged path; or the splash of a pool
+beneath his inadvertent step broke the silence of his journey, as these
+unaccustomed incidents of the way asserted their presence as obstacles.
+He never hesitated, nor doubted, nor deviated. He seemed led through
+the darkness by his will. He was aware in some mysterious sort of the
+looming propinquity of great trees or the locality of jagged rocks;
+he avoided the verge of cliffs and abysses with that keen, accurate
+discernment of an unascertained faculty, as a somnambulist might have
+done. As far as his recognized intelligence was concerned, he was down
+in the Cove before he knew it, for the way was still sloping, the
+footing rocky and uneven. A long slanting burnished gleam of orange
+light appearing suddenly before him, revealing the white mists, and
+making the darkness a definite visible blackness rather than merely
+charged with a sense of sightlessness, he deemed only one of those
+transient lines of lightning reflected in the temporary ponds that
+he had marked earlier in the evening. It did not flicker, however,
+and die away. As he stared forward, he perceived, beyond a darkly
+lustrous interval, a parallel line of yellow brilliance,--another, and
+still another; and he became aware that he was amongst the workmen's
+shanties, the lights of which were mirrored in the water. Presently
+illusory shimmering squares were visible in the mists which marked the
+open doors. A croaking frog by the waterside ceased suddenly, as,
+with more decided step, Larrabee skirted the pool and approached. He
+felt rather than saw the shadowy creature's leap from before his foot,
+again an elastic spring along the margin, and a splash as the frog
+jumped into the water, and the long lines of gilded light were broken
+into a thousand concentric shoaling curves. Voices sounded close at
+hand, and then the whole little settlement became vaguely visible,--the
+cabins further apart than they had seemed at the distance; a banjo
+was strumming at the most remote, and as Larrabee walked up to the
+nearest, boldly, in the avenue of light that the open door blazed out
+in the darkness, he saw within the man whom he sought, bending his
+frowning brow over a paper in his hand. In the other hand Kenniston
+held a cigar, which at long intervals he put between his lips; then he
+pulled energetically at it as if merely to keep it alight, and with
+no definite experience or expectation of nicotian solace. The county
+surveyor, on the contrary, on the other side of the table, puffed
+his pipe systematically, his eyes half closed, his grizzled bearded
+face showing in repose amongst the wreaths of smoke, his conscience
+discharged of every detail of the great science of mensuration which he
+sought to apply to the various parcels of land owned or claimed by his
+fellow-man. He had answered so much at random the occasional remarks
+of his host on the subject of the processioning that it became very
+apparent to Kenniston that he did not propose to work at his vocation
+out of office hours, as it were. From the consideration of futility
+as well as decorum, Kenniston had relapsed into silently comparing the
+calls of the deed with the notes he had made of the day's work, and
+only unconsciously did an interjection of irritation and disgust escape
+him.
+
+"I ain't responsible for any disputed p'int, Mr. Kenniston," said the
+surveyor, sibilantly sucking his pipestem, his eyes quite closed, his
+feet upon the fender of the little stove. "Ye kin hev a jury o' good
+and lawful men ter examinate an' decide upon it; my business is ter run
+the line 'cordin' ter the calls an' the compass. That's all!"
+
+Kenniston looked up, a sarcastic comment in his eyes; the mere
+possibility of submitting the question of the boundary of his land to
+the wild will of a jury of mountaineers, qualified by the surveyor,
+according to the law of processioning land, and met in those tangled
+precipitous woods to discriminate in matters mathematical and to settle
+questions of topographical fact, seemed to him so happy a travesty of
+the theory of law and justice that he could not forbear a scornful
+smile at his own probable plight when he should come forth from such
+unique adjudication of his interests.
+
+"There's no disputed '_p'int_,'" he said, laughing satirically.
+"It's the whole confounded line from the Big Hollow Boulder to Wild
+Duck Falls!"
+
+"'Cordin' ter the calls an' the compass," muttered the surveyor, fast
+succumbing to the unholy fascinations of a dream in which he found
+that in seeking to ascertain the area of a triangular body of land he
+achieved the petrifying result of transforming it to a square. Reason
+revolted; he woke with a snort, filliped off the ash from his pipe,
+adjusted himself anew in his chair, looked very wide awake, to be
+overtaken again by the same irreconcilable process and result.
+
+In the diversion of Kenniston's attention he had lost the run of his
+ideas; he paused, puffed his cigar into a glow, pushed his chair
+slightly back from the table, glanced with lowering disaffection
+at the slumbering surveyor, and then mechanically about him at his
+surroundings.
+
+The house was the roughest of shells, and hardly compact enough to
+withstand the floods of rain that had descended upon it to-day. In one
+corner the floor was still damp, the eaves outside dripped. Beyond a
+cot, a table, and a few chairs there was no furniture save Kenniston's
+valise, his gun in its case, which was never opened, and a monkey
+stove, an object of aversion to its æsthetic owner; for, despite its
+utility, its outline and atmosphere were a continual affront to him,
+and it suffered grossly from the comparison with the great open fires
+of the mountaineers' hearths, the incense of hickory and ash and pine,
+the flash and flame and sparkle of those humble illumined interiors.
+
+The shadowy figure of a man standing in the doorway Kenniston did not
+immediately notice. Beyond a slight start, a mere matter of nerve (for
+he could hardly be surprised by aught that the mountaineers could say
+or do), he did not betray the unexpectedness of the apparition. He
+smoked silently, eying the intruder without salutation, as if he sought
+to shift the discourtesy of the lack of formality upon one who merely
+paused at the door of his domicile and surveyed its occupant; it was
+his rule not to encourage the mountaineers to come about, and he felt
+at liberty, with so untutored a folk, to depart from the decrees of
+decorum in such small matters, which were, however, exigent even with
+them. In this instance no offense seemed to be taken, no intentional
+lack perceived. Larrabee stood, his smiling dark eyes scanning
+Kenniston with a steadiness which apparently had other actuation than
+mere curiosity, his pale clear-cut face, his auburn hair, his alert
+strong pose, distinct in the crude white light of the unshaded kerosene
+lamp. Whether it were the natural commendation of a face and figure
+regularly handsome by the line and rule by which Kenniston was wont to
+apportion beauty; whether the exaltation of the discovery of the star,
+the spiritual audacity of the arrogation of a personal intimation in
+its manifestation, had touched Larrabee's expression with something
+strange, something aloof from the day, the time, and the people,
+Kenniston's jaded interest was stirred.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" he demanded, at length. "Then come in."
+
+Larrabee remained at the threshold, but he leaned against the wall, his
+big brown hat on the back of his head, as it rested against the rich
+veined amber and creamy tints of the yellow pine wood.
+
+"Air you-uns the stranger-man ez hev been hyarabouts, buildin' the
+hotel an' sech?" he asked slowly.
+
+Kenniston's eye became intent, hardening as he nodded. His thoughts
+flew instantly to that fair edifice and the collapse of all his plans,
+with the quick inference that here was information to come touching the
+incendiary. He felt his blood leap; by his pulsing veins he knew how
+it was burning into his face. He had that desire toward justice which
+should animate every civilized man, but although he sought to hold
+himself impartial, calm, circumspect to receive what might be a false
+accusation, it would have fared ill with Larrabee's enemy had he an old
+score to settle thus.
+
+As he remained silent Kenniston spoke, with a view of urging forward
+the disclosure. "Have I ever seen you here before?"
+
+Larrabee shook his head. "I hev never viewed you-uns ez I knows on."
+Then, after a pause, "Air you-uns a book-l'arned man?"
+
+"Reasonably so," Kenniston said, with a slight laugh. He leaned his
+elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hand, which was half
+obscured by his full beard, and while he looked impatiently at his
+visitor his white teeth gnawed his underlip.
+
+Larrabee hesitated. "Hev ye met up with the stars in yer readin'?" he
+finally blurted out.
+
+A sudden look of blank disappointment crossed Kenniston's face.
+
+"Stars!" he echoed in dismay. "Why, I thought you had come to give me
+some information about the cur that set fire to my house."
+
+(It was a different kind of brute, but the fact of Bruin's agency was
+relegated to the state of things not revealed, which we denominate
+mystery.)
+
+It was Larrabee's turn for impatience, and an affronted sense of
+interruption.
+
+"I dunno nuthin' 'bout who burnt yer hotel"--He paused suddenly, the
+conviction all at once fully fledged in his mind that it was the deed
+of the moonshiners, to rid the Cove of its prospect of troublesome
+invaders. The recollection of Espey's threat rang in his ears as if the
+very vibrations of the words were audible upon the air: "Burn him out!
+Burn his shanty every time he gits it started!"
+
+Larrabee suffered the sense of a nervous shock, so great was
+the revulsion from the subject that had engrossed him; for this
+reminiscence of all things he had least expected to meet here. He could
+hardly cope with it in the free outer air. It belonged so essentially
+to that other life of his, that underground world where he bore so
+different an identity, that it seemed to have thoughts and intentions
+and a conscience peculiar to itself. He had realized the dangers of
+the isolation in which he stood amongst those of his association, but
+he had thought himself safe here. Kenniston knew him neither by name
+nor face, and he was a stranger to all the workmen; since their advent
+into the Cove he had been held a prisoner in the Lost Time mine. Even a
+chance encounter with Rodolphus Ross he did not dread, for the officer
+had not been apprised of his identity on the night he had summoned him
+to search for the escaped Espey masquerading under the name of Larrabee.
+
+The abrupt pause, the introverted look, the sudden recollection
+advertised in unmistakable characters upon his unguarded face, did
+not escape Kenniston's observation, now keen and all on the alert.
+For his heart was in this reprisal. If he had had naught to gain and
+much to risk, indeed much of certain loss, he would have pursued this
+injury to its ultimate and bitterest requital. All that was manly in
+him--his courage, his pugnacity, his tenaciousness, his self-respect,
+his vehement, insistent, vigorous personality, that could neither
+make nor keep covenant with concession, compromise, or defeat--rose
+to the occasion. He had cursed in his heart the lukewarmness of the
+authorities, who had opined that the mountaineers were mighty rough
+folks, mighty hard to catch, lived in a mighty difficult country, and
+who had offered him the half-veiled advice that they were mighty bad to
+run against, in lieu of the formulated and disciplined suspicions which
+he had expected, the canvassing of possible "fire-bugs," involving
+as sequence warrants for arrest, indictments, and other fierce and
+formidable engines of the law, set to work with full intent and
+expectation.
+
+Here was a clue,--the first; and fortunately it had fallen into his
+own hands. However, it behooved him to be cautious, or the suggestion
+might be of as little ultimate value as if it were already given to
+the turbulent, ill-advised, precipitate deputy, or to his unsanguine,
+dubious, dilatory principal, with his wise saws about the lack of
+prudence involved in running against mountain folks, who were mighty
+hard to catch in the wilds of their difficult country.
+
+Now and again the family of Cap'n Lucy had had an intimation of how
+pleasant Mr. Kenniston could be when he chose. It was reserved for
+Jasper Larrabee to experience the fascination of the full and ripened
+flavor, the bouquet, so to speak, of his geniality and good will. A
+second rapid covert survey from that altered point of view which one is
+apt to adopt when a personal interest looms in the background convinced
+Kenniston that his visitor was no fool. Although he intended to drop
+the subject for the present, he did not quit it abruptly.
+
+"I was in hopes you could name some suspicious characters, or had heard
+some threatening talk, or"--
+
+Once more he saw from his visitor's face that, inadvertently, he had
+again struck the nail on the head. His secret self-applause aided his
+self-denial in relinquishing so promising a line of investigation. The
+man must be made to talk freely, to disclose; his confidence must be
+secured.
+
+"I have had heavy losses in this matter, and the officers seem of
+mighty little account. Every now and then I hope I'll hear of something
+some other way. I'm afraid to build again unless I know the fire-bug
+is somewhere else, or discover what I've done to set people against
+_me_."
+
+Larrabee's face was at once softened and troubled. "Burn his shanty
+every time he gits it started," quoth Espey. And he that would work
+ill to one man would work ill to another: witness his own plight. His
+conscience began to stir. If, he thought, the whiskey tax were not in
+itself so tyrannical, so impracticable and obnoxious a thing, he might
+have admitted for the nonce that moonshining was in itself wrong.
+
+Kenniston's eyes were studying his unconscious countenance. "Well," he
+said suddenly, "since it's nothing about my affairs, what can I do for
+you? Won't you have a chair?"
+
+Larrabee shook his head silently. He stood for a few moments undecided.
+It might seem that his enthusiasm, so ruthlessly dragged down to earth,
+might hardly make shift to rise again; but it was strong of wing, as
+behooves that ethereal essence, and in his ignorant assumptions he
+thought that he had seen a sign in the heavens, a sign for him. The
+fervor of all that he had half doubting believed, and half believing
+doubted, fired his pulses once more. He cared naught for Espey and
+his troublous usurpations, the officer of the law, the moonshiner
+and his deadly feud, the incendiary, the necessity of heed to his
+words. He cared for naught under the moon. Once more his face had that
+illumined, exalted expression. As he leaned suddenly forward, with a
+keen anxiety, and said, "Air ye 'quainted with the stars by name, bein'
+a book-l'arned man?" Kenniston had a swift doubt of his sanity.
+
+"Yes," he replied. And after a pause he asked the counter-question,
+"Are you interested in the stars?"
+
+But Larrabee, still under the influence of the strong excitement that
+possessed him, did not answer directly.
+
+"I kin read, but I hain't got but one book. The teacher what l'arned me
+ter read 'lowed ez the stars air named; they air numbered in a book.
+Hev ye l'arned sech?"
+
+"Oh yes; I have studied astronomy," replied Kenniston capably. "I know
+their names."
+
+"I know _them_; I dunno thar names," said Larrabee, making a
+definite distinction. "That's the reason I kem ter you-uns, hearin' ez
+ye air a book-l'arned man."
+
+He turned his head and looked out into the night as he stood on the
+threshold. The mists had gone their ways. The clouds were far in
+the west. Above all, the clear, sombre field of the sky was thickly
+bespangled with stars, chill, keenly glittering, for below the night
+was very dark.
+
+"Thar's a new one," he declared excitedly, "a new one never viewed
+afore! I seen it kindle up a matter of three week ago, three week an'
+better, an' it's thar now!"
+
+Kenniston sat in silent amazement, looking steadily at him.
+
+"Kem out!" Larrabee insisted, in tones strangely urgent. "Kem out an'
+see!"
+
+Some subtle monition apprised Kenniston that there was something in
+the man's disclosure withheld; that it was not merely to bring his
+book-learning to bear upon the array of the stars that he was asked to
+step out of his door at this hour of the night. How often he had heard,
+as the climax of a feud, of a man in these mountains being summoned
+on some pretext out of his door to meet a murderous bullet fired
+by an enemy hidden in the dark! He was momentarily ashamed of this
+recollection as he glanced at the surveyor asleep close at hand; as he
+heard the rhythmic beat of feet on the shaking, ill-laid floor, and the
+patting of hands as some jovial young blade danced a "break-down" in
+one of the workmen's shanties to the strumming of the banjo, finding
+this far more congenial an occupation than shoving the jack plane.
+
+Nevertheless, he had enemies, virulent, unscrupulous, powerful, as
+his short stay here might seem to attest, and what strange, fantastic
+vagary was this touching a new star! He would not refuse; that would
+impugn his courage even to himself, and he held it dear; and as
+he looked at Larrabee's face with its ever-smiling eyes, despite
+the intimation of something withheld, of trafficking with a mere
+subterfuge, he doubted as causeless his prudence. Moreover, this was
+a man of whom he must keep track, of whom he must know more. He was
+looking about the room as he rose. "Wait a minute," he said. "I have a
+strong glass here that may be of use."
+
+The door of the maligned monkey stove standing ajar emitted a ruddy
+glow of embers upon the yellow pine walls of the room, and toned down
+the white glare of the kerosene lamp. A deep, restful red hue might
+have attracted the eye from the farther side amongst the shadows, as
+Kenniston tossed a rug aside upon a chair to obscure a quick search
+through his valise. A pernicious habit, that of carrying his pistols at
+the bottom of his luggage, amongst his clean shirts, and he promised
+himself this should be the end of it. At the moment that he thrust the
+revolver into his pistol-pocket he picked up the field-glass from the
+cot. "Here it is," he said, and he followed his guest out of the door
+and into the dusky night.
+
+It was still all vibrant with the twanging drone of the cicada and
+the windy note of the booming frogs. The air, damp and of clarified
+freshness, was pervaded with indeterminate fragrance, the blent perfume
+of some flower and the pungent aroma of weed and shrub and the balsamic
+fir. A cluster of great trees rose just outside of the little shell,
+and though many a star shone down in the interstices of the black
+fibrous foliage, Larrabee led the way out beyond them and into an
+open space. It was nearer the other cottages instead of farther away,
+as Kenniston had half expected. The suspicion, the half-dormant fear,
+the doubt in his mind, were giving place anew to his determination to
+keep his hand on this man, to win his confidence or to surprise his
+secret. All those genial arts of ingratiation at his command were once
+more brought into play. It was he who introduced the subject of their
+mission, as they paused on a slight eminence, with a clear view of the
+great fields of heaven before them.
+
+"Now which is the star that you want to know more about?" he demanded,
+lifting the glass with a free gesture, and adjusting it to his eye.
+
+"Don't ye see nuthin' oncommon?" the mountaineer asked, in a tense
+voice.
+
+The strained tone struck Kenniston's attention, and he lowered the
+glass and looked through the baffling darkness at his companion,
+whose form could only be discriminated by some fine sense from the
+surrounding darkness by an effect of solidity, given one could hardly
+say how.
+
+Kenniston, the glass swaying useless in his hand, gazed upward once
+more.
+
+"No, I can't say I do," he replied wonderingly.
+
+Larrabee suddenly came up close to him, taking him by the arm.
+
+"Now, hyar, todes the east, an' yit a leetle todes the north, sorter
+slanchwise todes Big Injun Mounting, setting a mite ter the west from
+that, an' plumb west from Chilhowee, a bright, bright star,--with," he
+added, in a surprised tone, as if he had not before discerned this, "a
+sorter silver shine onto it."
+
+Kenniston laughed slyly in his sleeve. One can hardly better appreciate
+the immense distance that mechanical appliance has brought man from
+his normal state of natural, unassisted faculties than in the effort
+to point out, with such accuracy as to enable another to distinguish,
+an object in those fair and foreign fields of heaven, by the unaided
+means of the index finger. A suffusion of self-gratulatory pride is
+apt to overspread the consciousness, the unit assuming the credit of
+all that the genius of invention has achieved in the generic name of
+mankind. Kenniston had not even a slight expectation of being able to
+distinguish the particular star, but the affectation of effort, in his
+own interests, in some sort constrained his will. He looked about the
+skies with that vague sense of recollection which animates one who
+turns the leaves of a volume written in a half-forgotten language. He
+had not been the familiar of the stars. His choicest ambitions had
+lifted him no further than a reasonably safe height for an attic, or
+those fantastic simulations of turrets, with which the new architecture
+apes _haud passibus æquis_ the old. He had naught in common with
+the full-pulsed aspiring audacity of those architects of eld who
+builded in the plain of Shinar; his was but a low-studded Babel. He
+had not cared for a higher outlook, and his building had no definite
+designs touching heaven. It had been so long since he had regarded
+the upper atmosphere other than barometrically that he hardly made
+shift to see the Swan arch her snowy neck from those great lakes of
+ether, whose indented shores seemed marked and foliage-fringed by the
+wooded summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. The assertive brilliance
+of Lyra he noted near the meridian, with the harp-strings all vibrant,
+doubtless, with that music of the spheres which we are told by the
+scientist is no longer a mere figment of poesy. The Cor Caroli gleamed
+pure and splendid amongst the mists of a struggling recollection. And
+where was Scorpio?--how low in the sky, how far to the southwest, how
+near to its setting! Through a water-gap of Chilhowee, cloven to the
+very heart of the range, he marked the gleaming coils. Of strangely
+melancholy intimations were the stars, seen so far through the steep
+wooded defile, dark and rugged on either hand; but he only remembered
+the relation of its early setting and the season, for it was near the
+end of September. How little building weather the year might spare
+him yet! How heavy the rains of to-day, and the west still harbored
+portents! Unless he relinquished all and left the field, baffled and
+beaten, he must have the incendiary behind the bars. To jail a suspect,
+at all events, would intimidate the lawless population, and point the
+moral of "Hands off!"
+
+"I don't see it," he said, reverting to the prosecution of his
+intention to win the mountaineer's secret information as to the origin
+of the fire. "I'm sorry I can't see it, Mr.--Excuse me, what did you
+say your name is?"
+
+His visitor had not said, but all thrown off his guard the young man
+replied promptly, "Lar'bee,--Jasper Lar'bee. Ef ye look jes' a leetle
+ter the right of that thar batch o' stars ez 'pears some similar ter a
+kyart-wheel"--He raised once more the futile inefficiency of his index
+finger.
+
+But Kenniston was not looking. This name,--he placed it at once. In
+the short interview which he had had with the deputy sheriff touching
+the incendiary, without whose apprehension he feared to recommence the
+building, it had recurred repeatedly to Rodolphus Ross's lips coupled
+with many an imprecation. Kenniston had paid scant heed at the time
+to the story of the search for Espey, of the pretended arrest, of
+the escape of the supposed Larrabee and the inference of some crime
+which his flight fostered. It had all happened during his absence from
+the Cove, and shortly before the beginning of the building of the
+hotel. He could not conceive of any reasons for connecting one with
+the other; but this man indubitably knew something of the crime; his
+long and mysterious disappearance had baffled all the devices of the
+officers, and surely it was a strange subterfuge which had brought him
+hither. Strange to the minds of others as well, for sundry figures
+were detached now and again from the illumined thresholds near at
+hand; presently the foreman had joined the two, and several of the
+workmen approached, all pausing at intervals and craning their necks
+up toward the sky, having noticed the intent scrutiny of it, and
+expectant of some _lusus naturæ_,--comet, or aurora borealis, or
+other phenomenon,--the observation of which might serve to break the
+monotony. The resonant tone of the banjo now and again sounded loud
+in the damp air, as the musician who carried it under his arm jostled
+against one of the other men. Their attitudes and faces expressed an
+alert curiosity, for they were not altogether indistinguishable, the
+two star-gazers having insensibly changed their positions, and come
+within the line of light falling from one of the open doors.
+
+"Some ter the right o' that batch o' stars ez be some similar ter a
+kyart-wheel," repeated Larrabee urgently.
+
+"I don't know which you mean," replied Kenniston, drawing himself back
+to the subject with difficulty.
+
+"Don't ye view one ez ye never viewed afore?" demanded Jasper
+breathlessly. "Ef ye know 'em, ye air 'bleeged ter see that thar one
+air strange!"
+
+"Mr. Jackson,"--Kenniston turned to the foreman,--"do you see anything
+unusual in that sky?"
+
+The foreman answered with a prompt and businesslike negative, and then
+appealed in turn to one of the workmen. None of them could perceive
+aught amiss, although they all turned about and critically surveyed
+the majesty of the heavens.
+
+"It's a new star," protested Larrabee, unconsciously adopting the
+scientific term of description. "I seen it kindle up myself 'bout three
+weeks ago."
+
+There was an astounded silence; then a resonance broke out abruptly as
+the young musician smote his bullet head with the banjo, apparently
+inadvertently, but with the view of intimating to his fellows that all
+was not accurately adjusted in the cranium of their queer visitor.
+
+Kenniston hesitated for a moment. There lay in his mind the residuum,
+so to speak, of an impression that new stars or temporary stars are not
+of infrequent occurrence in the economy of worlds, rating time by the
+long astral lengths. He could not say at once,--such scant commerce
+he had had with the stars of late years, to be sure! His mind had
+reverted instantly to the question upon what pretext he should seek
+to detain the man. He only saw rather than noted the workmen slowly
+turning aside, the long lane of yellow light streaming through the
+door, the lustrous mirror-like suggestions in the darkness hard by
+where the pools lurked and the frogs were still croaking, the outlines
+of the clustering roofs of the other little buildings, shadowy in the
+deeper shadow, the dense woods surrounding all, and above the great
+amphitheatre of the mountains on every side. The voice of the foreman
+recalled him:--
+
+"That's a queer customer. First crank I've seen here."
+
+"Where is he?" cried Kenniston, with a start, the freedom of the
+criticism notifying him of the absence of its subject. "Stop him! Call
+him! Hold on to him!"
+
+But the effort was vain. Larrabee had departed as suddenly, as
+tracklessly, as if the night had swallowed him up.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVII.
+
+
+It was a buoyant, elated spirit that Jasper Larrabee bore as he slipped
+swiftly away through the darkness and the woods, unaware of the sudden
+vehement search for him, unhearing the hue and cry. He had put his
+discovery to the test,--the most searching that he could devise. And
+not the man learned in letters, who even knew the stars by name, not
+the clear-headed, prosperous, efficient foreman, not the humbler
+handicraftsmen, could see that gracious, splendid stellular presence
+still shining,--shining down into the wilderness, doubtless with some
+message, some token, some personal relation, that would be in due
+season made known. He had no uncertainties; he had said to himself that
+if it were invisible to others he would accept it as a revelation to
+himself. For had he not seen it even as it first kindled in the blank
+spaces of the midnight sky?
+
+He felt with a sort of surprise that his limbs were trembling as
+he went, his breath was short; more than once he paused, with a
+reeling sense as if he should fall, and he beheld the summit line of
+demarkation where the dark woods touched the clear sky describe a
+long curve upward, and once more sink to its place. He had not known
+the physical exhaustion that ensues upon strong and long-continued
+mental excitement. Beyond the moment's impatient realization he gave
+it no heed. He was glad, glad beyond all power of analysis, expectant,
+breathless, his eyes continually fixed upon the star, unmindful whither
+his failing feet carried him. He passed without a thought the door of
+the store of the Lost Time mine, from which so lately he had escaped
+as it were with his life in his hand. He might have seen, if he had
+chosen, the twinkle of Cornelia Taft's fire through the chinking, as
+she nodded on the hearth and vainly waited for her father's return to
+supper. He heard naught,--no voice from the woods, no stir of leaf, no
+sigh of wind, no lapsing of the alien sheets of water, not even the
+full rush of the stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine, loud,
+sinister, seemingly charged with cavernous echoes from those hidden
+haunted recesses whence it came, wild, turbulent, with thrice its
+normal volume hurling out into the black night. Only once he paused.
+The unseen air and the invisible moisture were at their jugglery again,
+weaving from nothingness wondrous symmetries of scrolls tenuous to the
+eye, marvelous winged suggestions endowed with the faculty of flight
+and airy poise, graces of fabric, tissues, fold on fold of impalpable
+pearl-tinted consistencies; and now a floating film passed before
+the star, and again it shone out more splendid still, and anon dimly
+through the gathering haze, and so was lost to sight.
+
+Larrabee stood for a time spellbound, still gazing up into heaven. But
+winds were astir in the region of the clouds. Heavy purple masses, with
+here and there flocculent white drifts in their midst, and showing
+lines of white at their verges, were spreading over the sky; the
+temperature had fallen suddenly; he was shivering. Vagrant gusts seemed
+to issue from defiles of the mountain, and he heard the awakening of
+the pines. Out of sight of the star his flagging energies failed. The
+definite realization of his fatigue, his hunger, his faintness, pressed
+upon his aroused senses. He could hardly support his tottering limbs to
+the door of the Lost Time mine, and drag himself up on the rocks, out
+of the reach of the water, to rest, as he waited till the clouds should
+pass, till the sight of the star should be renewed to his longing gaze.
+Even in its eclipse, in a certain yearning sense of bereavement, in his
+disappointment, he had a patience and calm acquiescence begotten of
+confidence. For he should see it again. Was it not his own, his very
+own, charged with some unimagined significance to him? He shifted his
+posture once, reckoning upon its position in the sky, that it might
+not fail his sight the moment the baffling clouds should withdraw.
+He was conscious of a high degree of happiness despite his tremulous
+thrills of suspense. He gazed upward, as he reclined on the ledge of
+rock, with smiling eyes and a heart full of deep content. He had gone
+far enough within to have an upward view through the jagged portal
+of rough-hewn rocks. Beyond their edges the sky seemed of lighter
+tint, so black it was within. He could mark here how the clouds made
+sail, how swiftly the wind sped them. He watched a section of a branch
+close at hand sway in sight, and swing back on the wind, and once more
+wave, nodding, plumelike, into view. He heard the sharp bark of a fox
+outside in the woods; it roused far-away baying of drowsy hounds,
+and again all was still, but for the reverberation of the water loud
+against the echoing walls of the darksome place. The sound affected
+his nerves; he was dizzy for a moment. Then something cold, clammy,
+suddenly struck him in the face. His heart seemed to stand still with
+the recollection of the spectral terrors of the place. The soft chill
+buffet came again and again, and the air was vaguely fanned about his
+brow before he recognized the noiseless flight of bats on their way to
+the outer darkness. He lay back upon the ledge, finding a solace in the
+mere posture of rest in his extreme fatigue, and once more watched the
+jagged black portal and the purple clouds with their hoary drifts, as
+in endless unbroken folds they rolled before the serene white splendors
+of that wondrous star. Again and again he would lift himself upon his
+elbow, fancying that the cloud textures waxed thin, and that presently,
+when they should fall away from before it, he would behold anew the
+sidereal incandescent glory that meant so much, that should mean
+more to him. Not once did his faith fail him. Not once did he doubt
+that the white fires of this star, which none else could see, were
+miraculously kindled and charged with some deep significance for him,
+with the vouchsafed will of God. For were not stars messengers in the
+olden time? Had he not read of one, supremely blessed and brilliant,
+which had led men, the wisest men, to the cradled Christ? As he lay
+back in the dense darkness, with the gathering clouds outside, and
+the air freighted with the sense of black noiseless invisible wings
+of creatures of ill favor and ill omen, he seemed to have a vision
+of that guiding star,--not a chill splendid crystalline glitter like
+his own, high, high in the sky, but low down in the dark east, and
+of a soft supernal silver sheen in the purple shadowy mist above the
+shadowy purple hills of Judea, that stretched out in ever-lengthening
+perspectives, as it fared on and slowly on its mystic way, for
+Bethlehem might still be far to seek.
+
+And suddenly, with a start, Larrabee became aware that it was a real
+light at which he was gazing far down in the Lost Time mine. He had
+slept he knew not how long, nor in what danger, for the lantern whose
+starry lustre shone so far in the dark cavernous depths was swinging in
+the hands of one of two men who must have passed him as he lay dreaming
+and unconscious. He hardly dared move at first, so far those slanting,
+divergent rays extended from the white focus into the darkness. He
+lay still, struggling for a moment with the idea of the traditional
+spectres of the place, whose grisly renown had served to make it so
+solitary. It was the lantern which proved so redoubtable an exorcist.
+The sight of the little mundane contrivance appealed to his logical
+faculty as no mere theory of the impossibility of spectres could have
+done. He lifted himself cautiously on his elbow, and gazed down the
+vistas of the gloomy place with a suspicious, inquisitive worldly pulse
+beating in every vein. These were men in truth; and what was their
+mission here? One of them was singularly gesticulatory of manner.
+The other slouched heavily. It was the latter who had just lighted
+the lantern, for he was evidently throwing away a match, an article
+which the Lost Time store had made common in the Cove. Suddenly they
+were joined by a third figure, somehow detached from the darkness,
+for Larrabee could hardly have said whence he had approached, and
+who turned with a light, lithe motion, swinging to his shoulder an
+implement which the thickset man had handed him. It was a pick. How
+often Larrabee had heard its vibrations ring through these storied
+depths while he threaded the dark tunnel to the still, and shivered at
+the thought of the two dead miners digging and digging the graves these
+thirty years for their bones which only the waters had buried!
+
+The lantern swayed, the shadows all flickered, the group was on the
+move. Larrabee sprang hastily to his feet to follow.
+
+He could not easily judge how far the feeble glimmer led them, so
+rugged and winding was the way. Once, as the mouth of a submerged
+shaft yawned suddenly before his unprescient feet, he hesitated,
+half deterred; he was fain to skulk with the skulking shadows, lest
+the light should reveal his presence, and thus the dangers which his
+precursors braved menaced him doubly. He marveled that they dared the
+possibilities of the place, as he noted that the half-fallen timbers
+in a cross-cut through which they passed barely supported the masses
+of earth which any jar might dislodge. Everywhere was the sound of
+water working its secret will still on the ruins that it had made, and
+its tone added to the awe of the place, and the desolation, and the
+darkness, and the eerie effect of the bats that flew after the lantern
+and smote blindly against it.
+
+The light was set down presently, and as the men seemed stirring about
+their work Larrabee ventured to approach nearer behind a pile of
+broken rock in the darkness, and mopped the cold perspiration from his
+brow. He caught his breath at the sight of the faces which the lantern
+revealed.
+
+For they were all recruited from his mother's hearth. Some crazy folly,
+doubtless, of old man Haight had drawn him here. He had been one of
+the miners before that catastrophe which had closed the work forever;
+Larrabee remembered in what deep, blood-curdling tones he was wont
+to curse the Lost Time mine. And his daughter Jerusha's husband,--it
+had always been a marvel where and how he obtained the whiskey he
+so indubitably consumed; perhaps, in consideration of his age and
+infirmities, Mrs. Larrabee furnished a too ample allowance of liquor
+to old man Haight, who, for services rendered in this wild enterprise,
+furnished his son-in-law.
+
+"We-uns hev been toler'ble good customers o' the Lost Time still,"
+Larrabee muttered sarcastically.
+
+And there was Jack Espey! The sanity of _his_ presence here was
+easily demonstrable; nowhere else could he so safely be. How he had
+chanced to coöperate in this strange work with the dotard and the sot
+was soon explained.
+
+"Gimme a holt o' that thar grub," he said gruffly, with a look of
+poignant hunger on his thin face.
+
+Old Haight, with a deprecatory expression and shaking hand, made haste
+to give him a small basket, of the queer shape and aspect which bespoke
+the work of the Indians of Quallatown. The young man voraciously
+thrust his hand into its narrow mouth, and as he drew forth its meagre
+contents gave vent to his disappointment.
+
+"My Lord!" he exclaimed, "is that all? An' ye expec' me ter kem hyar
+night arter night--from--from"--the effort of his heavy flight of
+imagination showed in his face--"from 'way over yander whar I live now,
+an' holp ye dig an' sech, an' gin me sech forage ter work on ez that!"
+He pointed contemptuously at the food, albeit his mouth was full.
+
+"Now, now, Jack, now, bubby, lemme tell you," expostulated the old man,
+his jaw quivering painfully as he spoke, and his wrinkled face showing,
+in the glimmer of the lantern, at once grotesque and piteous, encircled
+as it was by the brilliant hues of a little shawl of Mrs. Larrabee's,
+in which his head was tied up for protection against the weather, and
+which was surmounted by his hat. "Ye dunno how durned hard it war ter
+git that much. This hyar Henrietty Timson hev got us down on half
+rations, mighty short commons. 'Tain't like 'twar whenst you-uns lived
+with us, Jack. Oh my! Oh my, no!" and he shook his queerly upholstered
+head as he sat quaking and shivering on a ledge of the rock. He
+impressed Larrabee as much out of place,--so habituated was he to the
+sight of the old man in the chimney corner,--as the oven, or pot, or
+crane, or any other naturalized appurtenance of the fireside might have
+been. He let his veinous old shaking hands fall on his knees with a
+gesture deeply significant of grief. "I wisht ter Gawd," he cried, "ez
+S'briny war hyar!"
+
+He pronounced her name as if she were a sort of minor providence, as
+indeed she had been to him.
+
+"Leetle as ye hed, ye mought hev brung it sooner," grumbled Jack,
+stuffing the half of a very fat, very heavy biscuit into his mouth.
+
+"Law, Jack," cried the old man, "we-uns air plumb 'feared ter leave the
+house sooner,--even arter all war bedded up for the night. That thar
+'oman hev got her pryin' nose in every mortal thing; 'pears ter me the
+longest, sharpest nose I even seen," he added injuriously, and with
+sudden sprightly interest, "ain't it, Tawm?"
+
+His fellow-sufferer from its pointed inquisitiveness had seemed about
+to fall asleep in a heavy, shapeless lump, but he roused himself at
+this to add his testimony with some sincere acridity.
+
+"Longes' an' sharpes' _I_ ever seen," he protested thickly, "an' I
+hev known 'em p'inted an' drawn out to _de_-straction." His snore
+followed so promptly that one might have doubted whether he had spoken
+at all; his remark presented the phenomenon of a waking parenthesis, as
+it were, in the midst of the somnolent text.
+
+"I tell ye, it's good fur S'briny ter go, ter let we-uns savor how we
+miss her," said the old man. "Sech a house, Jack, sech quar'lin' an'
+scufflin' an' tormentin', f'om mornin' till night,--crowdin' _Me_
+up on the h'a'thstone, an' shovin' _my_ cheer, an' talkin' 'bout
+useless cumberers, whenst I hev been treated with sech _re_-spec'
+by S'briny Lar'bee ez ef I hed been her own dad, stiddier jes' her
+husband's step-dad,--sech _re_-spec' an' hot vittles, an' the fus'
+sarved, an' the bes' o' everything!" His old face flushed with the
+recollection of the recent indignities offered him. "The pa'son tells
+ye ter lean on the Lord. Ef ye ain't got the grace ter do that, S'briny
+Lar'bee's a mighty good help!"
+
+For the life of him, Jasper Larrabee could not harden his heart.
+
+"Her pet tur-rkey air dead," old man Haight presently observed
+disconnectedly.
+
+"Glad of it," said Jack callously. "I never seen a beast so pompered,
+an' fairly hanker ter git stepped on, forever flusterin' 'roun' the
+floor underfoot."
+
+"_She_'ll be powerful sorry. She sot a heap o' store by it, an'
+doctored it cornsider'ble. She 'lowed it hed the quinsy." Then after a
+pause, "Whenst I gits my money back," said the old man meditatively, "I
+be goin' ter buy S'briny Lar'bee suthin' ez will s'prise her,--I dunno
+what. I studies on it some mighty nigh every day. A spry young filly,
+mebbe, or a good cow an' calf,--I dunno. I'd gin her the money, ef she
+wouldn't be sure ter fool it away on them wuthless triflin' cattle of
+chil'n an' folks she contrives fur all the time. I'd gin S'briny half
+o' the cold cash, an' ennyhow I lay off ter spend half fur a presint
+fur her."
+
+Espey, his energies recruited by food, and perhaps willing to postpone
+the evil hour of shoveling and digging, looked up with a satiric eye
+and a rallying laugh.
+
+"Whar's my sheer, ef ye be goin' ter gin Mis' Lar'bee haffen the money?
+Ye 'lowed Tawm hed hed his pay in whiskey,"--he cast a side glance at
+the bloated slumbering face and collapsed figure in the shadow,--"an'
+he's hed a plenty, too, fur he's nuthin' but a cag o' liquor set
+a-goin' on two legs; but I'm durned ef I'll take my pay out in Mis'
+Timson's sour yeast an' raw dough." He twirled the empty basket
+over contemptuously. "Ye 'lowed that night, three weeks ago, whenst
+I--ye--whenst we run on one another, an' s'prised one another, ez ye'd
+pay me solid silver ef I wouldn't tell nobody, but holp ye; now didn't
+ye?"
+
+Espey's tone was so obviously that of one who speaks in flagrant jest
+that Larrabee perceived he gave the unknown enterprise no serious
+support or credence, and that he was only utilizing some preposterous
+delusion of the old man touching his work in the Lost Time mine to
+secure food to sustain him while he evaded the pursuit of the law.
+
+"Ye 'low ez 'tain't enough money!" screamed the old man shrilly, and
+Larrabee recognized the clamors of the queer cracked voice which he
+had been wont to shudderingly mark in the tunnel that led to the
+still. "Ain't I done tole ye what I ain't never tole no other livin'
+man--I don't count Tawm--it air eighty-seben dollars! Yes, sir, nigh
+on ter a hundred, what I hed done sold my cabin an' lan' fur on Big
+Injun Mounting whenst I kem over hyar ter settle,--eighty-seben
+dollars in hard silver"--He broke off abruptly. Then, in the deep,
+hollow, blood-curdling tone which Larrabee had so often heard about
+the fireside, he cursed the Lost Time mine. His excitement was painful
+to witness, as Larrabee, still looking round the pile of broken
+rock, noted his feverish illumined eyes, the flush on his withered
+parchment-like cheek, the aimlessness and the quaking of his fluttering
+nerveless hand. Espey was gazing at him calmly, his face lighted by
+the lantern placed on the ground between them, and evidently believing
+that not a syllable he uttered had any foundation in fact.
+
+"'Twar the day o' the floodin' o' the mine," old Haight mouthed and
+gesticulated vehemently. "Every durned thing went wrong that day! I war
+hyar a-workin'. I hed worked in mines over in Car'liny, an' war ekal
+ter all. I war toler'ble young an' nimble,--knowed ter be ez nimble
+ez a painter! An' one o' them durned buzzards workin' of the windlass
+drapped the whole contrivance, winch, rope, bucket, man, an' all, down
+inter the bottom o' the shaft; an' they couldn't make the man answer,
+an' 'lowed he war kilt. An' I--the devil's own fool--mus' ups an'
+volunteer ter go down an' git the windlass an' let 'em hoist it out,
+an' then let down the bucket agin an' fetch up the man--(I furgits his
+name, dad-burn him!--Tom, Jim, Pete, cuss him, whatever he be!) An' ez
+they war a sort o' harnessin' me up with ropes under my arms an' around
+my middle, I felt my leetle bag o' money a-poppin' 'bout in my pocket,
+an' 'peared ter me it mought pop out down in that deep onhandy shaft.
+An' I handed it ter the foreman ter keep fur me in his pocket,--he
+war a clever trusted man; I never tole the t'others, kase they war
+toler'ble hard cases, an' some men would kill a man fur a dollar an'
+a half; an' bless Gawd--eighty-seben dollars! An' down I goes! I hed
+about teched bottom when--hell broke loose! I 'lowed I hearn thunder:
+'twar the water on a plumb tear, breakin' down the walls an' cavortin'
+like a herd o' wild cattle through the mine. Sech screechin's! The men
+ez helt the rope drapped it on my head an' run fur thar lives!"
+
+With open mouth and shaking jaw, he rose up, and gazed eagerly about,
+while Espey wearily yawned and passed his hands across his eyes.
+
+"It bust through about thar." He pointed about in real or fancied
+recognition of the course of the flood. "But over yander--the whole
+thing hev fell down an' caved in sence then, mighty nigh--'twar higher
+'n the level o' the overflow, an' I stayed down thar in the shaft dry
+ez a bone. I stayed two days along o' that dead man. I furgits his
+name," he broke off in peevish irritation.
+
+He sat down, readjusted his plaid shawl about his head, surmounted it
+again with his big broad hat, and recommenced:--
+
+"Wall, they 'lowed at fust they'd work the mine agin,--didn't know
+what the damage war; an' ez they war pokin' 'bout, somebody 'membered
+me, an' when they fished me out'n the shaft I hed these hyar jiggets."
+He held up his shaking hands, and looked in exasperation from one
+to the other. "Some calls it the palsy, but the doctor, he 'lowed
+it kem from the narvous shock. An' the foreman, he hed done hed ter
+git drowned with my leetle bag o' money in his pocket." He rose to
+his feet, with a sudden steady blazing fire in his eyes. "But it's
+silver,--eighty--seben--dollars!" He pronounced the words as if
+they expressed the wealth of the Indies. "They air silver,--silver
+metal. Water can't hurt 'em, an' the leetle leather bag kep' 'em from
+scatterin'. The foreman's got 'em in his pocket. Mebbe he hain't got
+no pocket by this time, but he hain't got rid o' all his bones. The
+money'll be nigh his bones, an' I be goin' ter foller the wash o' that
+flood, afore the walls fell in on it, till I find 'em."
+
+There was something pathetic to Jasper Larrabee's sympathetic gaze
+in the record of the gradual failure of the old man's mental powers
+registered on the walls. He could easily distinguish, of course, the
+difference in the work wrought by numbers and with the expectation
+of valuable ore and this unique subterranean burrowing with only the
+object of old Haight's search in prospect. But at first accepted
+methods of mining had been held in regard with a due consideration of
+safety. The excavations had been carefully timbered, the débris of the
+ancient lumber serving for the purpose; the nature of the earth and
+rock all capably recognized either in the avoidance of obstacles or the
+seizure of advantage; the exact location of an old cross-cut definitely
+ascertained and intersected by the new tunnel, and utilized to further
+him on the way to some objective point, doubtless once definite in his
+mind, but now hazy and intermittent, or possibly lost altogether, for
+here and there, evidently at random, great vaults had been hollowed
+out and abandoned, and for a long time every precaution or thought of
+safety had been discarded. His plan and its feasibility were gone, and
+only his inadequate intention remained.
+
+Larrabee started violently as the walls rang suddenly with the weird
+old voice, which, with its keen, false intonation, had so often struck
+terror to the stout hearts of the moonshiners of the Lost Time still.
+It was a voice of insistent command. He was urging his comrades to the
+work, and presently the regular strokes of the pick wielded by the
+stalwart "Tawm" set the echoes of the place to a hollow, melancholy
+iteration dreary to hear, and dismally blent with the rush of the
+cruel torrent. Espey's stroke seemed, in comparison, incidental and
+ineffective; but albeit both men worked apparently with a will, it was
+evidently quite at random, obeying implicitly now and again a gesture
+or command given in pursuance of some weak, wavering intention, and
+changed in a moment.
+
+The accident which had put the secret into Larrabee's hands seemed
+to him now so natural that he marveled that it had not been earlier
+revealed. But doubtless the vocation of the lost miners had served
+to connect the stroke of the pick with their gruesome fate, and thus
+the very fact of the sound, which must otherwise have betrayed the
+enterprise, aided the spectral traditions and the consequent avoidance
+of the place to preserve it. Would Espey have dared, he asked himself,
+to venture within, had he not feared the living more than the dead? And
+but for his own recognition of the humble lantern and its necessarily
+human uses he would, for fear of the spectral miners, hardly have
+tracked the old miner to his new lead.
+
+And suddenly, with the very thought, notwithstanding the perfectly
+natural solution of the mystery, he was solicitous as to the means of
+departure. He could not wait to follow that feeble lantern far enough
+in the background to insure his invisibility. He would not issue upon
+them now and advertise his discovery, and dismay the old dotard with
+his hopeless scheme. "I don't want to torment the pore old man," he
+said. He felt a keen thrill of savage joy to have discovered Espey's
+lair, but he would need some thought to secretly entrap him. "Fur ye
+air a mighty slick shirk, brother Jack," he said, with scorn. He was
+feeling some matches in his pockets, and judging of their number.
+Should they fail him before he reached the outer air, he could step
+aside and wait till the men should pass with the lantern. Its glimmer
+served now as long as the passage was comparatively straight; when it
+turned, himself out of the possibility of view, he struck the first
+match. The way was shorter than he had fancied. His store was not yet
+exhausted when he felt the warmer temperature from without, and saw the
+jagged outline of the portal and heard the melancholy dash of the rain;
+for it was once more "falling weather," and the sky was cloaked and
+gray.
+
+As he hesitated outside, his mind intent upon Espey and the incidents
+of his career since he had been among them, there came to him the
+thought of the barn in which his whilom friend had been wont to
+spend so many idle and meditative hours. A good refuge, to be sure,
+for a fugitive from the law. The idea of comforts allured him as he
+recollected the great fragrant elastic masses of hay. A hiding-place
+as well. Here even Henrietta Timson would hardly find him, for the
+rotting ladder, from which many a rung was missing, afforded scant
+footing for a barn swallow, or a flying squirrel, or an athlete like
+himself or his friend. Sleep would recruit his energies, quiet solace
+his mind, a vacant interval of time clarify his intentions and fortify
+his resolves. He started up the mountain briskly; the thought of home,
+even in this humble, secret, half-outcast guise, warmed his heart.
+He did not feel the rain dash in his face. A prescience of October
+was unheeded in the melancholy cadences of the midnight wind. He
+hardly noted the deep gloom of the Cove, where an owl was wailing at
+intervals, and whence all the orange-tinted lights had vanished. As the
+chill of the failing season struck him, he shivered, but unconsciously.
+He had forged on past the Lost Time store almost to the crest of
+the ridge, where the homeward way diverged, when suddenly a dull
+subterranean thunder shook the air, and the earth seemed to tremble. He
+paused in astonishment.
+
+"Why, they air a-blastin' down thar in the Lost Time mine. Espey
+oughtn't ter let two bereft folks tech sech ez that; 'tain't safe."
+
+Then he reflected that Espey himself had doubtless superintended the
+charges with due regard to their safety and his own. Nevertheless, he
+shook his head as he stood looking over his shoulder into the blank,
+unresponsive darkness. He heard no more, and presently he turned again
+and went his homeward way in the dark persistent dripping of the early
+autumn rain.
+
+
+
+
+                                XVIII.
+
+
+The anomaly of administering upon one's own estate Lorenzo Taft was
+permitted in some sort to experience. A definite realization of
+finality attended his meditations, at he sat bending over the embers in
+the great fireplace of the store, in the rain-clouded morning that rose
+upon the conclusion of his labors of removing the still and destroying
+all its approaches. His vocation was gone, and naught remained. He had
+no more affinity than a fox or a wolf for a law-abiding occupation.
+The possible profits that might stick to his hands in the process of
+the conversion of the goods upon the shelves from the wholesale ratio
+to the retail failed to allure him, for the store had never been aught
+but a "blind." The furrow was no thoroughfare. That wild gambling with
+the chances of the sun and wind and the rain in its season, and often
+out of its season, known as farming, and doubtless permitted by the law
+only because it insures its own punishment, was risky enough to jump
+with his humor, but the stakes were hopelessly inadequate. He could not
+look forward, and the glance backward over the shoulder needs a good
+conscience to commend the prospect.
+
+Now and again he lifted his heavy boot and kicked the embers together
+fiercely, as if at great odds with his thoughts and his own counsels.
+Like many another, he undervalued his success, its hairbreadth
+jeopardies and its difficulty of attainment, now that it was fairly
+secured. It seemed to him a slight thing, the device of his quick
+wits to insure his safety, and his satisfaction in its triumphant
+exploitation had already evanesced. Had it been possible to reëstablish
+the status of yesterday, doubtless he would have hardily risked the
+discovery of the still, the disclosure of Larrabee, the capture of
+Espey, Dan Sykes's drunken tongue, and, as a result of these, the
+"shootin'-irons" of the "revenuers" and the sentence of the federal
+court. But gunpowder as a factor in a scheme admits of no second
+thoughts.
+
+He even upbraided his own acumen that, in the emergency, he had sought
+with an eye single the safety of himself, his one remaining comrade,
+and the apparatus, regardless of all considerations of enmity. But now
+that judgment was satisfied and escape certain, vengeance clamored.
+
+Whenever he thought of Larrabee outside, triumphant, free, enjoying
+an absolute immunity from the law by reason of the destruction of the
+moonshiners' lair, which rendered the discovery of his complicity
+impossible, Taft frowned heavily and swore beneath his breath, and
+kicked the unoffending embers into a new adjustment, so bitter was the
+fact that his own safety made Larrabee's protection complete. Even poor
+Dan Sykes's exile--and doubtless the young sot was well on the way to
+Texas by this time--was as necessarily a measure taken in Larrabee's
+behalf as if it were the dearest desire of Taft's heart to shield and
+screen him. The realization that, despite himself, Larrabee shared his
+security cheapened it. Less and less he realized its value. A turbulent
+pulse began to stir within his veins. His heavy cheek was red and
+pendulous beneath his yellow beard. Occasionally he dropped his lower
+jaw with an expression of angry dismay, so ill had the event fallen out
+with his liking. The sight of Copley wandering about the half-darkened
+house, lighted only by the fire and the pallid grayness from the door
+ajar opening upon the rainy outside world, as uneasy as a homeless cat,
+able to settle to nothing, his face a palimpsest of care and trouble
+and failure, overwritten again and again above the half-obliterated
+script of years agone, irritated him vaguely. Taft eyed him loweringly,
+as the two children in the opposite room besieged him for the detail of
+the adventures and dramatic "taking off" of a certain "black b'ar," a
+vanquished enemy of his earlier days, which he recounted as aimlessly
+as if the story were elicited by a wooden crank; but responding to a
+spirited encore, he plucked up heart of grace to add new and fresh
+particulars. His worn and not unkindly face did not ill become the
+armchair and the propinquity of the juvenile heads. His serenity, as
+the two resorted from contradiction to blows, smartly administered
+across him to his own great jeopardy, bespoke a grandfatherly
+tolerance, nearly related to affection, for the combatants. Without
+more masterful leading than his own mind could originate or his own
+propensities could furnish, he might spend the rest of his life at the
+plough-handles, and ask no better society, and hope for naught beyond
+his coarse garb and his coarser fare. He was growing old, and this
+might be a better prospect than the still could promise, with always
+the possibility of a federal prisoner's cell at the vanishing point of
+the long perspective.
+
+Taft could preëmpt no such demesne of mild content. His rankling regret
+for all that he had done, and done so well, in that it served his enemy
+perforce as one with himself, deepened as he began to realize that in
+escaping so great and imminent a danger none sustained appreciable
+injury but himself. He alone seemed at the end. He could not for years,
+perhaps, safely rehabilitate the still. A new place must be sought, a
+new trade established, new dangers guarded against; and complicated
+by his relations with Larrabee, at large and at enmity, a removal
+unobserved and a reëstablishment without pursuit seemed impossible.
+He dwelt with futile persistence on the peculiar adaptability of his
+hiding-place, now demolished forever. Nowhere else could he have
+commanded such advantages of seclusion. Surely nowhere else could his
+dangerous vocation have been so safely plied. He enumerated the varied
+precautions that he had observed, the dangers that he had successfully
+balked. All the chances of the world outside had run in his favor; even
+the mysterious burning of the hotel was strangely calculated to aid his
+design in preventing the advent into the Cove of summer sojourners,
+that might lead to the discovery of his lair. Doubtless, too, by this
+time, in addition, Kenniston's plans were definitely and forever
+baffled by the untoward result of processioning the land. And as the
+thought of it recurred to him he started suddenly, the color deepened
+in his face, and he beheld the events of which he had elected to play
+the motive power in a new and baleful light.
+
+Certainly there was no flaw in his reasoning that stormy night when
+he had betaken himself in company with the wind and the rain, high up
+into the solitudes of the "bald" of the mountain. A wild night, with
+none else abroad save perchance a stray marauder of the furry gentry.
+Only the mists dogged his steps, and only the lightnings searched out
+his path. The gigantic boulder that seemed immovable, grim, gaunt,
+forbidding, the agency of giant powder set astir easily enough; and
+although the charge, accurately calculated for the purpose, was not
+sufficient to fracture the great mass, its equilibrium on the steep
+slope was destroyed. A wild turbulent dance it had as it hurled down
+the slope from the spot where the ebbing seas of centuries agone had
+left it stranded. A thunderous crashing voice it lifted as it went, and
+the thunder of the clouds seemed to reply. In the pallid dawn of the
+rainy day, Taft had crept back through the wet clouds of the summits
+and the spent winds lingering in the dank woods, to behold it lying
+there in this alien stop, as immovable of aspect as of yore, with great
+trees uprooted by the tempest athwart the rocky ledges about its path,
+and every trace of the action of powder effaced by the persistent rain.
+It marked a new corner for the beginning of Kenniston's survey; on a
+line with the old, it is true, but full five furlongs distant. It was
+a north-westerly line to be run out thence; the greater divergence
+would occur in the Cove, which fact Taft had learned as Kenniston made
+a swift plat of his irregularly shaped land with his cane on the floor
+of Cap'n Lucy's cabin porch. A simple scheme enough, this,--that the
+one available site for the hotel should be thrown within the lines
+of Cap'n Lucy, who would not bargain, sell, or convey, and thus the
+ill-omened caravansary crowded out of the space it was expected to
+occupy; for as yet Bruin's intervention as incendiary was among the
+uncovenanted things, and since the unlucky threat to burn the building
+had originated among the moonshiners Taft feared discovery should he
+apply the torch himself. A simple scheme, well planned and carried out
+with full effect,--and how should its completion so ill please its
+projector?
+
+The fact that Cap'n Lucy should profit by it Taft had heretofore hardly
+heeded, since this was the necessary incident of his own greater
+profit. Now, however, that treachery, as he esteemed it, had riddled
+the whole finespun web and brought it to naught, a turmoil of rage
+possessed him. It seemed some curious chicanery of fate that he alone
+should sustain loss, and that to others should accrue all the advantage
+of his subtle weavings of chance and fact, as if the threads still
+held fast. Cap'n Lucy was in possession, doubtless, of many hundred
+acres of Kenniston's land. He suddenly grudged them to Cap'n Lucy as
+he had never bethought himself to grudge them to Kenniston. Jealousy
+is an intimate passion, and insistently of the soil. The neighbor, the
+associate, the friend's friend,--it makes no far casts. Kenniston was
+beyond its restricted bounds.
+
+Cap'n Lucy's causticity, his arrogance, his insulting courage which
+belittled the possibilities of another man's wrath, his intrenchment in
+the subservience of his household, and his preëminence in the esteem
+of his small world did not serve to commend him to his unwilling
+benefactor, who stood in immediate contemplation of his own loss.
+And as the radiant face of Julia appeared in the dim midst of Taft's
+recollection, he rose to his feet, his resolution taken in the instant.
+He had not forgotten the look in Larrabee's eyes when Espey had
+demanded of him whom he had been "a-courtin' at Tems's." Now, with
+Espey gone, and Larrabee foot-loose and free, it might chance that
+these hundreds of acres of which he had bereft Kenniston would one day
+fall into Larrabee's possession as his wife's inheritance, when Cap'n
+Lucy should go to his account,--which Taft doubted not would be a long
+one.
+
+"I'll be dad-burned," he cried, "ef I'll stand by an' see Kenniston
+choused fur old Lucy or Lar'bee, air one!"
+
+Few human motives are simple. The travesty of restitution served to
+cloak even to himself jealousy and grudging and revenge, and that
+mad impulse to hurl down and wreak woe upon those who had chanced
+to prosper in the dispensations which he had ordered himself, and
+which had wrought perversely to his injury. He had, however, nothing
+of the appearance or the manner of a subtle villain when he was on
+horseback in the slanting lines of rain, that multiplied till they
+hid the mountains near at hand, and erased the Cove, and nullified
+all the conditions of the familiar world. On the contrary, his bluff,
+bold, open aspect was of a reassuring geniality, notwithstanding its
+overbearing intimations, and served to identify him to Kenniston, as
+he lounged in his unsubstantial domicile, and looked out ruefully at
+the dull day with the gray rain and the grayer mist and the ochreous
+pools of water, seeing naught else till this massive equestrian figure
+materialized in its vaporous midst and seemed to ride straight out of
+it. Taft flung himself from his saddle with a decision which implied a
+mission; and despite Kenniston's intention to discourage the visits of
+the mountaineers, he could not, with so assured a guest, have withheld
+the customary greeting of hospitality without more definite rudeness
+than he had expected to adventure.
+
+The new-comer was the more welcome since Kenniston's companion in
+keeping the monkey stove warm was Rodolphus Ross, who had come to the
+Cove for the purpose of examining the scene of the fire, and ferreting
+out the incendiary. He had, under the guise of questioning Kenniston
+on the subject, inflicted his society upon his restive host for the
+better part of an hour, now and then desisting from the discussion to
+work away at the damper of the monkey stove, which he patronizingly
+denominated a "smart little trick," albeit by reason of the heavy
+air and ill adjustment and the lack of adequate draught it was doing
+itself no credit. Ross experimented with an ardor and uninformed energy
+which threatened the total wreck of its constitution. The clatter of
+the metal was hardly more grating upon Kenniston's educated nerves
+than were his guest's speech and bearing. There was something in the
+exaggeration of the deputy's urban boorishness, the plaid of his
+ill-fitting garments, the hilarity of his vulgar townish impudence,
+that daunted a charitable acceptation of his foibles. So distasteful to
+Kenniston's cultured taste was the degree of sophistication acquired
+by the deputy sheriff, and with many a misconception adapted to his
+personality, that the absence of it seemed dignity in the mountaineer,
+and Taft's unvarnished address the unpolished substratum of good
+manners.
+
+"How's ducks in the hills?" Ross greeted him, dropping the small
+poker, and looking up with bright dark eyes, the two prominent front
+teeth visible beneath the short upper lip. There was a moment of
+rabbit-like expectancy of expression; then his lips widened to a laugh
+as the burly stranger turned his serious, impressive face toward him.
+
+"Air you-uns speakin' ter me, sir?" demanded Taft, in a grave, direct
+manner, his steady eye full upon him.
+
+The airy deputy shifted ground for once. "Good day fur ducks," he
+modified his speech.
+
+"Cornsider'ble fallin' weather," admitted Taft incidentally, and,
+seating himself in the chair indicated by Kenniston, he proceeded
+to take part in the conversation, his big booming voice rendering
+interruption impossible save as he listed.
+
+"I hev viewed you-uns afore at old Cap'n Lucy Tems's house," he said to
+Kenniston, crossing his legs, and eying the steam casually as it rose
+from the damp boots under the persuasive heat of the stove. "Yes, sir,
+Taft is my name."
+
+"I remember you very well," said Kenniston affably. "Won't you light
+your pipe?" He pushed a match holder and tobacco pouch across the table
+to him.
+
+Taft, without comment, filled his pipe from an inexhaustible supply of
+tobacco that seemed always loose in his pocket; it was far stronger
+than that of his host, as the rank odor which rose on the air presently
+demonstrated. Rodolphus Ross had looked at him with a grin of hopeful
+anticipation, which shrunk at once when he recognized and adapted to
+his own needs the uses of the lucifer match.
+
+"Yes, sir," Taft resumed, "I war toler'ble sorry ter hear 'bout'n yer
+hotel bein' burnt. I didn't view it at the time." He puffed the coals
+into a glow, and pulled away comfortably.
+
+"Meanes' people on yearth, these hyar mountaineers!" cried Ross. "They
+jes' so durned ignorant they don't know sin from salvation, nor law
+from lying."
+
+"Then they ain't 'sponsible," remarked Taft coolly. He pressed down the
+burning tobacco in the bowl with a callous forefinger indurated by long
+practice to crowding his pipe, and resumed: "I 'lowed it mought gin ye
+a start ef I war ter tell ye I hearn sev'ral men talkin' 'bout burnin'
+it,--long time ago, 'fore it war begun."
+
+Kenniston was leaning back in his chair, much at his ease, noting with
+a sort of languid interest the intimations of force and ferocity in
+his visitor's face: the keen sagacity, rather as of the instinctive
+endowment of one of the lower orders of creation than an enlightened
+intelligence; the beaklike nose; the contradictory geniality of the
+full blue eye and broad floridity. He brought his tilted chair suddenly
+to the floor, leaned forward on the table, with a slight exclusive
+gesture toward Rodolphus Ross, which, although it escaped that worthy,
+caused Taft a sharp regret for his precipitancy.
+
+The deputy sheriff was all a-clamor.
+
+"Why, now, my big bull o' Bashan, ye hev got ter make that statement
+under oath with full partic'lars,--names, dates, and place!" He rose up
+on the opposite side of the monkey stove, with the lifter in his hand,
+with which he gesticulated imperatively.
+
+Kenniston could hardly repress his impatience.
+
+"Of course, Mr. Ross, of course,--all in due season," he said irritably.
+
+"But abuse the authorities, in season an' out, an' 'low the devil will
+ketch the officer, in due course o' jestice, 'fore the officer'll ketch
+the malefactor. I ain't a-goin' ter lose you, Mr. Durham, ye bet high
+on that!" he added, turning to Taft.
+
+"Mr. Taft expects to swear to the facts, of course," said Kenniston. He
+paused abruptly, meditating a remonstrance with the tumultuous brute;
+but Ross's very vulgarity, his clamorous brutality, the impossibility
+of reaching through his hardened exterior any sensitiveness, or pride,
+or sense of decorum, or whatever sanction may control the heart of a
+man who is a gentleman in jeans, gave him an advantage over a man of
+breeding which no culture could compass. Kenniston could not cope with
+him; his training had prepared him for no such encounter.
+
+Only Taft's great sonorous voice could overbear the deputy's words,
+which sounded in his first utterance with the disjointed effect of
+Christmas firecrackers enlivening the booming of Christmas guns.
+
+"I'll make oath ter statements ez ter date an' person, but not
+place,--I hev no call ter drag other folks inter sech. I dunno ez they
+fired the hotel; I only heard 'em threat it."
+
+"But why?" demanded Kenniston eagerly.
+
+"Deviltry,--deviltry, o' course," protested Ross. He had contrived to
+smirch his face in the careless handling of the poker of the monkey
+stove, which added a certain grotesque effect to his appearance, if one
+were in the mood to be amused by it.
+
+Kenniston's mood was far from such influences.
+
+"I must ask you to be quiet, sir," he said, with acridity.
+
+"Ye must?" sneered Rodolphus Ross. "An' who war that ez 'lowed ef the
+local force war so 'torpid,'--_torpid_, ye hed it,--ye'd hev up
+private detectives from Bretonville ter settle the hash o' these kentry
+varmints?"
+
+He threw up his eyebrows almost to the smirches obliquely laid across
+his forehead, laughed with a gleam of white teeth and an intent
+widening of the dark eyes, the whole facial expression gone in an
+instant.
+
+"Waal, we ain't 'torpid' no longer. 'Wake up, snakes!' Now, old buck,
+answer my questions, an' tell me why they warn't willin' ter let Mr.
+Kenniston build his hotel in the Cove."
+
+Kenniston folded his arms as he tilted himself back in his chair, and
+resigned the conversation to its unique leadership. The ceaseless
+motion of the falling lines of rain gave a spurious effect of motion
+to the great monastic forms of the mountains cowled with mists and
+robed in dreary hue, seeming continually in sad processional along the
+horizon. The ochreous pools near at hand had lost all capacity for
+reflection, although the dark green branches of the firs here and there
+bent above them, and the gray rain dripping from the fibrous fringes
+upon the unquiet tremulous surface took its color, and was seen no
+more. His returning glance met Taft's eye as he was about to speak, and
+somehow in that momentary contact a quiet understanding was established
+between them.
+
+"The reason, I reckon, they didn't want Mr. Kenniston ter build his
+hotel hyar war 'kase 'twould bring too many strangers round."
+
+"An' what's the objection to strangers?" asked Kenniston anxiously. It
+was not merely a retrospective interest that the question served. He
+asked for the future.
+
+"Waal, I reckon they hed some moonshinin' or sech on hand," returned
+Taft coolly.
+
+"Thar, now! what did I tell ye?" vociferated Rodolphus Ross, appealing
+to Kenniston. "An' I'll bet this hyar Larrabee war one of 'em."
+
+Taft nodded, and Kenniston meditatively eyed the dull flashes from the
+stove, recollecting the strange conversation of Larrabee here, and his
+sudden significant betrayal of secret knowledge of the origin of the
+fire when it was mentioned.
+
+"Strangers air powerful onhealthy fur the moonshinin' business," said
+Taft, as a sort of corollary of his former statement.
+
+"Speak from experience?" sneered Rodolphus Ross.
+
+"I do so," declared Taft unequivocally. Then turning to Kenniston, "I
+sarved a prison term fur illicit distillin' whenst I war a young man.
+I 'lowed, like all these other young muskrats, ez I could do what I
+pleased with my own corn an' apples. But whenst I traveled all through
+six or seben States goin' to the North, an' seen this big kentry an'
+sech, I knowed I warn't ekal ter runnin' agin its laws; an' whether
+thar's reason in 'em or no, I ondertook ter keep 'em arterward."
+
+This unexpected confession disconcerted Ross in some sort. He silently
+eyed Taft, whose criminal experience seemed rather an error of an
+unripe judgment than the turpitude of law-breaking, and his candor in
+admitting it bluntly did not detract from the serious impression he
+had evidently made upon Kenniston. With Ross nothing was serious long.
+There was a sudden breaking up of the gloss of intentness in his round
+dark eyes, and as they shifted they fell upon the poker of the stove,
+and he once more thrust it through the bars and rattled it smartly.
+
+"I oughter say," said Taft, meditatively sucking his pipestem, "that
+'twar Espey ez fust 'lowed ter burn ye out. 'Burn his shanty!' he say."
+
+A picture as definite as if it were the reality of pigments and canvas
+glowed suddenly before his contemplation,--the red walls of his den
+a-flicker in the flare of the furnace fire, the burnished gleam of the
+copper, the burly forms of the tubs of mash, familiars of the brown
+gloom, and the circle of faces, definite with those sharply marked
+shadows and striking high lights that a strong artificial glow elicits
+from the darkness. For his life he could not repress a long-drawn sigh,
+and then he shifted his position and cleared his throat raucously. But
+the picture, like many another masterpiece of the painter Memory, was
+not on general exhibition. For all its close detail and strong salience
+and brilliant reality of hue, it was invisible to Kenniston. As to the
+regretful sigh, fat men are often wont to sigh for very fatness, and it
+passed without significance.
+
+After a meditative pause, "Did it ever occur to you that this Larrabee
+is a crank," asked Kenniston, "what you call, and very aptly,
+touched-in-the-head?"
+
+"Who? Larrabee?" exclaimed Taft vehemently, all alert once more, his
+eyes on fire, his angry breath quick. "He's smart ez the very devil!
+Don't you let him pull the wool over yer eyes with the lunacy purtense."
+
+Rodolphus Ross gave a final rasping clatter of the poker between the
+bars; then flung it, resounding, down upon the floor. He rose to his
+feet, stamping with first one and then the other to shake out his
+trousers from their persistent kneed effect, and, turning to Taft, he
+said, with an off-hand manner, "Now, look-a-hyar, Prize Beef, when did
+ye an' this sca'ce buzzard Lar'bee meet the last time?"
+
+The "Prize Beef" apparently perceived no sort of offense in this form
+of address.
+
+"I ain't viewed him in--I dunno when. I 'lowed he hed lef' the kentry
+till he war up at my store, a few nights ago. I warn't thar, but my
+leetle gal, she seen him."
+
+The sly, predatory look was in Rodolphus Ross's eyes. He lifted his
+knee and smote it as if he had discovered a very apt coincidence.
+
+Taft hesitated; then he said, "Ye'd better go up yander an' talk ter
+my leetle darter 'bout'n it." He hesitated once more. He feared that
+Copley might be inadequate to the situation, but, with his ever alert
+suspicions, he would doubtless fly at the very sight of a stranger; and
+as to Sis, he could rely upon Rodolphus Ross's address and manner to
+arouse the enmity of old Mrs. Jiniway's disciple in etiquette, and he
+knew of old that Sis was wont to give her adversary no quarter. A dozen
+of such as Rodolphus Ross would hardly be a handful for Sis. He would
+learn naught from her which he wanted to know. "Take my mare out thar,
+bein' ready saddled," he said hospitably. "I'll wait hyar till ye kem
+back."
+
+Contrariety was the breath of the deputy's life. The congeniality of
+his vocation lay much in the opposition of his duties to the desires of
+those of his fellow-men with whom he was brought into official contact.
+He earnestly wished to negative Taft's suggestion, but the possibility
+of getting at closer quarters with Larrabee, of once more finding his
+trail, which had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, was
+stronger for the moment. His enmity had not grown cold; it was the more
+vehement the more it was baffled. He lingered a moment; then, turning
+up his collar, and pulling down the broad rim of his hat all around to
+afford eaves to conduct the rain from his head, he plunged out into the
+steady torrents with a discordant yawp that made the little shanty ring.
+
+Taft gazed thoughtfully after him as he vaulted into the saddle and
+rode off with a good deal of unnecessary heel-and-toe exercise in the
+region of the animal's ribs. The restive mare apparently resented the
+ungentle treatment, for the last that was seen of mount and rider was
+a profile rampant against the blank white expanse of the closing mists
+ere they were enveloped in the opaque multitudinous folds.
+
+"They tell me that Gawd made man," said Taft at last. "'Pears ter me ez
+the Almighty slighted _that_ job, sure."
+
+Kenniston was a man of painfully orderly instincts. He could not
+satisfactorily resume the conversation without gathering up the poker,
+the lifter, and other appurtenances of the stove which Ross had
+scattered about the little zinc square on which it sat, replacing them,
+rearranging the writing materials, newspapers, tobacco, and cigars
+on the table, and stirring the fire to brightness and a possibility
+of burning. As he threw himself into his chair he marked how the
+encroaching mists had invested the house. Not half a dozen paces
+of the path remained visible from the door; even upon the threshold
+the vapor hung in vague white wreaths, to vanish in the heat, and be
+replaced by white clouds floating in with a rolling motion,--never
+disappearing utterly, but venturing no further. On the roof and in the
+invisibilities of the white mists outside they could hear the chilly
+rain still steadily falling. The seeming isolation gave a certain
+confidential character to the conversation even before its developments
+warranted this.
+
+"How did the percessionin' turn out?" Taft demanded.
+
+"The rain stopped it," returned Kenniston, gloomily eying the
+thickening mists, while Taft critically but covertly observed him.
+
+"Satisfied ez fur ez it went, I s'pose?" Taft flicked off the ashes
+from his pipe, and pressed down the remainder of its contents with that
+salamander of a forefinger.
+
+"No," said Kenniston irritably. "It is a great surprise to me."
+
+"Mr. Kenniston," said Taft, with that blunt directness which so
+commended him to the experienced man and so warped his judgment,
+"that thar Big Hollow Boulder, the beginning o' yer survey, hev been
+bodaciously moved."
+
+Kenniston lifted his head suddenly, the excitement of the moment
+showing red in his face. A half-scornful incredulity was in his eyes,
+almost on his lips. He was about to speak; then paused doubtfully. The
+testimony of his recollections of Cap'n Lucy's significant insistence
+on the phrase "Big Hollow Boulder" and a thousand satiric allusions to
+the stationary functions of a monument of boundary overwhelmed him for
+the moment; for their incongruity with a culpable knowledge or agency
+in the fact was more than inexplicable; it was mysterious. There needed
+no dexterous jugglery with phrase and fact, however, to account for
+Luther's furtive, hang-dog manner and averted eye.
+
+"It seems impossible! But I will not believe that old man Lucy had
+anything to do with moving it," Kenniston began. He suddenly caught his
+lip and bit it hard. It was evident from his flaunting remarks that the
+old mountaineer had not been similarly generous to his neighbor.
+
+"A heap o' land," suggested the politic Taft. "But then I s'pose ter
+run yer eastern line out would show whar yer corner is?" He asked the
+question eagerly.
+
+"Oh no. Calls for permanent natural objects usually control calls
+for distance. I suppose that rule would hold fast in this instance.
+My eastern line can only run to the boulder, which is presumably
+immovable."
+
+Taft's countenance fell. He had thought that the further survey of
+the eastern boundary would serve to reëstablish the corner where the
+boulder should be; on the contrary, Cap'n Lucy was invested with many
+hundred acres for which he had given no equivalent in goods, or money,
+or even occupancy.
+
+"I saw that something was mighty wrong with the line that the surveyor
+was running; and so did Cap'n Lucy, for that matter," said Kenniston,
+revolving the events of the processioning. "He looked dumfounded when
+he saw Wild Duck Falls in his boundary, and the hotel,--or rather the
+place where the hotel ought to be."
+
+Taft caught a quick inspiration. "That's it,--them boys is
+a-moonshinin' fur true. They must hev moved the boulder ter crowd ye
+out of a buildin' site. An' then they burnt the hotel."
+
+"Well, they've got me pretty badly crowded,--I'll say that for them."
+
+Kenniston was looking out of the door, with that sullen sense of
+injury and hopelessness which oppresses a city man in the country
+in bad weather. The world had slipped away, somehow; he was left to
+the vague unresponsiveness of the inexpressive white mists; the rain
+would probably continue forever; the day was of a longevity known to
+no other that had ever dawned; without the prompting of his watch he
+could not have said if it were morning or afternoon. The roof leaked;
+the boots of his uncouth visitors tracked up the floor with red clay
+mud. A saddle in one corner gave out an obtrusive odor of leather,
+and the monkey stove, despite all this dankness, filled the room with
+that baking, dry, afflicting aroma common to all its kindred. His
+pugnacity was abated under these untoward conditions; his enthusiasms
+were overwhelmed beneath the depression of the rain. He thought
+wistfully of Bretonville, and of a cosy corner in the reading-room of
+a certain club, and of his office, and sighed as his mind reverted to
+the jeopardy of the present, the futility of the money and thought he
+had spent here, and the froward tangle which must needs be untwisted if
+these unpromising assets were to be utilized at all.
+
+"Mus' hev been Lar'bee an' Espey a-moonshinin'." Taft once more sought
+to prompt that inimical sense of injury. "An' moved the boulder
+bodaciously,--the corner landmark."
+
+"A felony," said Kenniston thoughtfully.
+
+The patter of the rain came heavily through the silence, and in that
+bleak whiteness without they heard far away the wind rousing from its
+lair in furthest denies. The terrors of its voice did not shake the
+mists; only the sound touched a responsive chord of feeling, and the
+day was the drearier for the broken stillness.
+
+"A felony," he said, and fell a-musing. He vaguely repudiated the
+idea, and then bethought himself, contradictorily, of the strange
+subterfuge with which he had been summoned to the door. For no harm,
+surely, he argued. There was a certain fascination in the thought of
+the new star that the mountaineer had brought to his contemplation. Not
+a bad face, this star-gazer's, and with a coloring which had always
+commended itself to his artistic sense. A good face and finely cut, he
+would have said but for that association of ideas, "a felony," that
+sudden conscious expression as of some guilty knowledge of the burning
+of the hotel. He could not believe it of his star-gazer, with his
+elated upward look! He remembered afterward that he thought then that
+the dankness of the weather, in relaxing all manner of tension, had
+slackened his rigid standards and his taut personal exactions. He was
+morally limp, doubtless, as well as physically; but he shrunk from the
+phrase in this application, and he considered that the most definite
+sensation of that most indefinite day was the relief he experienced
+when Rodolphus Ross came plunging out of the mists.
+
+In high dudgeon the deputy was with the events and results of his
+mission, and he had wreaked his resentment on the unoffending animal
+which he rode. The mare's sides showed the marks of his stinging lash,
+and she had retaliated as well as she could by perversely refusing to
+pause where he wished to dismount to avoid the pools. A false start
+or two dragged him through water knee-deep, and as he came into the
+house his eyes were flashing with his various anger, and his lip curled
+scornfully.
+
+"I tell ye," he said to Taft, with his fractious mirthfulness, "thar's
+money in that brat o' yourn, that Cornelia Taft! Buy her a muzzle an' a
+chain an' jine a show, an' she'll draw a crowd ez the Leetle She-B'ar
+o' Persimmon Cove! Bless my boots! I'm glad I'm all hyar. The leetle
+b'ar like ter tore me ter fringes!" he exclaimed metaphorically. He
+canted his head mockingly to one side as he threw himself into a chair
+beside the stove, seized the poker, and administered a rousing shake.
+"I tell you what," he said, eying Taft gloweringly, "I'd keep her nails
+an' teeth well pruned, my friend."
+
+For Miss Cornelia Taft and Rodolphus Ross had failed signally to hit it
+off amicably. Copley had watched the interview through the open door
+of the store with varying emotions of anxiety: first, lest Ross was a
+"revenuer" or a spy; then, lest, as an officer of the state law, he had
+some charge against them; again, lest he cause Sis some apprehension;
+and lastly, lest the temerity of the doughty Sis bring woe and wreck
+upon the devoted household. Joe cowered in a corner of the fireplace,
+leaning against the great jamb, essaying only a few of the writhings
+and twistings of his anatomy which he affected, and sometimes sitting
+still altogether, so did the interest of the colloquy over-master the
+tendency of his muscles.
+
+"Hello, youngsters!" was Ross's affable greeting as he tramped in when
+Joe opened the door. He flung himself into a chair before the fire,
+then turned and surveyed Cornelia, whose prim, pale, precise face
+looked more unfriendly and forbidding and negative than usual, as she
+sat, her hands demurely crossed on her lap, on the opposite side of the
+fireplace.
+
+"My Lord! is this all? I 'lowed yer dad hed a heap bigger gal 'n you.
+Some similar ter a shrunk-up gran'mammy; ye look like ye mought hev
+lasted sence the flood. How's yer fambly, ma'am?"
+
+The juvenile heart resents a scoff. Cornelia Taft's faculties were
+limited, but she gathered herself for revenge.
+
+"Waal, then," he demanded, as she sat stiffly silent and insulted,
+"how's rats?"
+
+"I couldn't jedge," she piped up suddenly. "We-uns hain't hed a terrier
+happen in hyar afore now fur a consider'ble time."
+
+He was fairly silenced for the nonce. Elated by the execution of her
+sally, and not propitiated by his subsequent effort to ignore this
+passage at arms, she took full advantage of the opportunity to harass
+him which was presented when he announced himself an officer of the
+law, and demanded to know when and where she had seen Larrabee the last
+time. No perverse adult witness could have more dexterously baffled him
+with indefinite statements; and when he appealed from her to Joe, whose
+clumsy efforts to remember were hopelessly inadequate, her open glee
+was peculiarly tantalizing to Ross; for none can so resent a jest as a
+confirmed joker. Then it was that he made his fatal false step.
+
+"Look-a-hyar, Small Female, leetle ez ye be, I'll arrest you-uns an'
+kerry ye off ter jail, ef ye don't spry up an' answer my question."
+
+And then it was that Sis, bracing her small back, defied the majesty
+of the State of Tennessee as exemplified in Rodolphus Ross. So it came
+to open war. She was animated, too, by a partisan spirit for Larrabee.
+She remembered, with her infrequent approval, how he had conducted
+himself on the occasion in question; how quiet, how gentle, he was,
+how observant of the graces of her housekeeping, how commendatory of
+her dominion over Joe. Their conversation had since been often in her
+mind; she had rehearsed it, as she sat in the gloaming on her stool
+before the flickering fire, with the history of the Biblical worthies
+of which it was redundant. With no one else could she talk of these
+things. With quick adulation she had transformed Larrabee into a hero,
+and she longed to see him again. Her tongue, being feminine, could not
+be held altogether, but she told Ross naught which he desired to hear.
+She sounded the praises of Larrabee on many a key, and "disremembered"
+persistently whether it was Friday or Monday, or last week or week
+before, when she had seen him.
+
+"Waal, what war he a-doin' of hyar, ennyhows?" queried Ross.
+
+"Talkin'."
+
+"'Bout what, gal?"
+
+"'Bout no gal," Miss Taft responded, with a flash of the eye.
+
+"Waal, then,"--even he was fain to concede, in the hope of finding some
+thoroughfare in thus beating about the bush,--"'bout what boy?"
+
+She hesitated. She had not intended to cheapen the subject of her
+interest and enthusiasm by mention in this queer symposium. The talk
+with Larrabee had been in the nature of a confidence, as in the
+admiring canvass of mutual friends; she had a sense as if it were not
+the thing for general public and unworthy conversation. Nevertheless,
+her affinity for the subject constrained her. There was a light in her
+face, a placid softening of feature. Her flabby little colorless cheek
+mustered up a dimple.
+
+"'Bout Sam'l," she said, with a smile.
+
+"Sam'l who?" he demanded keenly.
+
+Sis hesitated, suddenly posed. "I--I disremember his--his--surname,"
+she admitted.
+
+"Did ye see him with Lar'bee?" he asked, his big pertinacious eyes on
+her face, expectant of immediate developments.
+
+"I--I ain't never seen _him_. I--I reckon"--it seemed too terrible
+to contemplate--"I reckon he mus' be--daid." She had never before
+looked upon it in this light, and her heart sank.
+
+"Friend o' Lar'bee's?" he persisted.
+
+"I reckon so; he hed read 'bout him."
+
+"Read 'bout him? Whar? In the 'Colb'ry Gazette'?" He lowered his voice
+respectfully, for to him personal mention in the 'Colbury Gazette'
+meant fame.
+
+"Naw. In the Bible, o' course," said Sis, stiffly reproving.
+
+He stared at her in blank amaze for a moment; then he smote his leg a
+sounding thwack, and burst into a howl of derisive laughter.
+
+"Ye an' Lar'bee hed a pray'r-meetin', did ye? An', my son," he
+continued through his nose with a sanctimonious whine, turning to Joe,
+"did ye lead the saints in supplication, or raise the hyme-chune?"
+
+Joe responded with a fat chuckle of delighted laughter, rejoiced to
+see his Mentor, the professor of many novel and distasteful arts of
+household economy, put to ridicule and out of countenance.
+
+It was only for a moment. She turned acridly against the domestic
+insurgent.
+
+"_He_ tuned up arterward. Joe done _his_ quirin' arter
+Lar'bee war gone, an' the wind riz, an' the rain kem down. He wisht an'
+wisht Lar'bee hed bided. He fairly blated fur skeer!"
+
+"I never!" protested Joe in pouting indignation. "_I_ warn't
+'feared o' the wind an' rain, nare one! 'T war the racket them dead
+ones kep' up in the Los' Time mine diggin' thar graves. This hyar house
+air right over the mine."
+
+Ross's great shifting wild eyes widened as he looked from one to the
+other.
+
+"Thar _ain't_ no dead ones diggin' thar graves!" cried Sis
+didactically. She must needs spend too many lonely hours here for that
+suggestion to be a welcome one. "Them ez dig ain't dead. Dad say jes'
+some boys, he reckon, a-moonshinin' or sech of a night in the Lost Time
+mine."
+
+Rodolphus Ross rose to his feet. He was elated, confident. He snapped
+his fingers noisily in the air as he took two or three of the sideway
+paces usually preliminary to a clog dance, which accomplishment he
+had acquired by viewing what he termed a "minstrel show." He had
+long suspected Larrabee of moonshining, and here was the _locus in
+quo_. He had said that Larrabee's trail had seemed to disappear from
+the face of the earth; with what literal reason he had not dreamed.
+Notwithstanding his haste, however, he must needs tarry for a fleer.
+
+"Gran'mammy Taft," he said, leering at the little girl, with her prim,
+antique aspect, "I never thunk ter find ye hobnobbin' with moonshiners."
+
+"Lar'bee ain't no moonshiner," she protested, with swift alarm.
+
+He joyed in her evident flutter.
+
+"Ah, gran'mammy Taft, ye kin consider yerse'f under arrest fur aidin'
+an' abettin' in moonshinin', ye an' all yer fambly."
+
+"Ye ain't no revenuer!" cried Sis, moving back a step, however. "Ye
+ain't 'lowed ter _purtend_ ter be one, nuther. I hearn o' a man in
+Persimmon Cove ez _purtended_ ter be a off'cer o' the law, an' got
+'rested hisse'f. An' I would hev thunk enny-ways ez ye hed hed enough
+o' arrestin' folks fur fun, sence that time ye flung Lar'bee over the
+bluffs, an' nigh kilt him. Ef ye be so sharp set ter 'rest ennybody, go
+find Jack Espey an' 'rest him."
+
+Ross was out of countenance. Nevertheless--"How many j'ints hev her
+tongue got?" he demanded of Joe, with a feint of serious interest.
+
+But Joe had deserted to the enemy. He thought that Sis was in the
+ascendant, and Ross's threat at once angered and terrified him. He
+received with pouting silence the officer's aside, while Sis went on
+triumphantly:--
+
+"Dad say my granny Jiniway air kin somehows ter the high sher'ff's
+wife; an' whenst I go ter Colb'ry nex' week with dad, I be goin' ter
+go ter her house an' ax the high sher'ff ef he 'lows his dep'ties ter
+arrest people fur joke, an' _purtend_ ter be revenue off'cers, an'
+skeer leetle gals by arrestin' 'em, an' 'lowin' he'll take the whole
+fambly fur moonshinin'. My granny Jiniway's third cousin air the high
+sher'ff's wife!"
+
+In the face of this genealogical detail, it was with a somewhat subdued
+spirit that Ross mounted the mare and set forth on his return; for the
+high sheriff was a man with a most attenuated sense of humor, a literal
+interpretation of the duties of his office, and notwithstanding the
+fact that Ross's willingness to ride long distances, in all manner of
+weather, relieved him of this the most irksome of duties to an inert
+temperament, he had begun to look doubtfully upon him, particularly
+since the untoward result of the facetious arrest of the supposed
+Larrabee, and Ross felt that his tenure was not altogether secure. As
+he passed the portal of the Lost Time mine, the thought of his quest
+recurred to his mind, and the important clue which he deemed he had
+obtained from the little girl's conversation. He no longer considered
+it important, for from the rough-hewn portal of the cavern poured forth
+the compressed stream of the divers subterranean currents, gathered
+together and hurled forth in a great spout, and with a plunging force
+that astonished him, remembering as he did the far tamer flow of the
+earlier season. He ascribed the change to the persistent autumn rains
+flooding some watercourse that doubtless pierced the hidden chambers.
+It filled the outlet within a few feet of the summit of the arch. Any
+entrance here was impossible; as for another opening to the mine, he
+looked about him upon the limitless tangled wilderness of wood and
+rock, the shifting beclouding mists, the endless skeins of the rain,
+and he swore between his big front teeth an oath which, despite the
+grotesque humor of its phraseology, had within it all the bitter
+profanity of his baffling disappointment. And in default of aught else
+on which to wreak his anger, he cruelly lashed Taft's mare; and so
+he went down to join the others at Kenniston's quarters amongst the
+shanties of the workmen in the Cove.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XIX.
+
+
+That night, the rain, beating out its strong staccato rhythm on the old
+clapboards roofing the barn, made scant impression on Jasper Larrabee's
+senses; he slept soundly amongst the great elastic billows of the hay.
+As by degrees the downpour slackened, the comparative silence affected
+his half-dormant consciousness as sound had failed to do. He roused
+slightly from time to time, and presently was broad awake, to hear only
+the melancholy drip from the eaves and the chorus of far-away frogs
+beginning to pipe anew along the pools. He did not welcome his other
+self, that mysterious essence of thought and will that was torn with
+hopes and fed on regrets, and was prone to hold troublous disputations
+with yet another inner self, which on its part was always keen to find
+out every fault, to upbraid each cherished sin, and had an ugly trick
+of unmasking and setting in a strong unflattering light motives which
+might otherwise seem to be above suspicion. The humbler obvious entity
+known as Jasper Larrabee would, he often thought, be happier without so
+definite a development of either of these endowments, his mind or his
+conscience; for thus he learned from their functions to differentiate
+them. When this Jasper Larrabee was well fed, he was hearty and happy.
+The sun shone on him, and he sang till the woods rang. When he went
+down into the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, every strong muscle
+rejoiced in the work, and his steady nerve, which is called courage,
+gave a zest to danger, whether the menace were of the law, or of the
+wild beast in the wilderness, or of the civilized savage amongst his
+own associates. If it had not been for his mind forever asking "Why?"
+and his conscience grimly protesting "Because," what a thriving,
+well-balanced physical organization Jasper Larrabee might have been! He
+knew others who were little more than body, who asked no questions and
+heard no answers; he held them far the happier for it, and he did not
+realize how much the duller. And so he hated the "Why?" and flinched
+from the "Because." And here they were in company, these choice
+spirits, in the suddenly silent midnight, with only the melancholy drip
+at long intervals from the eaves, the vague piping of frogs sounding
+afar off and failing again, and that strange preponderating sense of
+the proximity of the mountains although enshrouded and invisible in
+the mist. The sibilant rustle of the hay was loud in the stillness
+as he shifted his posture. He shifted it often, being anxious and
+restless, for his brace of companions were more censorious even than
+their wont as to that limited cheerful physique which he accounted
+Jasper Larrabee. He had had naught to eat but a few handfuls of
+grapes from the vines that clambered over the gable of the barn, and
+some unpalatable raw eggs found among the hay; and this fact of hunger
+gave a mighty grip to the poignancy of "Because." He had had naught to
+do all the long rainy day but to lie in the hay and look out through
+the crevices of the logs at the queer acorn-like roof of his mother's
+house, that had welcomed so many, and had no place now for him or for
+her. He watched with all the grief of an exile the children coming
+and going, and the gaunt Mrs. Timson wielding an unbridled authority,
+making the most of her usurpations; he heard, with the indignant
+objection that naturally appertains to the heir to the throne, her
+raucous raised voice in objurgation or command. Again and again these
+sounds came from the opaque blankness of the mist; for often the
+clouds obscured the little house altogether, and crowded through the
+crevices of the barn, and shifted back and forth. For the reason of
+the continuous fog he had delayed to inform the officer of the law and
+deliver Espey to him. Doubtless, in the idleness of his solitary day in
+the mine, Espey would be alert and hear an approach, and might escape
+through some aperture of the cavern other than the main entrance; the
+thick mists would then conceal him indubitably, and further his flight
+without the slightest scruple as to responsibility as accessory after
+the fact. Larrabee was waiting for the darkness that he might take
+Espey the more certainly, while his vigilance was relaxed in working at
+the forlorn enterprise of old Haight and his lieutenant "Tawm" in the
+mine. But in waiting Larrabee had fallen asleep, and the iteration of
+the steady rainfall was somnolent in its effects, and the hours drowsed
+by. He knew that it was past midnight before he noted the slant of a
+late-risen moon, golden, lustrous, dreamlike, softly shining through
+the crevices of the logs in one corner of the ramshackle old place.
+The sky was clearing, then. He rose hastily to his feet, and leaned
+out of the window. Clear! It was of a deeply limpid and definite blue,
+with white and gray clouds, moon-illumined, drawing back swiftly from
+vast expanses of this lucid ether all a-sparkle with the whiteness of
+the stars. With the dank earth so dark below, and the dully glamourous
+light of the moon in her last quarter, it seemed to him that he had
+never seen the stars so splendidly white. The next moment a sudden pang
+of suspense, of fear, that was like a bodily throe had wrested away his
+breath. He hardly realized that he had moved; he only knew that he had
+sprung down the rotting rungs of the old ladder and through the barn
+below, because he was standing outside the door upon the ground, gazing
+up, bareheaded, wild-eyed, in a frenzy of doubt, of anxiety, of a sort
+of unreasoning terror, at the skies. For the star--his star--was gone!
+It had vanished! Again and again, with the strong pulse of hope, he
+swept the heavens with eager search. Afterward he thought he remembered
+a dull leaden-hued minute object in the place of that splendid silver
+shining that had made his heart so glad. It had vanished,--its message
+withheld, its mystery unrevealed, like an illusion, like a fagged-out
+enthusiasm, like the futile words of a prayer without the fervor
+of faith. He could not believe it. Again and again he sought a new
+posture, a new hope. He followed its closer neighbors along the steeps
+of the mountain as they journeyed toward the west in the sky above.
+The tint of the heavens was changing presently,--a lighter blue. The
+golden moon grew of a pearl-like lustre. The stars waxed faint. The
+clouds were red. And here was the gray day hard upon him, and in the
+earth naught of value, for in the sky he had lost a star. How strong,
+how resistless of advance, was the riding up of the great sun! Get ye
+away, illusions, and glamours, and dreamers of dreams! Such a definite
+visible world! How full of fixed facts! He saw, as he stood, the
+shanties of the workmen in the Cove, where the mists were hustling off
+in great haste, as if too tenuous, too unsubstantial, too inutile, to
+hold ground in the face of the strong practicalities dawning over the
+horizon. The smoke was curling up from the chimney of Cap'n Lucy's
+cabin, where breakfast was cooking. The cows were at the bars. All the
+woods were lustrous with moisture, and splendidly a-glint with the
+yellow sunbeams striking aslant through them. The distant mountains
+were blue and amethyst and violet and purple,--a rhapsody of color.
+Here and there, as if the rain had painted them, boughs of sumach and
+sourwood were scarlet in the woods; the sweet-gum showed flecks of
+purple leaves, and the hickory had occasional flares of yellow. The
+goldenrod had burst into bloom, and with this seal of the autumnal
+season stamped upon the land came Julia along the road, her bonnet
+hanging on her shoulders, her head bare, her face like spring itself,
+her hands full of flowers that she scattered as she sang. How her fresh
+young voice rang against the turmoil of the current from the Lost Time
+mine, like some sudden burst of joy from out the fretted tides of a
+troubled life! As she tossed the flowers, and glanced over her shoulder
+to see where they fell, Larrabee crossed the log laid from one deeply
+gullied bank to the other side of the road, to serve foot passengers
+when the water was high in wet weather. She paused, and looked at him
+with a frown. The unwonted corrugations in her fair young brow changed
+her inexpressive face almost out of recognition. He stood in silent
+deprecation for a moment. His heart was sore. His life was full of
+trouble of many sorts and degrees. That æsthetic loss, that sense of
+bereavement because of his vanished star, outrankled them all.
+
+Courage is of the nature of an essence; one may not judge how it will
+pull the beam, nor is it dispensed by dry measure. Something seemingly
+inadequate, a breath of wind, a change of mind, or the chilling of the
+fervors of some futile and foolish enthusiasm, and behold the volatile
+element is dispersed through the air. The strain on Larrabee's nerves
+had been great. His sensibilities had waxed tender. He faltered before
+the definite bending of those delicately marked brows.
+
+"Ye air out betimes, Julia?" he ventured propitiatingly, as she stoutly
+maintained silence. "What be ye a-doin' of with them flowers?"
+
+"Sowin' 'em," said Julia instantly. "I expec' 'em ter bloom thar in the
+road ter mo' purpose 'n they ever did afore."
+
+He cast a glance of wonderment at her. But her unfriendly manner, her
+cold eye, disconcerted him afresh, and nullified his surprise at her
+words.
+
+"Air you-uns mad at me down at yer house?" he demanded eagerly.
+
+"What fur?" she asked, with a keen, belligerent look that was mightily
+like Cap'n Lucy.
+
+"'Bout my speakin' so free 'bout Espey, an' Cap'n Lucy not warnin' me
+an' my mother, knowin' him ter be sought fur murder?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, with airy causticity. "I hed furgot it."
+
+He felt the covert fleer of this speedy dismissal. But with him pride
+was at a low ebb. He silently looked at her as she held a cardinal
+flower to her red lips, while her long-lashed blue eyes scanned the
+dewy bunch of jewel-weed and mountain snow and wild asters that filled
+her hands. The wind swayed her dark blue skirt as she stood on a great
+fragment of rock beside the running stream. It gave a certain volant
+effect to her pose, her flower-laden hands, her singular beauty;
+she seemed the very genius of the flowering season, its perfect
+personification.
+
+"Waal, I'm glad o' that," he said humbly. "I need all my friends, an'
+all the comfort I kin git."
+
+He paused, daunted in a measure by her unresponsiveness. But she was
+always silent, always undemonstrative, and perhaps her manner in this
+instance went for less than its worth.
+
+"Julia," he said, "I hev hed a powerful strange 'sperience lately. An'
+it hev cast me down mightily. Not religious,--though I expected suthin'
+leadin' an' speritual out'n it. I viewed a new star in the sky."
+
+She was looking at the flowers on the soggy road as if she cared for
+no other radiance than their gleam of earthy hue, albeit an evanescent
+glow.
+
+"Nobody but me viewed it," he went on after a moment of unfruitful
+expectation. "I tried other folks, an' they seen nuthin'. An' by that
+I 'lowed it hed some charge fur me, some leadin'. Stars hev been
+messengers afore this." He interposed this affirmation of precedent
+for proof. His senses were keen. He had not failed to note the ring
+of incredulity in Kenniston's voice. He paused, thinking again of the
+wise men of the East, and the blessed path to the cradled Christ as the
+Star guided them. He sighed deeply as he plucked off the yellow plumes
+of a wayside spray of goldenrod. The fragments floated away on the
+stream, and he drearily lifted his haggard eyes to the broad whiteness
+of the day brightening over all the purple mountains and bronze-green
+valleys; here all miracles exhaled with the mists of the night and the
+evanescence of the stars. The atmosphere of the practical, the prosaic,
+the recognized and thrice-tried forces of nature was paramount.
+Naught seemed to exist that man in his ignorant cognoscence had not
+explored. But he had expected no miracle; he had sought no wonderful
+worldly gifts or graces. True, the will of God is much to know, but
+he had thought that with so signal an intimation a leading might be
+vouchsafed. Had not other men followed a star to Christ? And was there
+naught for him, no little thing for him to do? Did that gracious
+supernal stellular presence shine on him, and him alone, only to amaze,
+to baffle, to dismay him,--to find his life but poorly furnished, and
+to leave it empty?
+
+"I got no leadin' out'n it," he said drearily. "It jes' disappeared
+somehows. I dunno ef ez suddint ez it kem or no, bein' ez several
+nights war rainy and clouded over. It's gone!"
+
+Something in his dreary tone smote upon Julia's preoccupied faculties.
+Whether she harbored rancor against him for Jack Espey's sake, whether
+she resented his criticism of her father, whether she repelled the
+intrusion of the consciousness of any other emotion than the paramount
+emotion which possessed her, and love crowded out and trampled on pity,
+she spoke with a keen fling of satire.
+
+"Waal, ef yer star hev petered out, ye hed better go an' get Ad'licia
+ter hearten ye up by tellin' ye ter take notice how many stars thar be
+lef'. Ye'll be lighted full well on occasion."
+
+He flushed at the taunt, but love is of long patience.
+
+"Air ye mad at Ad'licia?" he queried, interested in aught that touched
+Julia.
+
+"Naw--yes"--She hesitated, interested herself. "That is, I can't holp
+bein' mad with the idjit fur bein' _sech_ a idjit."
+
+"How is she a idjit?" demanded Larrabee.
+
+"Fur not marryin' Jack Espey whenst she hed the chance. Dad an' Luther
+would hev stood off Ross an' sech cattle, or gin bond fur him an'
+patched up things somehow. Ye know they would. Ef I hed been in her
+place, now, an' ef he hed axed _me_"--
+
+She paused abruptly, with a sort of appalled recognition of the
+sentiment that animated her. A sudden illumination had broken in upon
+her; her heart throbbed tumultuously with pleasure, or was it pain? For
+she loved Jack Espey; and he--oh, was it true that he loved Adelicia
+still? She hardly heeded or realized her self-betrayal. She did not
+see--so little did she care--the pallid dismay, the heartbreak, on
+Jasper Larrabee's face. He could not deceive himself,--it was too
+patent. He turned away with a bitter sense of resentment, another
+grudge toward Jack Espey for thus slyly and completely supplanting him.
+At that moment his eye fell upon the jagged rock about the entrance of
+the Lost Time mine, and he drew back in amazement.
+
+"Why, where does all this water come from?" he exclaimed sharply. He
+wondered that he had not marked it before, despite his preoccupation.
+For the flow of the stream was quadrupled, its momentum every instant
+greater. Naught could enter now. The interior must be flooded anew. As
+he gazed at it, wide-eyed and dumfounded, a sudden enlightenment as to
+the phenomenon broke upon him. The blasting which he had heard,--he
+remembered it now; doubtless the concussion had brought down some mass
+of rock or earth, damming an underground current, and forcing its
+waters into the channel of the stream which partially emptied here,
+while the residue backed up and filled the spaces. He thought that
+Espey and the old man and "Tawm" had possibly made good their escape
+before it happened; but if not--and Taft--He remembered how close were
+the ghostly voices when he had last heard the false, cracked tones of
+command ring through the tunnel. Those ill-timbered galleries would
+fall to a certainty. He turned pale at the very thought of a living
+burial in the den of the still-room.
+
+He did not hesitate. Without a word he sprang upon the log, crossed
+the water, and sped away like the wind, leaving Julia gazing in
+astonishment after him. He thought his worst fears were realized, when
+he reached the store of the Lost Time mine. His hasty question elicited
+from the children only the fact of the absence of Taft and Copley. He
+ran down into the cellar, to find the obliteration of the traces of the
+old door, which he recognized only as an added precaution since his
+departure. Doubtless some other method of entering the tunnel had been
+devised. An axe hacking through the chinking served to reveal the ruin
+of the tunnel, and to admit a strong and pervasive odor of gunpowder.
+
+Lorenzo Taft's plans were very perfectly calculated and adjusted to
+the probabilities. There had been no rift in his judgment. Nowhere
+could he find fault or flaw in his reasoning. A lucky chance had fired
+the hotel, and freed his hands from the smirch of the firebrand and
+the possible penalties of arson. The moving of the great monument
+of boundary had thrown the only available site for the hotel on the
+Kenniston tract well within Cap'n Lucy's lines when the land was
+processioned, and thus the summer swallow must needs alight elsewhere,
+and the commercial interests of moonshining would thereby be promoted.
+Each detail had fallen out exactly as he had planned. Success seemed
+the essential sequence. Only Espey's frantic fear of arrest had
+precipitated all the untoward events which had advanced parallel after
+parallel, and forced him to his last defenses. And these one might
+think were most sagacious and adequate. The foolish drunken boy,
+whose tongue might work mischief, was within the hour hustled out of
+the country. Every trace of the forbidden vocation was demolished
+beyond the possibility of detection. If Larrabee should seek revenge
+by informing, he could prove naught, not even his own complicity. It
+would seem but the groundless accusation of malice. And Taft had even
+taken time by the forelock by avowing his former illegal practices,
+his prison record, his familiarity with the motives and manœuvres of
+moonshiners, and insidiously casting suspicion on Larrabee, ascribing
+to him an adequate motive for moving the Big Hollow Boulder, in the
+eyes of the law a felony.
+
+No possible flaw in his reasoning from the premises from which
+he argued. He had guarded himself logically, boldly, with great
+perspicacity, from enmity, from revenge. It never for one moment
+occurred to him to devise protection from good will!
+
+Kenniston and Ross, even in the excitement of the emergency, and the
+tumultuous tide of Larrabee's eager explanations when he suddenly burst
+in upon them as they sat smoking together after breakfast, could but
+take heed of the subtler sub-current of significance in his disclosure.
+More than once they exchanged glances charged with a meaning deeper
+than he wot of.
+
+"Thar's a shaft," he cried, "an old air-shaft, a-nigh that thar tunnel!
+Ef ye'll rig up a windlass, or let yer men put me down with a rope,
+I'll find Taft, an' the t'others too, ef they be thar yit."
+
+"You'll drown yourself, or fall, or suffocate with gas," Kenniston said
+tentatively, looking about for his hat, and pausing to cast a keen
+glance at Larrabee.
+
+"I'll resk it--I'll resk it--fur him and Espey too--an' I dunno what
+my mother would do ef old grand-daddy Haight war ter kem ter sech an
+e-end! Oh, I'll resk it! An' Taft, he ain't a bad man when all's said.
+Taft's mighty clever sometimes."
+
+"I think he's the worst man I ever saw," said Kenniston, as he flung
+away his cigar.
+
+A call for volunteers and the offer of a reward by Kenniston secured
+no companion to Larrabee in his venture when the workmen looked down
+into the dark shaft, with its crumbling sides, and sound of tumbling
+waters, and chill dank foul breath. They only manifested their good
+will in their alacrity in adjusting and adapting such appliances as
+they could to insure Larrabee's safety as far as possible. Kenniston
+doubted at the time whether he ought to permit the jeopardy; being
+assured, however, that the effort would be made at all events, but
+without the advantage of the heavy cables and pulleys which had been
+used in building the hotel, and which his compliance offered, he
+yielded. Afterward he was disposed to take great credit to himself
+for several devices which facilitated the enterprise, and from his
+knowledge of mechanical resources he doubtless insured its success;
+he bore the honors of the rescue,--which Larrabee at the peril of his
+life achieved,--with all the unblushing effrontery of an officer whose
+command has won a battle.
+
+He was in a glow of enthusiasm for the nonce, and he continued the rôle
+of benefactor with more genuine pleasure than had lately fallen to his
+jaded susceptibility. He placed eighty-seven silver dollars in a worn
+leather bag, a tobacco pouch of one of the workmen, to be given to old
+Haight when he should be sufficiently recovered, with the pious fiction
+that his own money had been found in the shaft. "This will keep the old
+mole from burrowing again," he said.
+
+His abounding good nature was very thorough when once aroused. His
+heart was touched by Espey's forlorn plight, as he lay panting on the
+grass, and the pallor of his young face marked by the dread of life
+that had just succeeded the dread of death.
+
+"Can't you make out to let up on Espey, somehow?" he said aside to
+Rodolphus Ross, whose clumsy pranks of delight at the successful
+outcome of this most exciting episode were like the extravagant
+joviality of a gamboling Newfoundland dog, and not unpleasing to his
+interlocutor from their common bond of sympathy.
+
+"Who? Espey?" He paused, turning his lighted dark eyes on Kenniston,
+his peaked hat shading his elevated eyebrows and surprised face. "I
+ain't hyar arter Espey no more. I'm arter the fire-bug, ye know. That
+thar man ez Espey shot in Tanglefoot Cove hev got well o' the pip, or
+the gapes, or whatever the weak-kneed chicken took from the bullet; an'
+this hyar warrant fur arrest hev been kerried round in my pocket till
+it's mighty nigh wore out." He took the ragged paper from his pocket
+and shook out its tatters, and laughed and grimaced in the very face of
+its august authority. "Go on, boy, go on! I wouldn't put the county
+ter charges ter board ye!" he said to Espey.
+
+A supply of whiskey was on hand, for the ostensible purpose of reviving
+the victims of the Lost Time mine, as they were drawn up one by one
+from those treacherous depths, limp and pallid and fainting. But the
+quantity was sufficient to enable the company of rescuers subsequently
+to refresh themselves, and Kenniston genially treated the crowd. Some
+of the men now and then began to coil up the ropes, and again fell to
+discussing the jeopardy and the disastrous possibilities; and much
+hilarity and gratulation prevailed amongst the group in the dewy woods,
+still filled with the slant of the early morning sunshine, when Espey
+slipped away from it. His heart was still sore, as if it had forgotten
+to beat except with a dull throb of pain, unrealizing his change of
+fortune except to sullenly rebel against all the unnecessary woe that
+had fallen to his lot. As he went along the road, he scarcely noted a
+flower here and there on the soggy ground. The dash and fret of the
+stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine caught his attention. He
+marked its added volume, and, with his familiarity with the terrible
+subterranean chambers, he could picture to himself the obstacles
+which lay in its course, and which the blasting from the tunnel or
+the still-room had brought down. He trembled and grew cold with the
+thought of his jeopardy. He mechanically cursed anew Taft's name, as he
+had done again and again since his voice, his "partin' compliments,"
+had been audible before the charge in the tunnel had been fired. He
+shuddered again as he recalled the sound of the water backing up ever
+higher and higher through those black dungeons, lisping and hissing
+its insidious threat through all the long night. How woeful it had
+been--with the wild terror of his companions to contemplate, till
+he was as wild with the terror of them as of his own fate--to look
+momently to meet death here, without a soul on earth to truly care,
+to anguish for him as he was anguished--He paused, the tenor of his
+thought breaking abruptly. Had he seen it before, or had he only
+fancied that cardinal flower lying in the sun on the gray rock by the
+water? Was it not thus that he should know that Julia had passed and
+had thought of him,--was not this their covenant? He doubtfully picked
+up the delicate spray--another; still, it might be an accident, a
+coincidence. A cluster of jewel-weeds lay caught in the bark of the log
+that served as footbridge, and swayed and glowed in the sun; it was in
+his hand when he reached the further bank. As far as one might hope to
+command a glimpse from the mine, the fragile tokens were scattered.
+They were full of dew; their breath allured him. They trembled as with
+some shy, timorous thought in his trembling hand. The color had come
+into his face; a light was in his eyes; his tired, troubled pulses were
+beating fast, strong, with a new rhythm. And as Julia, still loitering
+homeward, her head bare, her hands empty, heard a footstep behind her
+and turned, she saw him, all her garnered blossoms in his grasp, and
+all his heart in his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kenniston, still elated, but somewhat tired out with the morning's
+excitements, upon reaching his quarters among the workmen's shanties,
+found Cap'n Lucy there awaiting an audience, and all unaware of the
+progress of events of so much moment elsewhere to-day. A rousing
+"cock-a-doodle-doo" might be a fair summary of Cap'n Lucy's discourse.
+His perplexities had vanished with the tangled twists of the rain, and
+he set forth boldly and with much detail his discovery of the moving of
+the boulder, the corner monument of boundary, his anxiety and doubt as
+to his proper course, and his realization that the surveyor's line had
+thrown much land which he knew was Kenniston's within his own domain.
+
+A man of tact was Cap'n Lucy in his own way. He so glossed over his
+suspicions of Kenniston that albeit the latter detected them rather
+through the correlated circumstances than through the veneer of that
+section of his mind which it pleased Cap'n Lucy to present, he did not
+look upon them seriously. He was a stranger; the old man was densely
+ignorant, and his experience of life and comparative knowledge of men
+were limited indeed; and in truth it was apparently impossible to
+deduce from the facts any other interest than Kenniston's to be served
+by the moving of the boulder. Thus he silently forgave Cap'n Lucy for
+his suspected suspicions.
+
+And Cap'n Lucy was heartily ashamed of them now.
+
+"I know it air moved bodaciously--Big Hollow Boulder--corner
+mark--monimint o' boundary; an' now what air ye an' me goin' ter do
+'bout that thar dad-burned line what's gone an' coiled itself like the
+plumb old Scorpion o' the Pit?"
+
+"Procession the land again, and prosecute the man who moved the
+boulder," said Kenniston coolly.
+
+And indeed justice had hardily overtaken Lorenzo Taft, for Kenniston's
+unwonted leniency did not hold out to include his offending. It seemed
+to him a very pretty play of cause and effect that so close upon the
+heels of Taft's accusations of Larrabee, and his subtle and successful
+hoodwinking of the practiced man of business, who made a point of
+knowing men, Taft should be hurrying to Colbury and the county jail,
+under the escort of the jubilant Rodolphus Ross and a posse of two
+or three stout fellows, to answer these very charges of arson and of
+feloniously moving a corner monument of boundary,--all because of
+Larrabee's voluntarily putting his life in jeopardy for his sake.
+
+Nevertheless, Kenniston listened mildly enough to Adelicia's earnest
+intercessions for Taft that evening, when he sat as of yore with the
+family circle around Cap'n Lucy's fireside; he seemed to find a
+certain fascination in the incongruities of her ingenious palliations
+and extenuations of his crime.
+
+"He moughtn't hev been acquainted with the boulder ez a monimint o'
+boundary," she urged; and when the fallacy of this was demonstrated,
+"He mought hev been sorry an' wanted to put it back, but it war too
+heavy an' the hill war too high."
+
+Whereupon Kenniston burst into satiric laughter.
+
+"He's sorry enough now, I'll warrant you; and he'll be sorrier still
+before I'm through with him."
+
+But although Adelicia's expertness in excuses for other people failed
+in this instance, Kenniston's purposes were frustrated by a wholesale
+jail delivery which occurred at Colbury shortly after, and Taft was
+among the jail-birds who took flight thence. He was never heard of
+again in the Cove. The thought of him at large and at enmity served to
+postpone the building of the hotel for a time. The plans for a great
+public edifice in Bretonville absorbed Kenniston in the immediate
+future, and finally he grew indifferent to the project of the mountain
+resort, and it was definitely abandoned.
+
+Larrabee profited by Kenniston's advice, and availed himself of the
+"amnesty" proffered by the government to moonshiners about that time,
+and thenceforward the still knew him no more. The manufacture of
+"brush whiskey" was never resumed at the Lost Time mine. The store
+there became truly a centre of barter under the ministrations of old
+Copley and the power behind the throne, his niece, Cornelia Taft, who
+developed much of her father's decision and definiteness and shrewdness
+of character as she grew older, always tempered by Mrs. Jiniway's
+precepts, to which she rigidly adhered. She received much countenance,
+and guidance too, in these early years, from Adelicia, who persisted
+in following the bent of her own lenient inclination toward others,
+making the most of their good qualities and light of their foibles. It
+was a certain solace in the bitter loss of other illusions for which
+she was less charitable. She never could be brought to believe that
+Julia had not intentionally wiled her lover's heart away from her. It
+was a relief when these strained relations were at an end, when Julia
+and Espey were married, in defiance of Cap'n Lucy's opposition, and had
+gone to Tanglefoot Cove. Cap'n Lucy argued their much-mooted points of
+difference with Adelicia less than before, and deferred in silence to
+her. It was only when, in the winter evenings, Jasper Larrabee was wont
+to come and read aloud, as in the old days, that Cap'n Lucy rose to
+his normal temperature of contradiction, and controverted sundry hard
+sayings difficult to be incorporated in the life of a willful man, and
+contemned Jasper Larrabee's learning, and accused him of ignorantly
+perverting the Scriptures. Then it was that Adelicia's talents of
+optimism became transcendently apparent. She developed a wonderful
+craft of interpretation. Leaning over one arm of Cap'n Lucy's chair,
+while Jasper Larrabee leaned over the other with his book and page to
+show,--Cap'n Lucy, flustered and red-faced, acrid and belligerent,
+vociferating between them,--Adelicia would demonstrate that this
+doubtless meant the other, or it was plain to see that the reference
+was not general, thus including Cap'n Lucy, but was made directly to
+the character under discussion; whereby Cap'n Lucy, perceiving that no
+added burden of meekness or other Christian grace was to be laid upon
+him as essential to salvation, would permit himself to be pacified. And
+Adelicia's gifts grew by much exercise. Even Cap'n Lucy, always acute,
+became reluctantly aware of this, in some sort. "Ad'licia hav got so
+durned smart she kin mighty nigh explain away the devil," he fretted,
+unaware that this feat had already been accomplished by other and more
+pretentious theologians than Adelicia. The gossips said, in the Cove,
+that it was in the process of trying to "'square' Cap'n Lucy to the
+Scriptur's, or ter square the Scriptur's ter Cap'n Lucy," that Adelicia
+and Jasper fell in love with each other. Certain it is the days came
+in which neither had aught to regret, and Adelicia's optimism was
+triumphantly justified.
+
+Even his vanished star came to be a tender memory to Larrabee rather
+than a poignant bereavement. Sometimes thinking of that dread descent
+into the crumbling old shaft of the Lost Time mine, with the chill
+sound of the tumbling waters below, the thick foul air in his every
+breath, the desperate straining of the ropes that so shook his nerves,
+the fragments of rock falling about his head, and his heart fairly
+failing him for fear, he deemed he had found the "leading" he had asked
+and had followed it. For since he could do naught for Christ, whose
+humble humanity is merged in the majesty of the great King of heaven,
+he might do somewhat for man whom He died to save.
+
+He did not know that his star remained for a time a faint telescopic
+object and interested the speculation of astronomers, whose outlook
+from their wisdom was also limited as his from his ignorance. They
+merely accounted it one of those mysterious, unwonted apparitions, a
+stranger to all the astral hierarchy, prettily called "guest-stars"
+in the ancient Chinese records, and they knew after a time that the
+"Ke-sing dissolved." They did not dream that this celestial visitant
+could be charged with a moral mission; for in all the discoveries
+and advances of science, what mystic lens might serve to reveal the
+amaranthine wreath and the nearing pinion?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                               BOOKS BY
+
+                      "Charles Egbert Craddock."
+
+                          (MARY N. MURFREE.)
+
+
+                      IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS.
+                      Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+                           DOWN THE RAVINE.
+              For Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.
+
+               THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.
+                         A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+                        IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel.
+                             16mo, $1.25.
+
+                      THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS.
+                    For Young People. 16mo, $1.00.
+
+                    THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE.
+                         A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+                     WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT.
+                         A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+                          HIS VANISHED STAR.
+                         A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+
+
+                    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
+                         BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75678 ***
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+      His Vanished Star | Project Gutenberg
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75678 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>HIS VANISHED STAR</h1>
+
+<p class="ph1">BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK</p>
+
+<p>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br>
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br>
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br>
+1894</p>
+
+<p>Copyright, 1894,<br>
+<span class="smcap">By</span> MARY N. MURFREE.</p>
+
+<p><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.</i><br>
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#I">I.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#II">II.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#III">III.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#V">V.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#VI">VI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#VII">VII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#IX">IX.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#X">X.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XI">XI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XII">XII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XV">XV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XVII">XVII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc"><a href="#XIX">XIX.</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>HIS VANISHED STAR.</h2>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was a great property, reckoned by metes and bounds. A day's journey
+might hardly suffice to traverse the whole of his domain. Yet there
+was no commensurate money value attaching to these leagues of mountain
+wilderness, that bore indeed a merely nominal price, and Kenneth
+Kenniston's was hardly the temperament to experience an æsthetic
+gratulation that his were those majestic domes which touched the clouds
+and withstood the lightnings and lifted up an awesome voice to answer
+the thunder, or that his title-deeds called for all the vast slopes
+thence down to the unimagined abysses of the abandoned mine in the
+depths of the gorge. It was the spirit of speculation that informed
+his glance with a certain respect for them, as he turned his eye
+upon the mountains, and bethought himself how these austere craggy
+splendors were calculated to impress the shallow gaze of the wandering
+human swallow. He even appraised, in the interest of possible summer
+sojourners, the rare, pure, soft air with which his lungs expanded.
+Science was presently set a-prying about the margins of rocky springs,
+hitherto undiscovered and unnoticed save by oread or deer; a few
+blasts of dynamite, a great outgushing of exhaustless mineral waters,
+a triumphant chemical analysis ensued, and an infusion of enthusiasm
+began to pervade his consciousness. Such resources—infinitely smaller
+resources—elsewhere in the world meant a fortune; why not here?</p>
+
+<p>He was an architect by profession, and the aspect of the world seemed
+to him parceled out in available sites. It cost his imagination,
+trained by study and enriched by travel, no conscious effort to
+perceive standing in fair proportions, turreted and terraced, finished
+to the last finial, the perfected structure of his projected summer
+hotel, on that level space above craggy heights, facing the moon and
+the valley, with the background of still greater heights, ever rising,
+heavily wooded, to the peak towering above. He saw it, as a true
+architect, in completion; as the wren sees his builded nest, not as the
+single straw or wisp of hair. Yet the day of small things must needs be
+overpassed,—of straws and wisps,—of struts and purlins, plates and
+tie-beams. His day of small things was full of wrangling and bitter
+bafflings, heart-burnings and discouragements. His partners in the
+undertaking had not been induced to cast their lot with his save by the
+exercise of infinite suavities of crafty eloquence, overpowering doubt
+and fear, and indisputable demonstrations of disproportionate profits
+in the very air. One was a seer in a commercial sort, an adept in
+prognosticating unexpected expenses for which no covenant of provision
+had been entered into, and he beheld full-armed disaster menacing every
+plan save that of his own preference. The other had no imagination
+whatever, architectural or otherwise. He recognized no needs which
+required adornment, and measured the taste of the public by his own
+disposition to spend money to gratify it. That Kenniston's plans
+should have come through the ordeal of their councils, with the ever
+lopping-off incidents common to the moneyed non-professional, retaining
+any element of symmetry or grace or beauty argued much for their
+pristine value. He regarded them for a time with a sort of pity and
+affronted tenderness for their maimed estate, but little by little the
+original intentions faded from his mental view, and he could see with
+renewed satisfaction the flag flying from the tower without remembering
+that he had held this octagonal gaud upon the building by main force,
+as it were, against the iconoclastic grasp of the practical men.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he was relieved to be free from their presence. He felt
+that it was well that their legitimate business—one as a stock-broker,
+the other a real-estate agent—held them to their desks in the city of
+Bretonville. The manifest purpose of their creation, he thought, was
+fully served in their furnishing forth their quota of the sinews of
+war. He was much younger than either, but he had learned something
+beyond their knowledge in this internecine strife, and when it
+became necessary to provide for them occupation, to prevent further
+interference in the venture which had come to be of most hopeful
+interest to both, he wrote to them touching the finding of a suitable
+man to keep the hotel when built, certain that in this quest for a
+Boniface he had set them by the ears, and relying on their different
+temperaments to keep them wrangling together and to leave him in peace.</p>
+
+<p>Every sylvan detail of the scene pleased his artistic and receptive
+sense, as he stood on the great natural terrace, the site of the
+future building, and surveyed the landscape. It was a phenomenally
+felicitous opportunity. This plateau projected from a lateral spur of
+the Great Smoky chain, and faced the southeast. Thus the main body of
+the mountain range, diagonally across the Cove, seemed strangely near
+at hand; one could study its chasms and abysses, its jungles of laurel
+and vast forests, as it were from mid-air; it was the point of view of
+a bird. Through a gap lower down, the parallel lines of the eastern
+ranges became visible, elsewhere hidden by the great boundary ridge,—a
+wonderful fantasy painted in every gradation of blue, from the slaty
+grayish hue near at hand under the shadow of a cloud, the velvet-like
+tones of ultramarine beyond, and still further the metallic hardness
+of tint as of lapis lazuli, till the most delicate azure outline of
+peaks faintly obliterated its identity against the azure eastern sky.
+All unflushed the sky was here, although to the right the clouds were
+red above the western mountains. They closely hemmed in the Cove,
+heavy, massive, purple and bronze and deeply green, in such limited
+latitude of color as their lowering shadows would permit. Far down
+their slopes the river ran, threading the deep forests with elusive
+steely glimmers. He could not hear its voice, but from great cliffs
+hard by the silvery melody of the mineral springs beat upon the air
+with a rhythm inexpressibly sweet and wild and alluring. So definite
+it was that it seemed odd that one did not "catch the tune." In an
+open space some scattered sheep were feeding,—the effect pastoral
+and pictorial. The whole scene, with its blended solemnity and beauty
+and dignity, would well accord with the castellated edifice his fancy
+had set in its midst. It might indeed be a mediæval world upon which
+the windows should look, instead of the prosaic nineteenth century,
+so far it would appear from sordid to-day, so well would the fashion
+of the building aid the illusion, were it not for a section of the
+foreground immediately below the cliffs of the terrace, where there
+stood, bare and open and unsheltered, a primitive log cabin, a stretch
+of cornfields, a horse-lot, a pig-pen, and all the accessories of
+most modern and unimpressive American poverty and ignorance. Being
+near, and bearing human significance, the prosaic little home seemed
+the most salient point, in its incongruity, in the whole magnificent
+landscape. The methods of the mountaineer furthered, too, the effect
+of antagonism. Along the side of one of the ranges near at hand, a
+great gaunt blackened area bore token of a "fire-scald." Kenniston's
+eyes rested frowningly on this deep burnt scar upon the face of
+nature. It came from the pernicious habit of "setting out fire in the
+woods" in the autumn, to burn away the undergrowth and dead leaves,
+in order to give freer pasturage to wandering cattle. Here, as is not
+unfrequently the case, the fire, instead of merely consuming leaves,
+twigs, and shoots, had gathered strength and fury, burning the giant
+trees to great blackened, deadened skeletons, bleakly standing, and had
+devastated some hundred acres. He could see in the sparse shadows the
+cattle feeding on the lush herbage, and he ground his teeth to reflect
+upon the alarm any future conflagration would spread among the autumnal
+lingerers of summer sojourners and the catastrophe that might ensue to
+the chateau on the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>must</i> buy him out," he muttered. "He <i>must</i> be made to
+go."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's heart was as heavy with presage as if his flimsy chateau
+stood on the cliffs behind him; for it was not to be mediæval in point
+of strength of materials.</p>
+
+<p>The project of buying out Luther Tems seemed hardly so feasible as when
+first presented to the minds of the company. The proposition to this
+effect had already been made to the astounded mountaineer, and rejected
+with a plump No. A second and better considered effort, coupled with a
+disproportionately large pecuniary consideration, had fared no better.
+There Luther Tems was, and there he meant to stay, as his father and
+his grandfather had before him to a great age, till Death bethought
+himself at last of these loiterers in so obscure a corner of the world,
+and, although belated, gathered them in. The company was now at its
+wits' end. The place was an eyesore, a trail of the serpent in this
+seeming Paradise. It was, too, a source of danger and discomfort, and
+to seek to remove it was one of Kenniston's errands here, as well as
+to confer with the contractor, in his dictatorial character as one of
+the company rather than the architect. His visit was so timed that
+he was on the ground a day or so in advance of his coadjutor, and in
+furtherance of his project had asked for quarters in Luther Tems's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Far was it from Luther Tems, the fear of being over-persuaded. He was
+a lugubrious presentment of obstinacy, as he sat at his hearthstone.
+The immovable determination expressed in the lines of his face and the
+curve of his lips was incongruous with the other characteristics of his
+aspect. He was not of the gigantic build common among the mountaineers.
+He was singularly spare and alert, and there was something in his
+movements and in the lines of his figure which betokened that when
+endowed with more flesh it had expressed an unusual grace. His
+features were absolutely regular, and although the eye, sunken amidst
+a multitude of wrinkles and half hidden by the beetling eyebrow, no
+longer showed the fine lines of its setting and its pristine color
+and brilliancy, and his jaw was lank from the loss of teeth, and
+his well-cut lips were contorted over his quid of tobacco, he still
+exhibited to the discerning gaze of the architect enough traces of
+the beauty of his younger days to justify the feminine sobriquet of
+"Lucy." A good joke it had been in the Cove forty years before, but
+custom had dulled its edge and hallowed its use, and now he would have
+had to think twice before he saw aught incongruous in the appellation.
+It was a convenience in some sort, too, and averted misunderstandings,
+for his son bore his name of Luther. Although inheriting a share of
+his father's good looks, it had been admixed with the "favor" of the
+Tates, his mother's people, who were a tall, burly folk. He was heavier
+far than his father, and slower at twenty-four than "Lucy" Tems would
+be at eighty. The strong resemblance in their faces ended there, for
+naught could be more unlike the elder than the meditative composure
+with which the younger man sat and smoked his pipe, and now slowly rose
+and replenished the fire and seated himself anew. He had nothing in
+look or motion of the panther-like, dangerous intimation that informed
+the old man's every gesture and glance. But this expressed itself
+with a certain supple, feline effect in his daughter, a tall girl,
+in whom the beauty of his youth was duplicated. She had the chestnut
+hair, the exquisitely fair complexion with its shifting roseate
+suffusion, the large beautifully set dark blue eye, the high narrow
+forehead from which the hair grew backward, but lying on the temples
+in delicate fibrous waves,—all the fine detail that had graced her
+father's youth, and that had seemed so wasted on the wild scapegrace
+boy of the mountains, merely attaining the recognition of ridicule
+among his fellows, and unvalued by its possessor. She wore a dark blue
+homespun dress that enhanced her fairness, and she sat in a low chair
+in the firelit log room and busied herself, with a monotonous gesture
+and a certain sleek aspect, in carding cotton. Kenniston had seen her
+previously, and in his preoccupied mind she roused no interest, neither
+then nor now.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down by the fire, among them, much nettled to observe that there
+was a stranger, a man whom he had never before seen here, ensconced
+on the opposite side of the hearth. The shadow of the primitive
+mantelshelf obscured his face, and even when the fire flashed up it
+barely sufficed to show his burly figure in an attitude of composed
+waiting and observation.</p>
+
+<p>His presence added an element of doubt and difficulty to the already
+troublous negotiation, and Kenniston, accustomed to civilized methods,
+and having expected to carry all before him, felt a sinking of the
+heart out of proportion to the value of the property he coveted. He
+had, in his experience, conducted delicate and difficult negotiations,
+involving large considerations, many parties in interest, and
+conflicting claims, to a successful issue. And yet, what enterprise
+so unpromising as to buy from a man who will not sell! So did the
+half-masked presence of the stranger in the shadow shake his confidence
+that he did not at once open the subject nearest his heart. A short
+silence ensued upon the greetings, and he was fain to lay hold upon the
+weather as a subterfuge.</p>
+
+<p>"It holds fair, colonel," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He used the title in secret derision, as the usual sobriquet of men
+of dignity and substance in the lowlands. He had scant faith in the
+existence of any discerning perceptions and delicate sentiments in
+the minds or hearts of people in homespun; it had served to amuse him
+at his first meeting with old Tems, when he had not dreamed that so
+uncouth a character had a part to play upon the elaborate stage of
+his own future, which was a-building with such care and thought and
+hope, and he had laughed in his sleeve to observe the simplicity and
+acquiescence with which the fine title was accepted. He intended its
+use in no military sense, and he did not learn till afterward that
+old Tems bore a veritable title, which he had earned on stricken
+battlefields, and had later commanded a band of guerrillas whose name
+was a terror and a threat.</p>
+
+<p>Tems took his pipe from between his lips. "It holds fair," he
+echoed drawlingly; then, "Dunno fur how long," as if to admonish
+any speculator in the weather to be not too happy in a vale of such
+incertitude.</p>
+
+<p>"All signs favor!" A sudden singing feminine tone pervaded the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston glanced up. In one corner, a stairway from the attic above
+came down into the room. A young girl, whom he had not before noticed,
+was sitting on the steps midway. From this coigne of vantage she
+overlooked the room, and participated in the conversation when moved to
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston fancied that from some real or affected rustic shyness
+because of his presence she had sought this retirement, for she flushed
+deeply at his glance, and bent her head over a piece of rough mending
+which she seemed to be perpetrating on a jeans coat with a gigantic
+needle and a very coarse thread. She could hardly have seen very well
+to set the stitches, and as her side was toward him he could ill
+distinguish her face for the shadow and her industrious attitude and
+her falling hair.</p>
+
+<p>Julia Tems looked up at her with a laughing glance, half raillery, half
+sneer. But the brother took up the question with an air of contention;
+he wanted rain for his corn crop, and he believed the clouds must
+surely hold it in trust for him.</p>
+
+<p>"The fog war a-getherin' along the mountings this evenin', an' I seen
+'bout a hour ago a thunder-head a-loafin' round over Piomingo," he
+averred with a certain bitterness, as if to protest against the arguing
+away of these prospects.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," the singing voice, curiously vibrant, broke forth once more,
+"we air likely ter git a good full rain, ez would holp up the crap
+'fore long, but we ain't goin' ter hev no steady set o' bad weather
+now. Signs don't favor it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man again took his pipe from his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es. An' a body mought b'lieve from yer talk that ef Satan war ter
+cotch us by the right leg this week, he'd be mighty likely ter turn us
+loose by the lef leg nex' week." He laughed sarcastically. "All of us
+air s'prisin' apt ter be suited, no matter how things turn out." He
+replaced his pipe, adding, with the stem between his teeth, "That's
+Ad'licia's notion," and then smoked imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>The little optimist looked at him with an indignant, affronted gaze for
+a moment, then bent once more to her sewing.</p>
+
+<p>She had forgotten Kenniston, and her face was fully revealed in the
+moment that she had turned it on her critic,—an oval face, with a
+little round unassertive chin, a thin, delicate, aquiline nose, a small
+mouth with full lips, the indenture in the upper one so deep as to make
+it truly like a bow, and widely opened gray eyes that resembled nothing
+so much as moss agates. They were veiled by long, reddish lashes, and
+the hair that hung curling down about the nape of her neck was of a
+dull copper hue. Her complexion was exceedingly white, and she had that
+thin-skinned look which is incompatible with freckles as annuals; in
+those milk-white spaces about the eyes were sundry tokens of the sunny
+weather which even the dark days of winter would not obliterate. Her
+figure was slender, and she did not look strong. She wore a brown
+homespun dress, and she bit the coarse thread with a double row of
+small perfect white teeth as she addressed herself to threading her big
+needle anew.</p>
+
+<p>"Studyin' 'bout the weather, an' gittin' onhappy 'bout yer buildin'?"
+demanded old Tems of his guest.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight twist of the lips, suggestive of covert ridicule on
+his part, as he asked the question.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was totally unaware of furnishing in his proper person
+amusement to the mountaineer, but to his host he seemed a fool more
+bountifully endowed with folly than any other specimen of the genus
+with whom Tems had ever been brought into contact, and the projected
+hotel was accounted a ludicrous impossibility. It was Tems's secret
+persuasion that most of the population of this country had been slain
+in the war; he had himself seen much slaughter in its grim actuality.
+The idea that there were people who would wish to come long journeys
+to fill that vast projected structure seemed the most preposterous
+vaporing of imbecility.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't they got nowhar ter bide?" he would demand, in incredulous pity
+for the homeless summer birds.</p>
+
+<p>He had come at last to treat it in his own mind as a bubble, a mere
+brainless figment, and only his courteous instincts prevented this
+from becoming apparent, although now and again it was perilously near
+revelation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no; I think the weather won't affect my building for a good
+while yet," answered Kenniston. Then, with a sudden afterthought, and
+perceiving the opening, "I'm troubled, though, about the blasting for
+the coal cellars and wine cellar. There will of necessity be quite
+an avalanche of fragments of the rock falling into the valley, and I
+wanted to give you warning of it before it begins."</p>
+
+<p>The look of attention deepened on the old face. The thin old head
+suavely nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanky, sir. I feel obligated." And old Tems relapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was baffled for a moment, but presently he returned to the
+charge.</p>
+
+<p>"You and your family could leave the premises while the blasting was in
+progress. It might be inconvenient, but"—</p>
+
+<p>"Yes—ye-es—ef so minded," the ancient householder acquiesced.</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," Kenniston pursued with more energy, stroking his brown
+whiskers with one hand, while he looked, keenly interrogative, at his
+interlocutor. "There might be danger, positive danger, in remaining."
+Then, seeking an ally, and taking hope from the quiescent silence of
+the stranger in the corner, "<i>You</i> agree with me surely?"</p>
+
+<p>The stranger laughed, a round, vigorous, elastic tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I reckon old Cap'n Lucy is about ez good a jedge ez ter the
+dangers in dealin' in gunpowder ez ye'll meet up with this side o'
+Jordan. I'd be willin' ter leave sech ter him."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course—of course," Kenniston agreed hastily. "Only I am anxious to
+have no sort of responsibility,—moral responsibility, I mean,—in case
+of an accident to members of his family."</p>
+
+<p>He reflected that two of these were feminine, that the sex is to a unit
+a coward by open confession, and he sought to play upon their fears.</p>
+
+<p>But once more Adelicia interfered to show the more hopeful side of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>"It's toler'ble fur from hyar, a right good piece," she turned her head
+to say before she again bit the thread.</p>
+
+<p>"Not from the site of the first blasting; the wine cellar will be under
+the billiard-room, which will be in the pavilion at this end of the
+bluffs." He had waxed warm, excited. "The rock could easily be flung
+as far as this, and even if no human life were endangered, might kill
+horses or cows, or crash through the roof, or break down the chimney."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, the comp'ny is a good, solid, solvent comp'ny, ain't it?" said
+the man in the corner unexpectedly,—"respons'ble in damages?"</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston recoiled suddenly, and Tems pricked up his ears, like the old
+war-horse that he was. The prospect of conflict in whatever sort was
+grateful to his senses, and he snuffed the battle from afar. In this,
+too, he saw his defense and his opportunity. Kenniston would hardly
+have conceived it possible that, with such inconsiderable adversaries,
+he could be routed in diplomacy. It was not, however, to bring matters
+to this point of view that his schemes were designed.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope there will be no need for a demand for damages," he said
+stiffly. Then, driven back upon his last resource, the simple truth, he
+continued, turning toward the man in the corner, "It has been partly to
+avert all dangers and troubles that the company has been trying to buy
+out Mr. Tems, at his own price."</p>
+
+<p>"My h'a'thstone hain't got no price," said old Tems acridly.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston had thrown himself back in his chair with a dogged
+exasperation of manner. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his
+short flannel coat. His square chin, glimpsed in the parting of his
+full beard, was deeply sunken in its lustrous fibres. His lowering blue
+eyes were fixed on the fire, all aglow, for at this altitude the chill
+summer nights cannot dispense with the smouldering back-log. His legs,
+in their somewhat worn integuments of dark flannel and long boots,—for
+there are penalties to footgear and garb in clambering about these
+rough mountains,—were stretched out before him, and Adelicia's cat
+found them convenient to rub against, as she arched her back and purred
+in the dull red light. He felt at the moment irritated beyond measure.
+This idea of a lawsuit, craftily interjected by the stranger whom he
+himself had called into the conversation, might seriously embarrass
+the proceedings of the company. It could be held <i>in terrorem</i> at
+every point. Nay, it might incite Tems to seek out occasion to make a
+pretext of injury. It added a prospect of indefinite discomfort and
+jeopardy to the already harassed present.</p>
+
+<p>"I kin b'lieve that, Cap'n Lucy,—I kin b'lieve that," said the
+stranger, with a sudden outpouring of his full, mellow, rich voice.
+Its sonorousness and sweetness struck Kenniston only vaguely then, but
+he remembered it afterward. "Ye want yer <i>home</i>, an' the company
+wants yer <i>hut</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want thar money,—ain't got no cur'osity 'bout the color of
+it," old Tems said tartly.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of the younger Temses uttered a word. Luther smoked
+imperturbably, and Julia, as sleek, as lithe, as supple as a panther,
+bent her beautiful, clear-cut, distinct face above the cards, which
+she moved with a flexible elasticity that made it seem no labor.
+Every line about her was sharply drawn; the very plaits of her glossy
+hair showed their separate strands, over and under and over again, in
+the coil at the back of her head. Against the dark wall, she had a
+fixity, a definiteness of effect, like a cameo, in contrast with the
+somewhat tousled head which Adelicia held back to observe her completed
+industry. She lifted the mended coat in both hands before her, and
+contemplated the patch, set on indeed as if it should never come off
+again, but with what affront to the art of fine needlework!</p>
+
+<p>She was not so absorbed, however, as to be unmindful of the disaffected
+state of feeling in the room below, and she must needs seek to improve
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't so mighty easy tarrified, nohow," she remarked, suavely
+addressing the information more directly to Kenniston's pretended fears
+for their safety. "An' ez ter rocks fallin' an' sech,"—she turned her
+head askew to better observe the effect of the flagrant patch,—"I hev
+tuk notice ez trees streck by lightning mostly falls whar thar ain't no
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"'Kase thar be mighty few houses whar the trees be lef'," observed old
+Tems, whose contradictory faculties were called into play every time
+she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, fower hev fell, lightning-streck, sence we-uns hev been a-livin'
+hyar, an' nare one teched us," she argued.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston caught his breath. "How long have you been living here,
+colonel?" The secret gibe came back to him with the sudden secret
+renewal of his hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Five year, or thereabout," growled old Tems.</p>
+
+<p>"Five year this comin' fall," put in Adelicia, with exactitude. "We-uns
+lived then nigher sunrise, on the flat o' the mounting, over thar." She
+nodded with her wealth of bronze curls toward the east to indicate the
+direction of the locality.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you would move then, colonel, why not now?" demanded Kenniston.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if old Tems would not reply. So deep a scowl had
+corrugated his face that in its wizard-like aspect not the faintest
+vestige of his famous ancient beauty remained.</p>
+
+<p>"Burnt out," he growled at last.</p>
+
+<p>"The fire-scald, ye see," explained Adelicia, turning her oval face
+upon Kenniston.</p>
+
+<p>It had an old-fashioned, even a foreign cast, was his superficial
+thought, as he gazed up at her in the dusky shadows of the staircase;
+it reminded him of some antique miniature. But his recognized idea was
+expressed in the words, echoed in surprise and with a touch of dismay,
+"The fire-scald!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fire war set out in the woods ter burn the bresh; but the wind sprung
+up, it did, an' the fire tuk the house an' fence an' all. Ye mus' hev
+noticed the fire-scald over yon?" Once more she nodded her head in
+intimation of the direction. "Then we-uns moved hyar an' raised this
+house."</p>
+
+<p>Old Tems's surly, disaffected look caught her attention. "But this hyar
+house air a heap better 'n the burnt one; that war old, fur true, an' I
+tell ye the wind used ter shake it whenst stormin'. Roof leaked, too.
+Roof war so old that the clapboards war fastened on with wooden paigs
+stiddier nails. My great-gran'dad—Cap'n Lucy's gran'dad—didn't hev
+much modern improvemints, leastwise in blacksmith's gear, when he kem
+hyar ter settle from old Car'liny."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced down, smiling. Her strangely old-fashioned little face was
+lovely in smiling, but Kenniston did not heed; he did not even hear her
+words; he was absorbed in a train of thought that came to him as she
+talked.</p>
+
+<p>She looked slightly ill at ease for a moment, perceiving the defection
+of his attention; then, as if to make the best of it, she turned her
+head and glanced over her shoulder at the man in the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye hev hearn that?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. She saw the gleam of his full blue eye. "They called East
+Tennessee the 'Washington Deestric',' arter them days," he said, his
+big voice booming out. Then he went on to tell of an old house which he
+knew, in which wooden pegs also served as nails, as a set-off, it might
+seem, to the ancient dwelling that perished in the "fire-scald," and
+presently he was wrangling with old Tems as to the precise route that
+certain early settlers were said to have taken through the mountains,
+in which discussion even the silent Luther joined, and Kenniston was
+left undisturbed to his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts were significant enough. He had seen this vast property
+of his only once before in all the years that it had been in his
+possession. It had descended to him in due course, with the rest of the
+paternal estate, at the death of his father, who had been a successful
+merchant of Bretonville. He had had some little but well-restrained
+inclination for speculation, and these miles of mountain fastnesses
+were a single instance of it, looking to the future development of
+mineral resources. The abandoned mine in the gorge expressed the
+failure of hopes of silver and lead, which had led him only for a
+little while and only a short distance. He himself had never laid
+eyes on his purchase; but once, in a college vacation, the son, on a
+pedestrian tour, had explored to some purpose the woods up and down
+these steeps and across the line. Kenniston remembered now for the
+first time how the face of the country had impressed him then, for the
+fire-scald had so altered its aspect. The slope where the quaint little
+ante-Revolutionary house was perched had then seemed high and steep. In
+building anew, Luther Tems had selected a site on more level ground,
+considerably removed from the area of the burnt district. Possibly
+the fear of disaster when those blackened and decaying trees should
+finally complete their doom and fall, or the vicinage of springs for
+the essential water supply for man and beast, had served to influence
+his decision; but he had certainly made a very considerable journey
+from his former situation, and cut a large cantle out of the Cove in
+his present settlement.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's mind was hard upon the trail of the boundary lines, as
+his absorbed eyes dwelt on the red fire. They were ill defined in his
+memory, for when the great body of a man's land, numbering thousands of
+acres, bears a merely nominal price, a few furlongs amiss here or there
+in the wild jungle of the laurel are hardly worth the counting. In this
+particular instance the accuracy of metes and bounds made a difference
+all apart from actual values. It was his recollection that his lines
+included all those slopes to the "backbone," a high craggy ridge that
+ran like a spinal column adown the mountain mass. If this were the
+case, old Tems had inadvertently set up his staff of rest on his
+neighbor's land, was himself a mere trespasser, and might be ejected
+without difficulty in due process of law.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston stirred uneasily as he contemplated this possibility. In its
+extreme unpopularity there was a very definite menace. He could ill
+afford to antagonize the whole countryside. The lawless, illogical
+mountain population would be arrayed as a unit against his interests.
+Even single-handed, old Cap'n Lucy seemed formidable, when active
+aggressions were contemplated. And he could appreciate, too, the
+seeming injustice, from the rustic standpoint, that, for the frivolous
+and flippant desire of keeping the landscape sightly for the fastidious
+gaze of the gentlefolk, an old man and his family must be turned out
+of house and home. Kenniston knew that although he might pay the full
+value of Cap'n Lucy's improvements, the popular censor would account
+this naught if the mountaineer were forced to quit his home against his
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless law is law, and Kenniston could easily forecast the
+triumphant result of a legal arbitrament. Tems had not been ensconced
+here, within his own inclosures, claiming as his own, long enough to
+acquire any title under the statute of limitations, even if he could
+establish adverse possession. The property was his own, and he would
+satisfy even every moral claim upon him in paying the interloper the
+full value of his improvements. At all events he would have the line
+run out, and perhaps the land formally processioned.</p>
+
+<p>At the idea of prompt action in the matter, his full red lips, only
+partially visible through his beard and mustache, were pressed together
+firmly; his teeth met with a certain stiffening of the jaw into a
+hard, determined expression; his eyes were cast up suddenly over the
+primitive humble interior of the cabin with a certain impatience of
+its uncouthness, so at variance with the gala trim of modern comforts,
+so homely, so American, so hopelessly, desperately, the presentment
+of the unprogressive backwoods. Built five years ago, said they!
+It might have graced the "Washington Deestric'." His white teeth
+showed, as he half sneered and half laughed. He would, if he might,
+with a wave of the hand, have swept it and all it represented out of
+existence; nay, into oblivion. As his eyes came once more to their
+former point of rest, the fire, they suddenly encountered the intent
+gaze of the man in the corner. It discomfited Kenniston in some sort,
+although he could not have said why. His glance fell; he nervously
+uncrossed and recrossed his legs, and thrust his hands deeper into
+his pockets. A vague sense of sustaining covert enmity had begun to
+pervade his consciousness. He could not say whether this were induced
+by the mere inception of the unpopular idea of eviction, or whether
+it were a subtle perception of something antagonistic in the mental
+attitude toward him of the composed, watchful man who sat in the
+corner. It was not a furtive observation. It dwelt upon him openly,
+deliberately, steadily. It held no element of offensiveness; it was
+so calm, so incidental, so apparently, so naturally, the concomitant
+of the thoughtful, contemplative pipe, which now and again his hand
+steadied, or removed to release a wreath of the strong tobacco smoke
+which pervaded the apartment. Yet Kenniston felt, oddly enough,
+that it was not an incidental observation. It was charged with much
+discernment. A discriminating analysis was, he instinctively knew,
+coupled with it. He began, on his part, to more definitely gauge the
+two or three fragmentary contributions which the stranger had flung
+into the talk. The allusion to the solvency of a company and its
+responsibility in damages savored of a knowledge far beyond the ken
+of the Cove, this region of primitive barter where there is neither
+currency nor commerce; where the operations of far-away courts are
+but faintly echoed, as of retribution overtaking some reckless and
+unwary criminal, and the provisions of the law seem merely futile and
+disregarded devices of lawyers who seek to live upon the people by
+their enforcement. Then the crafty contrast of the differing estimates
+of the house, the one as a home, the other as a hut, intimated some
+definite capacity to play upon the springs of human emotions. He
+wondered if he had ever before seen this man. He had a good memory,
+but he did not charge it with the various mountaineers he met, and
+sometimes he forgot their names and occasionally their personality.
+He was restive under this slow, reflective gaze, and he pushed back
+his chair suddenly and walked away to the door. It was open and widely
+flaring, and he stood there as if scanning the weather signs.</p>
+
+<p>For so long he had seen the castellated walls of his new building rise
+upon the great natural terrace of the mountain, above the series of
+crags, that he experienced a sort of subacute surprise to mark the
+loneliness and melancholy of the landscape. Only the pinnacles of
+the mists glimmered in the moon, as unsubstantial as the turrets of
+his fancy. Below were all the darkling spaces of the night-shadowed
+forests. Above, the heavily wooded slopes loomed vaguely in the
+dim light, for the moon was in her first quarter, here showing the
+gaunt face of a crag, and there a ravine made visible by thronging
+spectre-like vapors. The stars were bright. Near the great dome he
+marked the scintillating circlet of the Northern Crown; its splendors
+seemed enhanced, he thought, by the vicinage of that towering densely
+dark mass beneath. So still it all was! He heard the silvery tinkle of
+the liberated mountain springs near his own site sounding with such
+freshness, with such elfin spontaneity, with such flexible fantasies
+of cadence, that one would have imagined he must surely have bethought
+him how featly the chorusing oreads were singing; it only brought to
+his mind anew the chemical analysis, and the hordes of valetudinarians
+waiting to bring all their ills, real and imaginary, to lay them, with
+more valuable considerations, at the shrine of his Spa.</p>
+
+<p>His sense of difficulties and discouragements took on a new lease, and
+as he turned impatiently away from the door he almost ran against young
+Luther Tems, who had come to gaze upon the clouds with that humble,
+expectant wistfulness characteristic of those votaries of the weather,
+the farmer class.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you-uns jedge thar war rain in that batch o' clouds settin'
+ter the south?" he drawled seductively, as if he sought to influence
+favorably the unprejudiced opinion he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no judge of weather signs," Kenniston returned succinctly,
+although in another mood it would have suited well his satiric bent to
+invent and promulgate a formula of fictitious barometrical science.</p>
+
+<p>As he glanced loweringly toward the fireside group, thrusting his
+hands into his pockets and advancing with long steps to his former
+chair, he was quick to observe that the man in the corner seemed
+to have determined on a leisurely departure. He had risen, and was
+returning to his pocket a brier-root pipe, taking the sedulous care
+to knock all the ashes out of it on the jamb of the fireplace, which
+betrays him whose pocket linings have more than once been the scene
+of an incipient conflagration. Kenniston regarded him, as he stood in
+the full light, with a disaffected interest, a sort of responsive
+enmity. And yet there was nothing of itself inimical in this man's
+bearing. On the contrary, suggestions of good fellowship predominated
+in his open manner and clear blue eye. He was exceedingly tall, not
+judging by Cap'n Lucy's elegant and slight proportions, nor by the
+burlier Luther's height, but by actual measurement. It had been long
+since he had shaved,—his full yellow beard hung like a golden fleece
+far down over the breast of his brown jeans coat; his long, straight
+yellow hair, of the same tint, had its edges upturned in the semblance
+of curl by the obstacle of his collar. He had a large, bony, hooked
+nose, which gave a certain strength to his countenance. The fashion of
+the feature was such as to suggest sagacity in some sort, as of keen
+instinctive faculties, but its expression was as ferocious as that of
+an eagle's beak. His mustache hid his lips and was lost in his beard.
+He wore great spurred boots drawn high over his brown jeans trousers,
+and a wide-brimmed black wool hat. A faded red handkerchief about his
+neck now and again showed amidst the hirsute abundance, for he turned
+his head quickly and vigilantly. He had an air of self-confidence
+which was somewhat imposing. It constrained in his interlocutor a sort
+of reluctant acceptance of his own estimate of himself. Kenniston,
+looking at him with an unacknowledged respect for the untrained natural
+forces his personality expressed, felt him to be formidable; how, or
+why, or when it was not manifest, nor in what sort his conciliation
+might be compassed, nor how it should be worth the effort. His bland
+phrases of departure set the man of etiquette ill at ease. Kenniston
+was accustomed to uncouthness in the mountaineers, even to lowering
+looks and open expressions of enmity when he or his plans impinged
+on their prejudices; polite duplicity, the native of drawing-rooms,
+seemed strangely out of place in this region of paradisaic simplicity
+of feeling and manner. His own acute social sense and his valued
+commercial acumen had given him an intuition of this man's aversion
+to him or his projects, or both; but his hand was feeling yet the
+stranger's cordial grip, and the sonorous invitation, "Obligated ter
+hev a visit over at Lost Time," was ringing in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that man?" he abruptly demanded of his host, as soon as the
+jingle of the spurs and the sound of the horse's hoofs were silent on
+the air. Then, seeking to make his question more incidental, he added,
+"Seems to be a friend of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy and Luther looked at each other, exchanging a grin of
+derision. The two girls seemed unaccountably embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, stranger," said the old man, "he's a widower, a sort of
+perfessional widower."</p>
+
+<p>Luther broke out laughing with a hearty joviality. It surely was not
+he who had been deluded by the clouds and made the sport of the winds;
+it hardly seemed possible that he could take so much pleasure in aught
+save good prospects of the fruits of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"He hev gin me an' Luther a heap o' trouble, an' we-uns hev tuk a power
+o' counsel tergether ez ter what we-uns war goin' ter do 'bout it," old
+Tems continued.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston, conscious that he had roused some standing joke, cast his
+slightly satirical glance from one to the other, and with a sort of
+scornful patience waited their pleasure to enlighten him.</p>
+
+<p>Adelicia, with heightened color and an affronted aspect, was making a
+great show of inattention; while Julia, with her sleek, deft grace,
+went on impassively carding cotton.</p>
+
+<p>"He kems hyar a-visitin' the whole fambly, an' thar he sets an' sets;
+an' Luther loses his sleep, till, follerin' the plough nex' day, he
+dunno the share from the ploughtail, nor Gee from Haw; mighty nigh fit
+ter fall in the furrow, jes' walkin' in his sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Once more Luther's crude boyish laughter rang against the rafters; this
+was at all events no somnambulistic demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef thar was jes' <i>one</i> gal in the fambly, Luther an' me would
+git off gyard jewty: but ez fur ez he lets on he jes' kems ter visit
+us all,—<i>all</i>; an' hyar we hev got ter set, an' watch him cast
+sheep's-eyes fust at one gal, then at t'other, till Luther an' me air
+plumb cross-eyed, looking two ways at once."</p>
+
+<p>It was a great mutual possession to have so witty a father and so
+appreciative a son.</p>
+
+<p>"A' fust," continued the old man, when the filial hilarity had somewhat
+subsided, "I jes' felt like I couldn't spar' either o' the gals.
+Whenst my darter was born, the fust thing I done war ter buy me a
+shootin' iron, express fur the fust feller ez kem a-sidlin' round,
+talkin' 'bout marryin' her, an' takin' her away, an' tryin' ter make
+her b'lieve ez he was a finer feller 'n her own dad: an' I didn't
+know—the insurance o' some folks is powerful survigrous—but he
+<i>mought</i> set up ter purtend ter be <i>better lookin'</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>His daughter might seem to have shown her appreciation of his famous
+good looks by adopting them all. As she lifted her eyes and smiled
+upon the narrator, the brilliant and spirited beauty of her face might
+indeed be a welcome reminiscence of the time when he, too, wore so fair
+a guise, and might impart a zestful relish of the resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>"An' then Ad'licia, she kem hyar when her mother, my sister Amandy,
+died. My sister hed married a second time, a mighty mean man, an'
+whenst I tuk Ad'licia—she war 'bout three year old—I jes' said, 'Yer
+mam didn't hev much jedgmint in marryin', an' I reckon ye'll take the
+failin' arter her; an' ye'll show sech jedgmint ez ye kin l'arn in
+marryin' nobody.' An' she agreed: she warn't very young at three, jes'
+sorter youngish; an' though people mought think she hedn't hed a chance
+ter view the world on sech a p'int, she hed her senses powerful well
+in hand. So we made a solemn promise. An' I felt plumb sot up till
+lately. I don't want nare one of 'em ter marry. A fust-rate man ain't
+wuth a fifth-rate woman, much less a fust-rate woman," he declared
+chivalrously. "Leastwise, ye can't git the gals' daddies ter think so.
+An' now, jes' ez we air all so sot an' stiddy in our minds, hyar kems
+this widower, this <i>perfessional</i> widower; fur he don't show no
+signs o' bein' nuthin' else! An' we dunno whether he kems ter listen at
+Julia hold her tongue, or Ad'licia talk, or hear Luther praise God fur
+the weather, or ter git my best advice on politics. We'd do ennything
+ter git shet o' him. He mought hev air one o' the gals, ef he'd only
+say <i>which</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And he chuckled as he gazed into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"What's his business? Farmer, I suppose?" suggested Kenniston.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw; he hev got a leetle store,—powerful leetle trade, 'count o' the
+cross-roads store at the settlemint, though he trades right smart.
+Liberal, too. He'll take ennything,—load o' corn, load o' wood, sech
+like heavy truck ez thar ain't no sale fur ginerally, 'count o' the
+wagonin' an' roads bein' so heavy. Whenst you-uns git yer railroad
+put through,"—he gave him a rallying wink at this aberration, as he
+esteemed the projected narrow gauge,—"ye'll mend all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; you'll be in touch with the markets of the world then," said
+Kenniston, with his satiric laugh. "Only a little question of freight
+rates between you and New York."</p>
+
+<p>This sarcasm did not cut so deeply as one might imagine. It would have
+been impossible to insert the idea—save with an axe—into old "Lucy"
+Tems's brain that New York was more important and metropolitan than
+Colbury, or essentially more remote.</p>
+
+<p>"This Lorenzo Taft ain't been so sociable till lately. That's what
+makes me call him a <i>perfessional</i> widower," old Tems went on,
+with a peculiar relish for the designation. "He hev two childern, gal
+an' boy, an' the gal hev been with her gran'mam down in Blount County
+till the old woman died; an' now he hev got 'Sis,' ez he calls her,
+with him, an' he wants a step-mammy fur her! He ain't a-courtin' a wife
+fur hisself; he's courtin' a step-mammy fur 'Sis.' An' in course his
+sheep's-eyes would go cornsider'ble furder with the gals than they do,
+ef they didn't know that he air jes' out a-trappin' fur 'Sis.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," said Adelicia suddenly, "I dunno ez folks oughter think hard
+of him fur that, 'kase 'Sis' did look powerful lonesome an' pitiful,
+settin' up all by herself 'mongst all the men at the store."</p>
+
+<p>"Thar, now!" exclaimed Cap'n Lucy triumphantly, "makin' excuses fur
+folks agin! I told ye ez ye couldn't hold out till bedtime 'thout
+excusin' this one fur that, an' t'other one fur which."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," said Adelicia, "it's a mighty late bedtime."</p>
+
+<p>She was rolling up the coat as carefully as if a first-class triumph of
+needlework had been accomplished upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sis' didn't 'pear ter me ter need enny lookin' arter whenst I seen
+her," said old Tems heartlessly. "She 'peared ter be some fower or
+five hunderd year old, an' stiddy an' settled ter accommodate."</p>
+
+<p>"She be 'bout ten year old," said Adelicia gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," said Cap'n Lucy, with a twinkle of the eye, "I <i>do</i>
+wonder ef that thar pernicious way o' makin' excuses fur folks's
+faults would hold out ef Ad'licia war ter set out ter be somebody's
+step-mammy!"</p>
+
+<p>Luther suddenly held up his hand with an intent look, bespeaking
+silence. The rain was coming. From far away one could hear the steady
+march of its serried columns, now amongst the resonant woods, and
+now through open spaces, and again threading narrow ravines. A bugle
+blast of the wind issued suddenly from a rocky defile, and was silent
+again, and once more only the sounds of that resistless multitudinous
+advance pervaded the mountain wilderness. Already the influx of air
+from the open door was freighted with dank suggestions commingled with
+the odor of dust. For a panic was astir in the myriad particles that
+lay in heaps in the sandy road; they seemed to seek a futile flight
+in some inadequate current of the air, and were wafted a few paces
+along, to fall again upon the ground, and finally to be annihilated
+by the vanguard of the great body of the torrents. A tentative drop
+here and there on the clapboards of the roof, increasing presently to
+a brisk fusillade, and then all individuality of sound was lost in the
+tumultuous downpour under which the cabin rocked.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was because he had seldom been brought into such close
+intimacy with the elements that Kenniston found little sleep that night
+under the reverberating roof. He could touch it by lifting his hand
+in the tiny shed-room beneath the eaves, which was devoted to his use
+as a guest-chamber. At arm's length, too, with but the thin barrier
+of the clapboards intervening, was the wild, riotous rain. He seemed
+in the midst of its continuous beat and thunderous splash, as its
+aggregations swept from the eaves into the gullies below, so entirely
+did its turmoils dominate his senses. Now and again the shrill fanfare
+of the triumphant wind sounded, and a broad, innocuous glare of sheet
+lightning illumined the little apartment through the multitudinous
+crevices between its unplastered boards; for this addition to the
+house was not of logs, like the main structure. He could see, too, at
+intervals, as he lay in indescribable discomfort on the top of the
+big feather bed, the landscape without through the open door; for the
+heavy, close air had induced him to set it ajar. He found a certain
+interest for a time in these weird illuminations: the great mountains,
+slate-tinted in the searching yellow glare, with clouds of white vapor
+hanging about them; the rain, visible in myriads of fine lines drawn
+perpendicularly from zenith to valley, apparently stationary, as if it
+were some permanent investiture of the atmosphere; the little porch,
+low-browed, on which the door of his room opened, and which leaked with
+a heavy, irregular pattering. Half a dozen dogs were lying there,
+having taken refuge from the storm. A scraggy cedar-tree close beyond
+held down its moisture-freighted branches, and amongst them he saw once
+a great owl, business interrupted for the nonce, staring at him with
+big yellow eyes, as it ruffled up its feathers against the rain.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious of sustaining the steady, sedate gaze of the nocturnal
+fowl even when the whole world would disappear as with a bound into the
+depths of darkness. As if the sound had been restrained by the presence
+of light, the tumult of rain would seem redoubled upon the roof. The
+unmannerly elements evidently disturbed no one else in the house. It
+was as silent as if no life beat within the walls. The very dogs were
+still. One of them, a fat, callow fellow, with an ill-appreciated sense
+of a joke, roused them once by facetiously snapping at a sleeping
+confrère's tail, set wagging by the propitious happenings of dreamland.
+Whether it was that he had interrupted the gustful gnawing of a
+visionary bone, or simply that his elder was of a vicious temperament,
+he was soundly cuffed, rolled over on his fat, round sides, and sent
+shrieking under the house. He came out after some indulgence of vocal
+woe on a piercing key, and, perceiving Kenniston, sought to make his
+acquaintance. Being a shaggy shepherd, his rain-laden hair diffused
+a peculiarly canine odor throughout the little room; he was used to
+rebuffs, and it required but a single tweak of the ear to send him,
+depressed and discouraged, to prosaic slumbers among his kindred.</p>
+
+<p>The lightnings failed. The world was plunged into unbroken gloom. The
+hours wore on into the deeps of the night. Once, as Kenniston was on
+the point of losing himself in sleep, he heard a shrill blood-curdling
+cry, searching out every nerve of repulsion in his body,—a panther
+shrieking from the terraces of his castle in the air. Even the fierce
+dogs, lifting their heads to listen, only whined and huddled closer
+together. When at last he dreamed, his mind clung close to the theme
+that held his waking thoughts. It was of processioning those wild acres
+of mountain fastnesses, and the serpentine lengths of the surveyor's
+chain seemed alive as the chain-bearers dragged it writhing through
+the grass. And again he was taking off the hospitable roof beneath
+which he slept, and riving off the doors, and somehow Cap'n Lucy was
+curiously helpless to resist this desolation of his roof-tree. But
+the man in the corner was plotting against him, and seeking to excite
+public animosity; and while he was busy in counterplotting, suddenly
+Julia appeared, with a strange face, subtle and insidious and sinister,
+leading the panther which he had heard filling the night with terror.
+And he was frightened, and awoke.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft met the rain halfway to his own dwelling. He pulled his
+hat over his eyes and bent to his mare's neck before its fury, and
+although the animal now and again swerved from the bridle-path at the
+glare of the lightning, she carried her master steadily and fleetly
+enough; and it was not far from his reckoning of the hour that they
+should pass the Lost Time mine when a broad illumination of the skies
+revealed the great portal, gauntly yawning in the side of the range,
+where a tunnel had been made in the search for silver, and abandoned.
+He pulled up his dripping steed and seemed to listen. Water had risen
+within, evidently, from the infinite enmeshment of the underground
+streams and springs that vein the great range; he heard it lapping
+upon the rocks, as it came pouring along its channel in the tunnel.
+It played around the mare's fetlocks, and now and again the animal
+fretfully lifted her forefoot. Another flare of the weird, unearthly
+yellow light, more lingering, brighter, than the last, showed the
+swift clear flow of the current, the great bleak beetling rocks of
+the oval aperture, the trees on the mountain side high above it, and
+beyond, three hundred yards or so, a little log cabin set upon the
+slope, which was a gentler declivity here, surrounded by a few acres of
+cornfield, and the appurtenances of beehives, hen-house, and rickety
+barn common to the humbler dwellings of the region. He could even see,
+between the house and the steep ascent immediately behind it, the
+far-away crags, as the range rounded out, glimmering in the lightning
+down the vista thus formed.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed the simplest of domestic establishments, and a forlorn little
+family group met his gaze as he opened the door and stepped within. The
+fire had dwindled to a few embers; a flickering flare from a handful
+of chips flung on in anticipation of his return, heralded by the sound
+of the mare's hoofs, showed the unplastered log room of the region,
+more unkempt than is usual, and betraying the lack of a woman's hand.
+The slight preparation for his reception was not the work of a boy of
+twelve, who sat soundly sleeping in a splint-bottomed chair, his whole
+attitude one of somnolent collapse, as if he had not a bone in his
+body, his round face white and freckled, his curly red hair growing
+straight up from his forehead, his slightly open red mouth of a merry
+carelessness of expression even in unconsciousness. On the opposite
+side of the fireplace a little girl was staidly seated. She had a
+narrow, white, formal little face; thin light brown hair, short and
+straight and smooth, put primly back behind her ears; a small mouth,
+with thin, precise lips; a meek eye, with a gentle lash. Her father
+looked at her with a sentiment of awe rising in his stalwart breast.
+"Consider'ble older'n the Newnited States, an' I hed ruther keep house
+for a regiment o' pa'sons," he commented silently.</p>
+
+<p>She wore a checked homespun dress, spotlessly clean, a dark calico
+apron, high-necked, buttoned to the nape in the back, shoes and blue
+stockings, which are rare among the children in the mountains at
+this season; and despite her limited inches, she was as formidable
+a spectacle of perfect precocity and prim perfection as ever a man
+who liked to go his own gait had the pleasure of looking upon. Miss
+Cornelia Taft was entirely competent to see all that might be going on
+in her small world, and she had brought her own unalterable standards
+with her, in her pocket as it were, by which to judge.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little unacknowledged weariness in her expression, and a
+certain stiffness as she got down out of her chair, which intimated
+that she was not quite equal physically to her resolution to sit
+up for him. He was about to requite this after the usual manner of
+those favored with this feminine attention, but she had begun to rake
+out some Irish potatoes roasting in the ashes, and Lorenzo Taft's
+remonstrance was subdued from his original intention.</p>
+
+<p>"Look-a-hyar, Sis," he said, "whyn't ye go ter bed? Ye mustn't sit up
+waitin' fur me this time o' night. I don't eat no second supper, nohow."</p>
+
+<p>But he was presently disposing of the refection of potatoes, corn
+bread, and buttermilk in great gulps, while she looked on with her
+inexpressive, unastonished eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Whyn't ye make Joe go to bed?" he demanded, his mouth full, as he
+nodded at the sleeping boy.</p>
+
+<p>The vaguest expression of prim repudiation was on her face. "He 'lowed
+he warn't sleepy," she said, with some capacity for sarcasm. She
+would have mended Joe as if he were a rag doll, but for his stalwart
+resistance. She did not expend herself in vain regrets. She had cast
+him and his tatters off forever, unless indeed he should come some day
+and sue to be made whole.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," said Lorenzo Taft, bending a perplexed brow upon her, "jes' let
+him be, an' ye go on upsteers an' go to bed. Ye'll never grow no higher
+ef ye set up so late in the night."</p>
+
+<p>She turned obediently toward the stairs, or rather a rude ladder
+that ascended to the loft, while Lorenzo Taft paced back and forth
+in the room with a long, elastic stride, troubled and absent, and
+only conscious at the last moment that it was a look of the keenest
+curiosity that the little girl's placid eyes cast down upon him as she
+disappeared amongst the shadows of the loft.</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, disproportionately perturbed, it might seem. Then he
+sought to reassure himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I ain't much similar ter old Mis' Jinaway, nohow; an' ez
+she air useter a quiet, percise old 'oman's ways an' talk, I mus'
+seem toler'ble comical, bein' so big an' hearty, an' take big bites,
+an' talk loud, an' ride in the storm." He paused in the midst of his
+sophistry. Her look was so intelligent, so keenly inquisitive. "She's
+mighty leetle, but"—his caution had returned—"a ca'tridge o' giant
+powder ain't so powerful bulky. I hev got ter git somebody ter take
+keer o' her,—or ter take keer o' <i>me</i>, sure!"</p>
+
+<p>If the small Cornelia Taft's curiosity had been excited by what she had
+already observed, she would have thought his subsequent proceedings
+very strange indeed, could she have supervised them. But her placid
+little eyelids had closed at last upon her calm little eyes, and a very
+few gentle homesick tears for a place where they washed the dishes,
+and swept the floors, and slept in an airy room with the firelight
+flickering, and mended their garments; if amusement must be had, what
+gay times she and her grandmother had enjoyed, to be sure, when they
+raced as they knit their stockings, pausing twice or thrice in the
+evening to compare speed and measure the accomplished hose! A very
+strange man she thought her father, and she would have thought him
+stranger still if she could have seen him presently take a lantern
+and cross the open passage to the other room of the log hut, which
+served as store. There were embers here as well, and as he locked
+the door again they showed the array of gear needed for a country
+trade,—knives, shoes, shears, saddles, harness, rope, a little calico,
+sugar, coffee, salt, and iron. There was a counter at one side, on
+which stood the scales. It seemed a very commonplace structure, unless
+one should see him open a door into it on the inner side. This was
+not a cupboard, which might have been convenient; it gave upon a door
+in the puncheon floor, which, lifted, showed a ladder leading to the
+cellar. He went through, feet foremost, closing the counter door after
+him as well as the other. He lighted his lantern, not with a coal or
+flint, as is usual, but with the more modern and progressive match,
+and then down the ladder he went very warily, for it was a somewhat
+slight structure, and he was a heavy man. It could be removed, too, in
+a moment, which added to its insecurity.</p>
+
+<p>And still there was naught apparent which could justify so much
+caution. The lantern, now fairly alight, revealed empty boxes and
+barrels, and a scanty reserve of stock similar to the goods which the
+shelves above showed. He pushed a few boxes aside, took down a board or
+two of the wall in the rear, and in another moment was in one of the
+tunnels of the abandoned mine, the wall replaced behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, a man was never more ingeniously secure, he thought, as he
+went at a brisk pace into the depths of the mountain, and it would all
+be jeopardized by the influx into the Cove of a horde of tourists and
+summer sojourners that the projected hotel might bring. No exclusive
+aristocrat was ever more jealous of his seclusion from the roving of
+his kind than Lorenzo Taft. And then this danger of his own household,
+his own hearthstone; this silent, disapproving, prying, perfect little
+primness!</p>
+
+<p>He crossed water once. He never crossed it without remembering the
+instinct of the deer pursued to put a running stream between its
+flight and the hunter. The rivulet, very narrow here, flowed in a
+rocky bed at a swift rate. This was a tributary of the larger torrent
+that had flooded the mine, and, together with the small output and the
+inadequate prospect, had caused the work to be abandoned. Two of the
+miners had been drowned in the catastrophe, and this circumstance had
+doubtless contributed to the solitude of the locality. It was a place
+of strange sounds, with the forever-echoing rocks, and few curiosity
+seekers had ever ventured farther than the great outer portal of the
+Lost Time mine. Into this tunnel, with which Taft had joined a tunnel
+of his own secret workmanship, the water had not risen, albeit the
+lower excavations were all submerged; and as he went dryshod, he heard
+the deft patter of his tread on the well-beaten "dirt" path multiplied
+behind him by the echoes into the semblance of many a following
+footfall. This illusion might have jarred less accustomed nerves, but
+Taft had heard this impalpable pursuit so long with impunity that he
+was hardly likely to heed it now. Something, however, that he sometimes
+heard, and that was more often silent, he had learned to watch for, to
+fearfully mark the sound when it came, and to note its absence with a
+shuddering sense of vacancy and a chill suspense. It was like the sound
+of a pick continually striking into the earth, not with a hurried or
+fitful stroke, but timed with a composed regularity characteristic of
+the steady workman. Sometimes it seemed far away, sometimes immediately
+overhead, and again just underfoot. Those who heard it accounted for
+it readily enough. Who had set the ghastly superstition afoot none
+might say, but the belief widely obtained that the two lost miners
+thus wrought continually in the depths of the mountain, digging the
+graves that had been denied them on the face of the earth. To Taft,
+the familiar of the dark, the weird, and the uncanny, it seemed a
+likely enough solution of the mystery, and he nothing doubted it. He
+could not account for another phenomenon, not so frequent, but often
+enough forced upon his contemplation to bring him to an anxious pause.
+Sometimes he heard, or thought he heard, voices, loud, resounding,
+distinct,—hailing, hallooing voices; and again so uncertain, so
+commingled, were these vibrations, so repetitious and faint, that he
+could not be sure that they were not merely echoes,—echoes of the
+talk and mirth of the group of moonshiners whom another turn of the
+underground passage showed him at their work in the broader space of a
+chamber of the mine, where the great timbers still stanchly supported
+the roofing masses of earth, and the walls of sandstone bore freshly
+the gaunt wounds that the blasting had wrought in their rugged sides.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The gloom of the place had a unique underground quality which could
+hardly be compassed elsewhere by the mere exclusion of daylight. The
+yellow flare from the open door of the furnace seemed chiefly to serve
+to render visible the surrounding darkness. The masses of shadow were
+densely black. Where the firelight smote them they merged reluctantly
+into expositions of the darkest possibilities of umber and burnt
+sienna and dismal gradations of duskier brown. The clay wall facing
+the furnace door at one side, however, glowed with the reddest of
+terra-cotta hues. Against this the group was outlined, motionless, all
+eyes turning upon the black aperture of the tunnel along which the
+faint, wan gleams of Taft's lantern had preceded him. The moonshiners
+had an air of pretermitting work, and the expectant, receptive
+attention which characterizes the secluded in colloquy with him from
+the world without.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain rapacity in this demand for developments. Withdrawn
+from the scene of action, it seems as if anything definite and decisive
+might have happened in the interval of time, when perhaps only
+combinations of causes are slowly and imperceptibly tending toward
+the precipitation of the event. When the full-voiced greetings were
+supplemented by the inquiry for the news, Lorenzo Taft stood for a
+moment at a loss, conscious of a need of caution in the recital of his
+suspicions and doubts and indeterminate fears. He sat down on the side
+of a barrel, looking, in the flickering dusk and the vivid gleams from
+the furnace, like some able-bodied, overgrown Bacchus, with his flowing
+yellow hair and beard definite against the terra-cotta wall behind him,
+his reckless, jovial blue eyes full of life and vigor, and his fair and
+florid complexion wearing already the deeper flush painted by brush
+whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno 'bout <i>news</i>, edzac'ly." He hesitated, wiping his mouth
+with the back of his hand, as if he could hardly summarize so few
+experiences and impressions for the benefit of the debarred.</p>
+
+<p>"That's always the way," sarcastically exclaimed Jack Espey, a slight,
+eager-eyed young man, the impersonation of impatience. "'Renzo don't
+never hear no news in the Cove; leastwise"—he cast a keen, significant
+glance at the others—"none ez he air aimin' ter tell agin."</p>
+
+<p>The facial expression of the other men changed subtly, unmistakably.
+Some strong sentiment of disaffection had evidently been set astir in
+Taft's absence. As he slowly recognized it, a deep, dismayed gravity
+fell upon his features, which were as incongruous with his expression
+for the moment as if they were merely component parts of some jovial
+mask. It was a petrified look, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon
+Head of Trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The other men said nothing, maintaining a sort of wary attention
+inimical in its close receptivity. The suggestion had communicated
+instant fire to certain inflammable suspicions and antagonisms. All the
+work about the still was given over for the nonce, and Lorenzo Taft
+had a certain overpowering realization of being brought suddenly to
+judgment, without a moment in which to take account with himself and
+his agile duplicities and perfect his defense.</p>
+
+<p>There were four of the moonshiners besides Lorenzo Taft. Their
+aspect had so little in common that one might wonder at the cohesive
+property of the enterprise to hold them together, were it not for
+the opportunity of profit so rare in these mountain communities, and
+the great and ever-present dangers of the law that served to cement
+their association when once they had fallen into the toils of the
+illicit worm. One, in his shirt-sleeves, was somewhat beyond middle
+age, bearded and grizzled and grave, with a sedate eye, callous hands,
+and a steady look as if he might be trusted to do a good deal of hard
+work by sheer force of industrial momentum when once about it. He
+had distilled much liquor against the law in his time, and even had
+an experience in such matters antedating the unpopular whiskey tax.
+His was a sober, trusted judgment in questions of pomace and mash,
+singlings and doublings, and the successes of the manufacture were his.
+Another had a downy lip, full, petulant, passionate; a large blue
+eye, deeply bloodshot; a tousle of light curling hair; an overgrown,
+large-jointed look,—a mere boy, despite his thickened utterance, his
+shaking hand, and his frequent reference to a jug down amongst the
+shadows which the others left almost untouched. A far more dangerous
+personality was exemplified in the keen-eyed man, of about twenty-five,
+called Jack Espey. He had a wild, alert, aggressive look, widely opened
+bluish-gray eyes, full of reflections of the world without, straight
+black hair, a drooping mustache, a fair complexion, a square jaw, and
+about him was the unmistakable intimation of recklessness. He wore a
+white wool hat set far back on his head, a blue shirt, and blue jeans
+trousers, and he clasped both his hands across one knee above his long
+spurred boot, while he sat on a shelf of the rock, half in the shadow
+and half in the light. The gleam fell on the handle of the knife in his
+belt and his pistols, which he did not lay aside to assist in the work.
+Yet it was not toward him that Taft, surprised and overtaken, cast the
+first covert glance of anxiety and deprecation. A smiling, dark-eyed
+gaze fixed upon his face shook his confidence, in that moment of
+detection. The smile was not one of pleasure, but Larrabee's eyes were
+seldom without it. It was tinged with a suggestion of contempt; it was
+habitually slow; it seemed rather an unintentional emanation from the
+spirit within than a means of communication with others of his kind. He
+smiled, as it were, to himself. He had a pale, clear-cut, intelligent
+face, with fine straight features, dark eyes, and short auburn hair. He
+was about twenty three or four years of age, lean but strongly built,
+and tall, and was dressed in brown jeans, with great rough boots.
+He had a certain inactive, lounging aspect, and laid aside with a
+reluctant gesture the worn New Testament which he had been laboriously
+reading as he sat close to the door of the furnace and caught its
+glimmers.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw," reiterated the keen, eager Espey, with what he intended to be a
+sneer, but which was instead a snort of indignation, "ef 'Renzo hears
+enny news, he ain't rememberin' ter sheer it with we-uns; he keeps it
+from us, moles o' the yearth that we be!"</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his voice dramatically. The others, with a hot sense of
+injury, gazed with glowing eyes upon Taft.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, look-a-hyar," Taft felt impelled to defend himself, "what is it I
+ain't told ez ye want ter know?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a close understanding among the "moles o' the yearth," for
+the united accusation about to be voiced was withheld as Larrabee fixed
+his ever-smiling eyes upon him and held up his warning hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, 'Renzo, what <i>is</i> the news ye hev tole hyar?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the pride of intellect which illumined Larrabee's face, that
+ineffable sense of power which a conscious mental superiority bestows.
+The smile in his eyes extended to his lips; he laughed a little,
+showing his strong white teeth, and there was something craftily
+brilliant in his expression as he looked down and turned the Testament
+in his hands, and looked up and laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," exclaimed Espey rancorously, "ye purtend ter go out an' see
+nuthin' an' hear nuthin'. I reckon ye air 'feared we'll git skeered too
+easy, an' light out an' leave the still, an' sech; so ye tell we-uns
+nuthin' 'bout sech ez ye meet up with. Jes' ondertake ter jedge fur us
+an' gin us no warnin' nor nuthin'"—</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee broke in suddenly: "<i>We</i>'ll ondertake ter tell you-uns
+the news, 'Renzo Taft, though we do be 'moles o' the yearth'! <i>Thar's
+a stranger in the Cove!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>A large, imposing personality is at a peculiar disadvantage when
+overtaken by disaster. Lorenzo Taft felt detected in every fibre,
+and he was conscious of comprising a good many pounds avoirdupois of
+culprit as he sat arraigned before them all. He could only look from
+one to the other in flushed doubt and anxiety as to how much they knew
+of what he had his own reasons to conceal.</p>
+
+<p>"He air 'bidin' down at old Lucy Tems's house; an' ez ye sot out ter
+go thar this evenin', ye air 'bleeged ter hev viewed him," persisted
+Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I viewed him," said Lorenzo Taft, the steadiness of his fixed gaze
+beginning to waver somewhat as he sought to assume a more incidental
+manner, in the midst of his amazement to hear the details of his visit
+to the Tems cabin from these "moles o' the yearth," miles away in the
+rain and the mist and the darkness, and locked up in the denser medium
+of the depths of the solid ground.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell ye his name," continued Larrabee, his eyes still smiling,
+but the curves of his mouth fierce, and his breath coming fast. "His
+name is Kenn'ston, or sech."</p>
+
+<p>A wild, confusing fear of supernatural agency in this knowledge had
+begun to pervade Taft's consciousness. Then he caught himself suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye mus' hev hearn on <i>him</i> whenst <i>he</i> war hyar afore," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Hyar afore!" exclaimed the anxious-eyed men in concert.</p>
+
+<p>"He be the man ez 'lows ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove, or
+sech like. Ye mus' hev hearn 'bout him."</p>
+
+<p>A silence ensued. "That war 'way las' year," the elder moonshiner said
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>"He 'pears ter go powerful slow," said the boy, disaffected and
+incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>As the grizzled elderly distiller pondered on the matter, the perplexed
+wrinkles and lines of his worn face were painful to see. "Ye be
+right sure he ain't no revenuer nor nuthin'?" he asked anxiously,
+subordinating his own judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Gosh, naw!" exclaimed Taft, with a resonant, confident note.
+This idea, so at variance with his knowledge of Kenniston's plans,
+had not occurred to him. He broke out into a sonorous laugh at the
+fears which for the first time he comprehended. "Revenuer!" he cried
+contemptuously. "Moonshining would be a powerful slick bizness ef
+revenuers war sech ez him!"</p>
+
+<p>The sense of relief induced a slackening of the tension among the
+others. They too laughed, albeit a trifle constrainedly, and glanced
+consciously from one to the other. But Larrabee turned the Testament
+back and forth doubtfully in his hands, and asked suddenly, without
+looking up, "Then, why n't ye tell 'bout him a-fust, ef ye didn't want
+us not ter know 'bout him,—jes' ez news?"</p>
+
+<p>Taft was silent for an instant. But the sense of partial success
+is a prophetic element in the completion of triumph, and, with an
+irreflective dash at the nearest means of exculpation without full
+disclosure, he replied precipitately:—</p>
+
+<p>"News! I didn't count <i>him</i> no news. Sech ez him don't count much
+whenst a man's a-goin' a-courtin'."</p>
+
+<p>The silence with which this was received was expressive of extreme
+surprise. The crackle of the furnace fuel, the roar of the flames,
+the rush of the air along one of the unseen shafts near by that had
+some immediate communication with the outer atmosphere, and sustained
+a strong current through the connecting drift, even the continuous
+dripping from the worm, each made itself conspicuous in the absence of
+other sound.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Espey had suddenly lifted one spurred boot to his knee, and was
+affecting to examine the rowel. "Who be ye a-courtin' thar at old Cap'n
+Lucy's?" he gruffly demanded, but with an obvious effort to assume an
+off-hand manner.</p>
+
+<p>The steady look which Larrabee fixed upon Taft was, evidently, not
+incidental. The blood rushed to Taft's head. He had not dreamed of
+this complication. He saw that his answer meant far more to each of
+them than to him. And yet it was a difficult answer to give. He could
+not even seem to hesitate, and he must needs decide his fate at chance
+medley.</p>
+
+<p>"Ad'licia!" he blurted out at a venture. Then, as the recollection of
+the handsome, silent Julia came over him with the inevitable sense of
+comparison, a pang seized his utilitarian heart; for since an excuse
+for his silence as to the details of his visit must needs be framed,
+and a stepmother be chosen in such haste, why could he not have
+bethought himself of the beauty? The fact that others were touched by
+this matter, of which he had so suddenly a subtle perception, rendered
+his decision extra hazardous. His own natural interest, his swift
+regret for his choice, which was likely to ensue in any event since
+his feelings were not involved, dulled his observation for the moment.
+It was the least fraction of time which he had failed to improve, but
+when his discerning, covert gaze sought the faces of the other two men
+it could tell him naught of what he wished to know. Jack Espey still
+sedulously examined the rowel of his spur lifted to his knee, and
+Larrabee's eyes were fastened upon the worn book which he turned in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I'm mighty welcome ter my ch'ice of Ad'licia," Taft said
+ruefully to himself. "Ad'licia 'd stand no sort'n chance with young
+fellers sech ez them, alongside o' sech a lookin' gal ez Julia."</p>
+
+<p>The instinct strong in ambitious human nature to enter the lists for
+a prize stirred within him, albeit it was merely his own fancy that
+rated Julia at this phenomenal value. Fictitious though it was, it
+belittled Adelicia in his estimation. However, the die was cast. He
+had openly avowed his preference, and it was hardly to be presumed
+that the arrogant Julia would suffer herself to be second choice to
+one of her own household. The possibility of defeat from any objection
+to him on the part of the lady never occurs to a man of that type.
+In his bluff vanity, a concomitant of his other hardy attributes, he
+thought he had only to choose. And he had chosen. He began to seek
+to reconcile himself to his selection. It would not be judicious to
+have a rivalry in a matter of this sort—of which young men are apt to
+make so much—between himself and members of his gang; more especially
+Espey, who was dangerous because of his hot head, and Larrabee, who
+was dangerous because of his cool head. And then Adelicia was of an
+easy, acquiescent, optimistic temperament, and was likely to put up
+more readily with the two children, Joe and Cornelia. He astutely
+reflected that it would probably require all the optimism attainable in
+the Cove to put up with "Sis." He began to feel that he was very lucky,
+or rather instinctively and intuitively sagacious, to have made such a
+choice at a snap shot. A troublous household would the determined and
+doubtless exacting beauty make of it. "Sp'iled ter death, I expec', by
+Luther an' old Lucy; nare one of 'em dunno <i>how</i> ter say 'no' ter
+nuthin' Julia sets her head ter, I reckon. An' I ain't no young feller,
+nohow, to go danglin' arter the purtiest gal in the kentry, pickin'
+out a second ch'ice fur a wife. Ad'licia hain't got no home, bein'
+jes' Cap'n Lucy's niece, an' I reckon she 'd be glad an' pleased ter
+hev a house o' her own, with nuthin' ter do but ter keep blinders on
+Sis 'bout'n the still an' sech, an' set her a-sewin' or a-hoein' till
+she gits some growth an' jedgmint." He began to pluck up. "Purty is ez
+purty does. Air one o' them boys is welcome to Julia!"</p>
+
+<p>Then a sudden thought smote him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pears ter me I oughter hev a cornsider'ble gredge agin you-uns," his
+big voice boomed out with all its sonorous confidence once more. "I
+kem hyar arter goin', ez ye knowed, ter Tems's, an' durned ef ye don't
+haul me over the coals like ez ef I hed hearn suthin' ez I didn't want
+you-uns ter know."</p>
+
+<p>"So ye did, so ye did!" said Espey eagerly. "Ye didn't 'low fur we-uns
+ter know ez that man war hyar agin surely settin' out ter build his
+tavern or sech. 'Kase ef sech a many folks war stirrin' in the Cove,
+we-uns would be 'feared they'd nose us out 'fore long, an' quit the
+still."</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft's face once more grew stony, as if he beheld some
+petrifying prospect not included in the range of vision of the natural
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I hev got ez much call ter be 'feared ez you-uns," he
+protested. "I dunno ez enny o' you-uns hev sarved out a prison term fur
+illicit distillin' but me."</p>
+
+<p>The others stirred uneasily at the mere mention of the possibility,
+their faces, stricken with a deep gravity, all illumined by the
+brilliant flare of the flames springing up anew; for the grizzled
+elderly man was busying himself in replenishing the fire. The wall
+of red earth on one side, on the other the wall of dark gray rock,
+alternating with lighter tints, where the blastings had riven its
+close texture; the heavy supporting timbers made of great tree boles
+(what sordid translation from the noble forests without, where the
+unstricken of their kindred still towered toward the stars, and sang
+with the winds, and received glad gifts from the seasons in springing
+sap and spreading leaf, in acorn and cone, and kept a covenant with
+time registering the years in mystic rings in their inmost hearts!);
+the black aperture of the tunnel on one hand, and opposite a mysterious
+recess leading beyond; even a rat, and his elongated shadow, which,
+augmented into frightful proportions, sped after him in a mimic chase
+across the trampled red clay floor,—all became visible in detail.
+The disorder of the immediate surroundings, the barrels, the tubs,
+the sacks full of meal, the great woodpile, the rotting refuse of the
+pomace in heaps waiting to be cast down into the half-submerged shaft
+close at hand, the copper still, itself, and the spiral worm and its
+adjuncts made a definite impression hitherto lost in the gloom. The
+shadows of the mountaineers doubled their number, as they sat, grave
+and absorbed, and gazed at the deep red and yellow and vivid white
+flare within the furnace. They seemed to wait in silence until the
+ill-fitting door clanged again, as if their senses recognized an added
+safety in the gloom which was not approved by their judgment.</p>
+
+<p>As the door closed the elder distiller spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno ez I hanker ter sarve no prison term," he said lugubriously.
+"An' I kin see full plain ez this hyar still will hev ter quit ef the
+Cove gits full o' valley folks. We-uns will hev ter move, sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Move whar?" demanded Taft. "I been a-movin' afore. That's how kem I
+lef' Piomingo Cove, whar the revenue folks knowed me better."</p>
+
+<p>There was another long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Burn him out!" exclaimed Jack Espey violently, bringing the foot which
+he had held on his knee down to the ground with a vehemence that made
+the spurs jingle. "Let <i>him</i> move! Burn his shanty every time he
+gits it started."</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft recoiled. The glimmer from the crevices of the furnace
+door made a dull red twilight about him, as he sat on the barrel
+against the red wall. The suggestion was not new to his mind. He had
+not intended, however, that it should take root amongst the moonshiners
+and augment their jeopardy. He thought that, if he were any judge of
+character, Kenniston would soon have enemies enough here. The stranger
+was already busy in antagonizing Cap'n Lucy,—an early collision was
+inevitable. This catastrophe to the building might be presumed to be
+the natural outcome of their wrangles, and he would fain have silently
+awaited this interpretation of the event. As to the old mountaineer he
+felt no qualms of conscience; Cap'n Lucy was amply able to take care of
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>This was the trend of Lorenzo Taft's plan,—the reason of his avoidance
+of the subject of the stranger. How or why his expectation should have
+miscarried he could not for the life of him see. The man had before
+been in the Cove. His presence would soon be an ordinary accepted fact.
+Fate merely would seem to harass Kenniston and his plans. Fire is a
+dangerous element in building, nevertheless requisite, in the tinner's,
+the plumber's, even the paper-hanger's art, and a conflagration in
+remote places is a terrible thing. Kenniston would become discouraged
+after a time, and desist.</p>
+
+<p>But Lorenzo Taft had never intended that this work should be through
+the united means of moonshiners. Five men were too many to keep the
+secrets of arson. The art of moonshining is necessarily worked with
+numbers, but the fire-bug's must needs be a solitary trade. He could
+not see the rift in his logic. How <i>had</i> they taken the alarm?</p>
+
+<p>He marked with secret fear how the suggestion fared. Larrabee, who had
+begun again to read by the knifelike gleam from the crevice of the
+furnace door, caught upon the page on his knee, as he sat close beside
+it, looked up with a keen, pondering face, his finger still on the line
+along which it was wont to guide his wavering comprehension. Surely
+he found no thoughts in its wake responsive to the idea now astir in
+his active, untaught brain. Law-breaking is a progressive evil. If
+he had not been engaged in the crime of illicit distilling,—which
+has, however, its apologists from the mere standpoint of economics,
+who plead the inherent right of a man to use his own corn and fruit
+to serve his own advantage,—this further iniquity of the destruction
+of the property of another could not have found lodgment in his
+consideration, for he was not naturally a cruel man, nor wicked.
+But in the depths of the earth, working at an unlawful vocation, in
+jeopardy of his liberty and in fear of his life, viewing the world
+only in transient glimpses in the midst of a backwoods community, and
+sustaining in effect an assumed character, that of a slothful farmer,
+an ignorant man's mind, however good the native essence, is not likely
+to develop fairly; and he may read the New Testament, as indeed those
+wiser and better than he have done, as a matter of literary interest
+and excitement, with not a thought of personal application.</p>
+
+<p>The half-drunken boy pulled himself out of his semi-recumbent position
+on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the dinctum, by Gawd!" he exclaimed, his solemn red face
+swollen and somnolent of expression. "Burn him out! Burn him out! Make
+<i>him</i> move! Kindle up a leetle hell around him!"</p>
+
+<p>He broke out with a wild, hiccoughing laugh, singing in a queer
+falsetto,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"'Ladybug, Ladybug, fly to yer home!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Yer house is on fire'"—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>ending in a shrill cackle of derision and a quavering whoop.</p>
+
+<p>"Shet up, sonny!" said Copley, the veteran moonshiner, who seldom
+interfered save upon a question of work. Even he turned from the
+examination of the fermentation of a tub of mash which had been in
+question, his lantern in his hand, and a slow smile of discovery in
+the perplexed, anxious wrinkles of his wooden face. "I reckon our fire
+would last ez long ez his buildin' timber."</p>
+
+<p>There was not a protest from among them. Lorenzo Taft, more dismayed
+than he could at once realize, again marveled how they had taken the
+sudden alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ain't never tole me yit how it air ez you-uns fund out, sence I
+been gone this evenin', ez thar war a stranger in the Cove, an' how ye
+knowed 'twar this hyar Kenn'ston down at Tems's."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden volley of laughter, and Larrabee closed his book
+with a bang of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Our turn now! Jack, <i>he</i> wants ter hear the news!" he called out
+to Espey.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye mought ez well s'arch the hen-house fur teeth ez ter kem hyar
+ter we-uns, 'way down in the ground, axin' fur news!" protested Jack
+sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>A frown was gathering on Taft's face. He no longer had the incentive
+to self-command which the welfare of a plot requires. His plot was
+shattered; the event was out of his control, at the uncovenanted mercy
+of the future. It was almost sheerly from the force of curiosity that
+he pressed the question:—</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>did</i> ye know, ennyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he might not have been enlightened save for Larrabee's relish
+for detailing the circumstances, in the paucity of incident and
+interest in their underground career.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," he began in a narrative tone, and they all composed themselves
+to listen. Even the elderly drudge decanted a jug of doublings into a
+keg with marked speed of manner, and shuffled up into the circle, where
+he seated himself on a broken-backed chair, which, since he could not
+lean backward, rendered him fain to lean forward, his elbows on his
+knees,—"waal, this evenin', it bein' sorter lonesome down hyar,—I
+knowed 'twar goin' ter rain,—I felt sorter like 'twould be toler'ble
+pleasant ter read in my book."</p>
+
+<p>He paused in pride; the respect of the others for this accomplishment
+was visible on their faces; it might be said to be almost tangible.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't find it, though, nowhar; an' I s'arched an' s'arched. An'
+suddint I 'membered I hed lef' it on the counter in the store. So
+knowin' 'twar nigh dark, an' nobody likely ter be stirrin', I went up
+inter the suller an' listened; an' ez I hearn nuthin', I went up the
+ladder inter the room. Ye know I felt plumb safe, fur I thunk the door
+war locked on the outside."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, warn't it?" asked Taft, with a swift look of alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>It warn't locked at all</i>; fur, ez I stood thar,—I hed jes' by
+accident shet the door o' the counter up an' the suller,—the door of
+the room opened."</p>
+
+<p>Taft's breath was fast. He had himself unlocked the door before he came
+down to the still. He could have sworn it.</p>
+
+<p>"The door opened, an' a leetle gal kem in," Larrabee went on.</p>
+
+<p>Taft's dismayed eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye didn't tell her nuthin'!" he exclaimed, for he recognized the
+avenging "Sis" without description.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee laughed at the reminiscence of the humors of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"I war fit ter drap down dead with plumb skeer at the sight o' her!
+But I sorter held up by the counter, an' I say, 'I kem ter see 'Renzo
+Taft,—yer dad, I reckon.' An' she owned up ter it. An' I say, 'I
+'lowed he kep' the door o' the sto' locked.' An' she say, 'He do.
+I think 'twar locked.' 'I reckon not,' I say, 'fur I couldn't hev
+walked in ef he hed locked it.' An' she say, 'I couldn't hev locked it
+<i>good</i>, agin. I <i>onlocked</i> it this evenin' with my grandmam's
+key what I brung from her house.'"</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft gasped. The idea of old Mrs. Jiniway's keys unlocking his
+helpless doors gave him a sense of the futility of concealment from the
+prying feminine eye which nothing else could so adequately compass.</p>
+
+<p>"An' then," continued Larrabee, with another burst of laughter,—Taft
+did not think "Sis" half so funny,—"I axed her what ailed her ter
+open the door of her dad's store whilst he war gone. She looked like
+she hed a mind not to say another word. But she tuk another notion,—I
+reckon she didn't like ter be faulted,—an' 'lowed ez a strange man hed
+rid by; an' his horse bein' turrible fractious and hard-mouthed, the
+bit hed bruk in the critter's mouth, an' he wanted ter buy another. So
+Sis tried ter open the door, and done it, with her granny's key. An'
+she sold him a bit. She said he war powerful saaft-spoken an' perlite,
+ez ef she 'lowed <i>I warn't</i>! An' that gin me a chance ter ax her
+what he said. An' she tole his name, an' the word ez he war 'bidin' at
+Tems's,—fur Sis axed him. He got away with mighty leetle news that Sis
+hed enny cur'osity 'bout."</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft listened in silent despair. Disaster seemed closing about
+him. Certainly this was a field for a stepmother. Adelicia could not
+take the enterprising "Sis" in hand a moment too soon.</p>
+
+<p>"How much did she want to know 'bout <i>you-uns</i> that <i>ye</i>
+didn't tell?" demanded Taft.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I fell in line, an' wanted ter buy suthin', too. I purtended I
+wanted ter buy a pound o' nails. Sis weighed 'em out fur me,—gin me
+mighty scant measure,—an' then I 'lowed I would wait ter see you-uns,
+an' I sot down in a cheer. An' she sent Joe ter set with me,—ter see I
+never stole nuthin' o' the gear, I reckon,—an' went off in the t'other
+room ter spinnin', ter jedge by the sound o' the wheel. An' Joe drapped
+off ter sleep, an' arter a while I croped down hyar agin. I reckon she
+'lowed, when she missed me, ez I got tired an' went away."</p>
+
+<p>Taft, anxiously canvassing the probabilities, could but deem this more
+than likely. He began to breathe freely. The girl was too young to
+critically observe any departure from the usual routine, or to reason
+about the matter. He doubted if she would know what moonshining was,
+or could draw any inference from the fact of concealment should their
+precautions chance to fall under her notice. Not that he intended,
+however, to submit them to this jeopardy. The finding and fitting of
+old Mrs. Jiniway's key to the door, in order that the sale of the bit
+might not be lost, savored too much of a precocious intelligence to
+be needlessly trusted. "Sis will bear watchin'," he said to himself,
+unaware that this was a mutual conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>For early rising was one of the virtues inculcated in old Mrs.
+Jiniway's rule of life. Cornelia Taft was awake betimes the following
+morning,—a dawn full of rain, of gray mist veiling the mountains,
+of low clouds, of heavy, windless air. She saw its melancholy gleams
+through the crevices of the clapboards of the roof above her head and
+the batten shutter close by her bed. She knew that these fugitive
+glimmers were brighter than the dull day slowly breaking without,
+from the contrast with the deep tones of intervenient shadow. She lay
+looking at them for a time with this thought in her mind, and then
+she leaned forward and opened the shutter. It was as she had fancied:
+the dusk was almost visible, like a brown mist that seemed subtle
+and elusive, and always vaguely withdrew whenever the eye would fain
+dwell upon it. A great elm grew just without the window and hung high
+above the roof. Its leaves were all lustrous and deeply green with the
+moisture; the graceful bole and branches were darker and more definite
+than their wont. A bird's-nest was in a crotch. She turned her head
+to hear the sleepy chirp of nestlings. She wondered that Joe had not
+rifled it,—only because he had not observed it, she felt sure. "That
+boy don't take notice o' nuthin'," she commented acridly upon her
+senior. The next moment her own powers of observation were brought
+into play. She heard steps, voices, a loud laugh, and before she
+could experience either fear or surprise very definitely two or three
+men passed out of the house, under the elm-tree, and down the road,
+vanishing in the mist. She recognized one of them as the man who had so
+suddenly appeared in the store the day before; another she had never
+seen; the third was very young and very drunk.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the sanctimonious atmosphere that had characterized Mrs.
+Jiniway's domicile, the doings of the unregenerate had always been
+commented upon with the freedom affected by those who are subject
+neither to the temptation nor the transgression. Few gossips were
+better informed upon current affairs than she and her youthful charge;
+and it might be safe to say that, to all intents and purposes, a United
+States marshal knew no more about the revenue laws as applied to
+illicit distilling than did Miss Cornelia Taft.</p>
+
+<p>Her small mind received a great enlightenment as she watched the young
+moonshiner reel down the road with his two companions, and then she
+leaned forward and softly and deftly closed the shutter as before.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The day proved of variable mood. The mists clung sullenly to slope
+and ravine for a time; the clouds hung low, full of menace; even a
+muttering of thunder afar off now and again stirred their dense gray
+masses. The veiled mountains were withdrawn into invisibility. Below,
+the earth lay as if it consisted only of dull levels, limited, silent,
+comatose, for the dank, drowsy influence pervaded all energies alike of
+the animate and the inanimate; there was no sound of beast or bird, no
+stir of wind or rustle of leaf, and a lethargy dulled pulse and muscle
+and brain.</p>
+
+<p>The sunburst came with the effect of revelation. A vague tremor
+pervaded the tissues of the gray mists, and all at once a great white
+glory was on the green mountain sides. The vast spaces to the blue
+zenith were filled with radiant flying fleecy forms as the transfigured
+vapor took wing. Far in the south the gray cloudage still held its
+consistency, and trembled with thunder and sudden elusive palpitating
+veins of yellow lightning. But the lithe arc of a rainbow presently
+sprang athwart it, and the wind came gayly piping down the gorge. In
+the actual perceptible jubilance of the earth, it might seem that the
+miracles of the goodness and the gladness of the sun were no common
+thing. There was a visible joy among the leaves as they fluttered
+together, and lifted up their dank fibres, and lustrously reflected the
+pervasive sheen, and tremulously murmured and chanted in elfin wise
+beneath the breath. How was it that the plaining river should suddenly
+find its melodies again as if light and song were interdependent? A
+tumultuous, rollicking stave it flung upon the air; and so, faster
+to the valley! The benignant revivification was on the very flocks;
+the dull, submissive sheep, huddled drowsily together in the gray
+menace of the morning, were astir once more, and dispersed here and
+there as they browsed. Even Luther was singing in the barn as he
+mended his ploughgear. All day the swift upward flights of the sheeny
+white figures continued at intervals, and when Adelicia set forth to
+drive the cows home, in the afternoon, only the more radiant aspects
+of the world gave token of the storm of the night. She hardly left
+the print of her shoe in the wild woodland ways through which she
+wandered, so had the warmth and the light dried the dank herbage. She
+was out betimes. There was something in the long, meditative strolls
+that harmonized with certain moods, and Cap'n Lucy sometimes sourly
+commented, "Ad'licia gone ter fotch home the cows? Waal, who be a-goin'
+ter fotch home Ad'licia?"</p>
+
+<p>It might be an hour before Spot would think of turning her crumpled
+horns homeward. The sun shone aslant through the vast forests, but
+still hung well up in the western sky. Through the deeper gloom
+amongst the gigantic trees the rays hardly penetrated. She stopped
+once to gaze from the midst of the dark green shade of the umbrageous
+tangle at the strange effects of the light where it fell into an
+open space cleared long ago by "girdling" the trees, which betokened
+collapsed agricultural intentions, for the ground had never been
+broken by the plough. The enormous dead trees were still standing, and
+time and rain and wind had worn them to a pallid whiteness. She could
+see the successive clusters of columns, one after another, rising in
+the sunlight, until the roofing foliage nearer at hand cut off the
+view. To Kenniston's cultured experience they were reminiscent of the
+colonnades of some great cathedral, when he had observed the place and
+the same effect. She had naught in mind to which she could compare
+them, but those white, silent, columnated aisles in the midst of the
+savage fastnesses of the great wilderness always impressed her with a
+certain solemnity as she passed, and she was wont to pause to gaze at
+the spot in awe and with a vague sinking of the heart; for, despite her
+optimism, Adelicia's heart was not always light. She was sensible of
+its weight this evening, as she wandered on, leaving the still, white
+sanctuary in the midst of the forest glooms. Her face was wistful and
+pale. Her dark gray lustrous eyes were dreamy. She walked slowly and
+aimlessly, her brown dress brushing the undergrowth aside with a gentle
+murmur, her yellow calico sunbonnet hanging on her shoulders and
+leaving her auburn head bare. Her errand was far from her mind. She did
+not even bethink herself to call the cow, until suddenly she noticed
+how high upon the great boles of the trees the slanting sunlight
+registered the waning of the day. Then, as she set the echoes vibrating
+with the long-drawn cry of "Soo, cow! soo!" she turned at right angles,
+following the trend of the mountain stream, invisible in the labyrinth
+of the woods, but not far distant she knew by the vague murmur of
+waters borne by the wind. She had looked for no other listener than the
+somewhat arbitrary Spot, who would heed or not as she listed, and who
+might now be standing knee-deep in the limpid ripples near at hand,
+hearkening, but making no response, intending to fare home at her own
+good pleasure. But the long, musical, mellow call, with its trailing
+echoes, attracted other and more receptive attention, and as Adelicia
+turned suddenly into a straighter section of the path she saw at the
+end of the vista, before it curved again, standing beneath a tree and
+with his face toward her, a man apparently listening and waiting for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He had dismounted from his horse, a light-tinted yellow roan, who stood
+as still as if he were of bronze, while his master leaned against the
+saddle, with his hand on the bridle. He held the other arm akimbo, with
+his hand on the belt which supported a knife and a pair of pistols.
+They were unconcealed by a coat; he wore a blue shirt and blue jeans
+trousers, with heavy boots drawn to the knees; and she recognized him
+rather by his accoutrements than his face, for his wide white wool hat
+was pulled far over it. From under the broad brim he gazed at her with
+sullen, lowering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I hearn ye callin' the cow, an' I knowed yer voice," he said. "I been
+waitin' fur ye."</p>
+
+<p>She faltered for a moment; then, with an evident effort, quickened her
+step and went forward to meet him. She apprehended the anger in his
+face, apparently, for there was a disarming, deprecating look in her
+clear dark eyes as she cast them up at him. Her yellow sunbonnet hardly
+served more for shelter than an aureola might have done,—a background
+for her auburn head; her dark brown dress and the green shadows of the
+trees added a pallor to her white oval face with its small delicate
+chin. He did not heed her appealing gaze. It was with a stern, hard
+voice that he spoke, and a fiery eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I hev got a word ter say ter ye, Ad'licia," he began, walking slowly
+by her side and leading his horse, the reins thrown over his arm and
+his uplifted hand near the bit.</p>
+
+<p>The animal's head was close above his shoulder, and as Adelicia met the
+creature's large-eyed and liquid gaze it seemed to her as if she were
+doubly arraigned before them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye needn't ter try ter fool me," said Jack Espey between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't tryin' ter fool ye," protested Adelicia.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her narrowly, taking note of her evident discomposure, and
+placing disastrous construction upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye 'low ye kin fool me 'thout tryin', I reckon," he said, with a
+sarcastic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't a-foolin' ye," gasped Adelicia. "Ye know—why, <i>ye know</i>
+I ain't!"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, half constrained to believe her. He still gazed
+searchingly at her from under the broad brim of his hat. Her wild,
+agitated look made him doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, ye jes' ondertake ter fool me," he continued, with an accession
+of angry jealousy, "an'"—he laid his hand on the pistol in his
+belt—"I'll ondertake ter shoot ye dead on the spot."</p>
+
+<p>The color surged to her face. The tears rushed to her eyes. A sharp
+conflict waged in her heart for a moment, and then she walked on beside
+him, pale, composed, silent, as if she were alone in the depths of the
+primeval wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Only the sound of the stir of the saddle with the breathing of the
+horse as the animal tramped on behind them, their muffled footfalls
+barely perceptible on the thick herbage of the cattle path, the light
+whisper of the wind in the leaves, broke the pause, while Jack Espey's
+touch trembled on the handle of the pistol as he walked beside her.</p>
+
+<p>Her calmness shook his own composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Ad'licia!" he exclaimed petulantly, but with an evident softening of
+his fierce mood, "whyn't ye say suthin'? Whyn't ye say suthin' ter me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno what ter say," she responded coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye know what I want ter hear," he declared passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't no use ter say it agin." She turned upon him her eyes, soft
+and lustrous, like some brownish-greenish moss in the depths of a
+crystal spring. "I done said it an' said it."</p>
+
+<p>His hand released the pistol, and pushed his hat far back on his dark
+hair with a hasty gesture of impatience. Then, with a sudden calmness,
+"Ad'licia, ye oughtn't ter git mad with me! Ye oughtn't ter git mad so
+dad-burned easy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe I oughtn't," she said, with a note of sarcasm in her vibrant
+voice. Her eyes were bright, her cheek flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't right," he continued didactically. "'Tain't religious." He
+looked at her with grave, admonitory eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe 'tain't," she responded. She laughed a little, unmirthfully, and
+her lip quivered.</p>
+
+<p>He strode on a few steps in silence, at a loss for words for
+explanation. He dreaded and deferred it, and yet he longed for its
+possible reassurance. As his thoughts canvassed its probabilities, he
+broke out tumultuously once more:—</p>
+
+<p>"I hev got good reason ter b'lieve ye air foolin' me,—good reason, I
+tell ye, now, Ad'licia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good reason agin my word?" she demanded, her pride in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her. "A gal's word!" he said lightly, and then he laughed.
+As a guaranty it struck him humorously. "I reckon thar ain't many men
+ez would be willin' ter stand or fall by sech."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye set store by it wunst," she said humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twar when ye promised ter marry me," he declared precipitately,
+unconsciously showing that it was the prospect which he had valued
+without trusting the promise. "An' I want ye ter 'bide by it, too," he
+sternly added, suddenly perceiving that it was not policy to adduce too
+freely precedents as to the friability of feminine promises.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, regardless of his keen, fiery eye. "I ain't goin'
+ter marry nobody, I reckon," she said slowly. "Ye'll shoot me dead
+fust, some day, in one o' yer tantrums."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ain't a-goin' ter marry 'Renzo Taft, an' that I tell ye, now. I'll
+shoot ye fust, sure!" he cried furiously, his eyes blazing upon her.</p>
+
+<p>The look in her face checked his passionate rage. An utter wonderment,
+a deep bewilderment, overspread it as she echoed, "<i>'Renzo Taft!</i>
+The man over yander at Lost Time mine? War ye a-talkin' 'bout
+<i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>He controlled himself instantly, although his eyes were all ashine and
+alertly restless.</p>
+
+<p>"Who war you-uns a-thinkin' 'bout, Ad'licia?" he asked gently and
+incidentally.</p>
+
+<p>"Jasper Larrabee, o' course," she answered innocently.</p>
+
+<p>He could only grind a curse between his teeth, and then he was
+speechless for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno nare nuther good-lookin' young man in the Cove," continued
+Adelicia, girlishly talking on, oblivious of the significance of her
+disclosures. "Though I b'lieve Jasper ain't studyin' 'bout sech ez
+marryin'. He jes' kems thar toler'ble frequent ter read out'n his
+book ter uncle Lucy. He kin read powerful well. Uncle Lucy 'lows he
+senses the Gorspel better from Jasper's readin' 'n the rider's, 'kase
+whenst he don't onderstan' he kin make Jasper stop an' spell it out
+an' read it over. An' sometimes"—she broke into a little dimpling
+laugh—"whenst the Gorspel goes agin uncle Lucy's policy an' practice,
+he makes Jasper spell an' <i>spell</i>, an' yit them times he can't
+spell it out to suit uncle Lucy. But it's plumb heartsome ter hear
+Jasper read of a stormy night," she added, recalling the one spiritual
+pleasure of her stunted, starveling spiritual life.</p>
+
+<p>As she glanced at his face, there was something so gruesome, so
+strange, in its expression that she was fain to remonstrate. "Ye 'pear
+powerful techy, Jack," she said. "Ez ter 'Renzo Taft, it's jes' old
+uncle Lucy's foolishness; an' I wish he 'd quit it, too! Though 'tain't
+no harm, nuther. Uncle Lucy jes' makes out ez 'Renzo Taft air arter me
+or Julia fur a step-mammy fur his leetle gal, an' it tickles him ter
+talk 'bout'n it,—it's so foolish! Why, Jack, 'Renzo Taft is old enough
+purty nigh ter be <i>my</i> dad; an'—he ain't ugly, edzac'ly—but,
+but—nowise desirable. Uncle Lucy air always peckin' at me fur
+puttin' myself out ter obligate other folks, but I ain't so powerful
+meek-tempered ez ter marry 'Renzo Taft ter be a step-mammy. Though he
+ain't axed me, nor nobody else ez I knows on. An' I ain't got nuthin'
+agin him."</p>
+
+<p>He walked on beside her, hardly listening, and scarcely caring what
+she said or thought of Taft. For him, at the moment, Jasper Larrabee,
+and his gift of reading the Scriptures and interpreting them to Cap'n
+Lucy's satisfaction and her humble and incidental pleasure, filled all
+the horizon. His jealousy had taken a new lease on life with this more
+promising object, and with the surer foundation of what she said of
+Larrabee rather than of what Taft said of her. He hardly heeded her
+presence as he sought to gather together his faculties. He did not
+even feel the clumsy caress of the horse now and again rubbing his
+head against his master's shoulder, as he minced along behind him,
+accommodating his long stride to the shorter compass of the human step.
+The young man's eyes were hot; they seemed to burn the dry lids, as he
+gazed down through the cool leafy vistas of the forest; but his voice
+was calm enough when he suddenly said to her:—</p>
+
+<p>"Ad'licia, ef ye keered ennything 'bout me wuth talkin' 'bout, ye'd
+marry me now."</p>
+
+<p>The placidity which her face had resumed as she had talked disappeared
+abruptly. She was once more anxious, disquieted, on the brink of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye know, Jack," she expostulated, "I can't marry agin uncle Lucy's
+word."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye would ef ye keered a straw, a bare straw."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Lucy jes' say, 'Wait awhile.' It's jes' 'awhile,' else I would
+go agin his cornsent."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye don't keer," he reiterated dolorously, for her protest was welcome
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Lucy jes' say," she went on very fast, "jes' wait till that man
+ez you-uns shot in Tanglefoot Cove gits well. He'll git well, I reckon.
+Ye said he war powerful hearty an' big. Uncle Lucy say he ain't goin'
+ter lemme marry a man ez mought be tried fur his life, ef he kin holp
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ef ye keered fur me, ye wouldn't gin <i>that</i> fur Cap'n Lucy's
+word!" he asseverated, as he lifted his arm high in the air and snapped
+his fingers resonantly.</p>
+
+<p>The horse shied suddenly at the sound, and pulled heavily on the hand
+that held the bit.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she said in deep humiliation, "I can't 'low at this time o' day
+ez I don't keer fur uncle Lucy's word. I never eat none o' my own bread
+in my life."</p>
+
+<p>She knew that he had turned and was staring at her, although she
+could not distinguish him through her tears. If she had never loved
+him, her heart might have warmed to him now, for the vehemence, the
+partisanship, with which he protested her independence.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat yer own bread!" he cried in a ringing voice that made her shrink.
+"Ye never eat nuthin' else! Who churns, an' sweeps, an' mends, an'
+cooks, an' milks cows, this many an' many a day? That thar dough-faced
+Julia?"</p>
+
+<p>To his amazement she burst out laughing, but the next moment she was
+sobbing in good earnest, and he hardly knew whether she was glad or
+sorry.</p>
+
+<p>He scarcely paused to wonder. He went tumultuously on to repudiate the
+obligations that so lowered her pride and her title to self-respect.
+"Who hoes, an' sews, an' weaves, an' spins, an' raises the chickens
+an' tur-rkeys an' sech, an' answers old Cap'n Lucy's call 'Ad'licia!
+Ad'licia!' all day long? That thar long, lank, limp Julia? Ef I war
+ter marry ye an' take ye away from thar, that house would fall down, I
+reckon, an' old Cap'n Lucy knows it."</p>
+
+<p>His well-set bluish-gray eyes had brightened as he spoke; he smiled
+genially; his face was handsome and intelligent with this expression.
+The next moment it clouded heavily. He could not do this as almost any
+other man might,—marry a wife and take her home. He was a fugitive
+and an exile by reason of the jeopardy of the man whom he had shot in
+Tanglefoot Cove, and who still hung between life and death, his own
+fate involving that of his enemy. Jack Espey felt sure that he could
+have proven self-defense, had he permitted himself to be apprehended at
+the time. But from the circumstance of his hasty flight, uncertain what
+he had done and animated by ignorant terrors of the law, the lapse of
+time, the dispersion of witnesses, he feared to submit his action to a
+legal arbitrament now.</p>
+
+<p>The suspense was in itself a terrible retribution, but it is safe
+to say that Espey had hardly appreciated its rigors till now, when
+it hampered his every prospect in life. He had been a man of some
+substance in his native place, according to the humble rating of
+the mountaineers, and the lowering of pride involved in his present
+situation was very bitter to him. He could not ask to be received
+under Cap'n Lucy's roof, and its hospitalities certainly would not be
+offered. He repented of his candor in making known his circumstances
+when he had "asked for" Adelicia, for in the probation on which he had
+been placed he recognized the crafty hope of her uncle that the affair
+would soon blow over. He felt it a poor reward for his frankness, and
+he determined that it should not go without requital in turn. "Jes'
+lemme fix up that cussed bother in Tanglefoot, an' durned ef Cap'n Lucy
+ever shell see Ad'licia's face agin!" he often said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he hung around as best he might, fraternizing secretly with
+the moonshiners; for here was the best opportunity of earning enough to
+provide for his simple wants, and to keep him out of the observation of
+the law, while awaiting the result in Tanglefoot, whence the news had
+lately become more hopeful.</p>
+
+<p>He had fallen in with Jasper Larrabee at the blacksmith's shop at the
+cross-roads, where he had paused in his flight for his horse to be
+shod; the two had "struck up" a mutual liking, and Espey had come
+with Larrabee to the Cove, where he divided his time pretty equally
+between his new friend's home and the Lost Time mine. His frankness had
+not extended to these acquaintances, who knew no reason why he should
+shun observation except that which they shared with him concerning the
+still. His utility there and its financial advantages were ample to
+justify the continuation of his stay in the Cove; and thus, but for his
+own attack of conscientiousness in revealing his true circumstances to
+Adelicia and Cap'n Lucy, he might have seemed as advantageously placed
+as any of his compeers.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," said Adelicia, unaccountably brightened, "we-uns hev ter 'bide
+by uncle Lucy's word an' wait awhile, bein' ez he hev tuk keer o' me
+all my days, mighty nigh. An' ye better be toler'ble perlite ter Julia,
+too," she added, with a radiant smile. "Julia's cornsider'ble apt ter
+take notice o' slights."</p>
+
+<p>He promised humbly, swallowing his pride with a mighty gulp; and as
+they came out from the woods into the more open spaces shelving to
+the great crags, they encountered Kenniston, a cigar in his mouth, a
+memorandum in his hand of the boundaries of his land, taken from the
+calls of his title-deed, a good-humored triumph on his face, and a gay,
+kind voice as he instantly recognized and greeted Adelicia.</p>
+
+<p>He called her to come and observe the splendor of the view from a
+certain craggy point where there would be an observatory, and his
+enthusiasm was not dashed even when she gazed off wonderingly into
+space, seeing nothing to which she was unaccustomed, and evidently
+apprehending naught of what he said. He wondered a trifle, subacutely,
+how much the perception of beauty may be promoted by the sense of
+contrast. Since she knew no dull levels or discordant scenes, the
+sublime was merely the natural daily presentment of creation, no more
+a marvel than the rising of the sun, and thus she was bereft of its
+appreciation. He wondered, too, if the converse of the proposition
+were true,—if those to whom nature is expressed in a meadow, or a
+series of knobs, or a pond, can have no mental conception of the
+austere splendors of the craggy heights or the stupendous area of
+infinite detail spread before the eye within a wide horizon piled
+with mountains. He showed her, too, a small drawing of the projected
+hotel, which she held awry and almost reversed to gaze upon it. His
+good humor extended to her companion, whom he had never before seen.
+Although usually aloof and averse to strangers, Espey found the
+suave words a salve to his sore heart. He did not know how much less
+pleasant Kenniston could be when not pleased. Just now even this new
+acquaintance harmonized most aptly with his gracious mood. Artistically
+viewed, poor Espey might have graced the romantic stage, as he stood,
+in his dark blue shirt and trousers and great spurred boots, defined
+against the yellow-bronze horse which he held by the bit, his belt
+full of weapons, his broad white hat far back on his black hair, and
+his defiant face at once wild and eager and wistful. The man of the
+alert pencil was moved to wish that he had the art to do him justice.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's kind and ingratiating manner as he explained his plans and
+expectations, which could not interest the mountaineer, who was as
+foreign to such considerations as deer or bear, secured nevertheless
+Espey's attention and respectful silence. He looked now and again with
+a sort of reluctant liking at Kenniston's face as he talked, regretting
+that, since he attached so much hope and consequence to the project,
+it would be necessary to burn the buildings down as fast as they were
+erected.</p>
+
+<p>In the plenitude of his access of amiability, Kenniston lagged behind
+and let them stroll away homeward together,—as pretty a pair of rustic
+lovers, he thought, as one could wish to see.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was well down; the sky was red; the evening star was in a
+saffron haze; the nearest mountains had turned a deep purple, with a
+vague, translucent, overlaying gray hue like the bloom on a ripe grape;
+the distant ranges had vanished in the mystery of night. It was not
+dark, but the flare of the fire within the door of Cap'n Lucy's cabin
+was visible as it rose and fell on the puncheon floor in transitory
+flickers. It was a poor place, but it was home, and to the exile it
+looked like paradise. Julia had come to the door, and stood there half
+in the soft outer light, and half in the firelight within. Schooled
+and docile, Espey remembered his monitor's bidding, and roused his
+unwilling, flagging energies and his tired, sad heart to evolve some
+pleasantry as he called out a greeting from the bars. She turned her
+sleek head and smiled at him. There had never been such eyes in the
+Cove, except perhaps those which Cap'n Lucy had opened there first some
+sixty years before, nor such long, dark, curling lashes. She might,
+however, have been no more comely, for all Jack Espey cared, than old
+"T'bithy," Adelicia's cat, who arched her plebeian scantily furred
+back in the door, and surveyed the landscape with her yellow eyes, and
+yawned from sheer mental vacuity. He got through the interview with
+what poor grace he could, and from a sense of duty; and as he was about
+to mount, he offered, unobserved by the others, to take Adelicia's
+hand. To his amazement, she looked him full in the face with hard,
+angry eyes, struck down his hand with a petulant gesture, passed him
+like a flash, and disappeared within the door.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Espey, who had no more recognition of the aspect of jealousy than
+if he had never felt its power, could but mount and ride away in angry
+bewilderment; and Kenniston, hearing the furious speed of his horse's
+hoofs as he went headlong down the dark, rocky road, looked wonderingly
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll break his neck, at that rate," he said.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Kenniston's gracious mood was not of long continuance. He was of the
+temperament which demands a prerequisite for good nature. Given an
+adequate reason to be happy, and he could show you a fine article of
+felicity. But his heart would not bubble with gratitude on general
+principles for ordinary blessings enjoyed in common by humanity at
+large. It was not enough for him that the fried chicken was fat; that
+his cigar was good; that as he smoked after supper on the little porch,
+the air was so fragrant, so fine, so dry; that the stars were brighter
+for the great dark amphitheatre of mountains above whose summits,
+serrated against the horizon, his far-reaching gaze sought them; that
+Julia, as she sat on the step of the threshold, had an outline and a
+coiffure that he would have discriminated as classic in marble; that
+every trace of the battered beauty of old Cap'n Lucy's countenance
+vanished, leaving it a unique ideal for a gargoyle, when his guest
+chanced to intimate that he had written to the register in the county
+town, who had furnished him with the calls from his title-deeds, and
+that he felt very sure that Cap'n Lucy had inadvertently trespassed on
+his neighbor's domain. Harmoniously ugly as his countenance was, Cap'n
+Lucy's conduct was more so.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, sir," he said, after an interval of stunned dismay, during which
+Kenniston leaned forward, drawing with his cane an imaginary line on
+the floor, and repeating the measurements for the boundaries from the
+paper in his hand, "ye an' the register may go to hell, sir, an' brile,
+sir!"</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy's face was very distinct in the light from the fire within
+the door, as he sat tilted back in the chair against the post of the
+porch, and a sudden sensation ensued amongst his household as they
+gazed upon him, astounded by this unprecedented breach of all the
+canons of hospitality. There was silence for a moment. Luther stirred
+uneasily, the legs of his chair rasping harshly on the rough flooring
+of the porch. Even Julia gave signs of having heard by turning her head
+slowly, with a certain interest and excitement on her impassive face.
+Adelicia's eyes dilated with alarm as she half rose from her seat on
+the step of the porch; she had grown pale; her delicate, fine little
+chin and her lips quivered with the agitation of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, uncle Lucy, ye don't mean that,—ye don't mean that, now!" she
+urged.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I ain't partic'lar ez ter <i>when</i>!" the old man blurted
+out. And then he paused to chuckle in sinister fashion over his play
+upon the double meaning of the word "now" in this connection. He had
+a satisfaction, too, in thwarting the ever-ready peacemaker and
+apologist, and in her look of balked surprise as she cogitated upon his
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>His grimly jocose pride in his cleverness relieved the tension of the
+moment. It suddenly became more practicable for Kenniston to overlook
+his rude rage, when the circumstances rendered it hardly possible for
+him to take cognizance of it. His indignant repugnance to the situation
+was sharply manifest in his face, however, which was of an expressive
+type, but he compassed an off-hand manner as he said,—</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the register and I may be burned indefinitely and to your heart's
+content, in due course of spiritual justice; but I fancy it won't be
+the direct consequence of anything in the nature of muniments of title,
+and it won't change the metes and bounds of this land by one rod,
+perch, or pole."</p>
+
+<p>Another voice broke into the discussion abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"What reason hev ye got ter 'low ez Cap'n Lucy be on yer land?"</p>
+
+<p>The dull irradiation of the porch from the flicker of the fire within
+the house barely sufficed to show Lorenzo Taft's burly form standing
+beside the post. His approach had been unnoticed by the group, but his
+question apprised them that he had joined them some moments previously,
+and the pawing of his mare at the gate showed that she had been hitched
+in anticipation of passing the evening there. In the excitement of
+the situation the usual greetings were dispensed with, and Kenniston
+not unwillingly recited anew the calls of the title papers, again
+sketching the boundary line with his cane on the floor, and even taking
+from his pocket a letter, and drawing upon the back of the envelope
+a miniature plat of the irregularly shaped body of land. Even in his
+preoccupation he could but note the intelligence of the attention which
+the visitor closely bent upon his exposition and the rude draught, the
+receptivity of his mind, the pertinence of his questions. Taft stood
+leaning over the back of Kenniston's chair, his blue eyes fixed on the
+paper in the slim deft fingers of the draughtsman, his own brawny hand
+laid meditatively on his long yellow beard.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Kenniston, folding the paper, and by way of
+concluding the matter, "I am ready to pay the colonel the full value of
+his improvements. He has only to name his price."</p>
+
+<p>The irate glance which Cap'n Lucy shot at him served to steady him a
+trifle, to tame his buoyant sense of triumph. He had an ample fund
+of physical courage; that is, in his fresh, healthy, normal mental
+impulses he never thought of fear. But he had seldom been brought into
+actual personal danger, and the details of sundry lawless and furious
+feuds that had come to his knowledge during his stay in the mountains
+were brought suddenly to his remembrance by that swift, scathing look;
+he was further reminded that few of these bloody chronicles recounted
+so definite a provocation as the effort at eviction. Nevertheless,
+the sense of proprietorship was strong within him, and the active
+aggressiveness of a man with the coercions of that weapon in his hand,
+the law of the land, made his blood stir when Cap'n Lucy, wagging his
+arbitrary old head, retorted, "An' s'pose I say—like I hev said—ez
+my h'a'thstone ain't got no price! S'pose I won't sell, an' I won't
+gin in, an' I keep my line whar I know my line hev got a right ter
+be,—whut then, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>But for his gray head, so did his manner and expression reach the
+climax of aggravation, it might have seemed righteousness to smite
+him. Kenniston, held in the bonds of such considerations, controlled
+himself with difficulty. He was unused to self-restraint, or to
+occasions that necessitated it. The color had overspread his face; he
+was hot, impatient, indignant. "Why, then, there's nothing for it but
+to procession the land and establish the boundary," he declared.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy stared in amazement. This possibility seemed never to have
+occurred to him as a solution.</p>
+
+<p>"Percession my lan'!" he cried at last, as if the extremity of insult
+had been offered him. "Percession my lan'!" His face was scarlet; his
+eye blazed; his hand, held out with a gesture of insistence toward
+Kenniston, shook with fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Or <i>my</i> land," Kenniston sneered. "'Tisn't capital punishment.
+Plenty of men have survived the processioning of land,—thriven on it!
+My land, then; the process won't hurt it. Get the line,—that's what I
+want."</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice Adelicia sought, in her agitation, to interpose. Now
+she rose and came to Cap'n Lucy's side, taking hold of the shaking
+hand which he brought ever nearer to Kenniston's face, who would not
+draw back, nor mitigate nor postpone his demand, in the front of this
+threatening gesture. "Oh, uncle Lucy—don't—don't! Sweet uncle Lucy,
+don't! Thar's room enough in the mountings fur all o' we-uns! Look at
+the mountings—how big they air—toler'ble roomy fur sure! Don't quar'l
+'bout <i>lan'</i>, uncle Lucy,—whenst we-uns hev got all out o' doors
+fur lan',—an' git in a fight, mebbe, an' git hurt, an'"—</p>
+
+<p>"Ad'licia," snarled "sweet uncle Lucy," with a gasp, pretermitting
+his attentions to Kenniston to turn upon her his corrugated face,
+"Ad'licia, I tole that man ez war so dead set ter marry ye ez I
+wouldn't let him hev ye. But I hev changed my mind. I'll tell him he
+kin cart ye off from hyar ter-morrer, an' welcome, mighty welcome, ef
+so be he ain't changed his mind; fur I can't abide ye an' yer 'peace
+talks,' like a Injun, an' yer interferin' with yer elders, an' yer
+purtenses, no mo'! Thar, now!" he exclaimed in triumph, as she fell
+back quite speechless because of this disclosure of the matrimonial
+proposition. "I reckon ye'll set down now, an' stay set!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to Kenniston with an accession of fury, the fiercer for
+the momentary stemming of the tide.</p>
+
+<p>"An' I say, hyar I be, an' yer percessionin' don't tech me nowhar. An'
+hyar I'll 'bide, no matter whut! An' I won't sell out, an' I won't take
+no price fur my h'a'thstone, no matter whut!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Kenniston hotly, "you'll be ejected in due process of
+law,—that's all."</p>
+
+<p>He changed color the next moment and bit his lip, for he had put
+himself in a false position.</p>
+
+<p>"That's toler'ble tall talk ter a man under his own roof," said Cap'n
+Lucy, suddenly cool, and not without dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was out of countenance for the nonce. He felt that there was
+scant grace or utility in forcing the matter, which was beyond the
+control of either, to this unseemly issue. He had been hurried by his
+impatience of contradiction and Cap'n Lucy's illogical and arbitrary
+temper far beyond his intention, which was originally merely to propose
+to have the surveyor run out the boundary line in order to demonstrate
+for the old man's enlightenment the fact that he was a trespasser, and
+to offer to pay the full value of the improvements. But he was not of
+the type from whom penitents are developed. The acknowledgment of being
+in the wrong was inexpressibly repugnant to him. Perhaps he could not
+have constrained himself to make it but that he foresaw the reversal of
+their mutual position.</p>
+
+<p>"You're more than half right, colonel. I am out of place here. I feel
+that. And, under the circumstances, I think I had better take myself
+off."</p>
+
+<p>He had intended to get the better of his host. But his most cruel
+desire could never have sought to compass the deep humiliation of
+vanquishment which had befallen poor Cap'n Lucy. The implied reflection
+upon his hospitality, the consciousness that his own hasty words
+justified it, the receding and diminishing aspect of the provocation
+common to the mental vision at such moments, with the magnifying of
+the offense, all combined to render him a chopfallen and lugubrious
+old noncombatant in the space of a second. But Cap'n Lucy's talent for
+open confession and repentance was not more marked than Kenniston's. He
+sat grum, crestfallen, afflicted of mien, but silent. His keen eye had
+no longer an alert interest; it was fixed with an absorbed, reflective
+stare on an intermediate point some two feet from the floor, with the
+air of insight rather than outward vision. Kenniston was not prepared,
+either, for the protest from the younger and ordinarily acquiescent
+members of the family.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar, now!" exclaimed the apathetic Luther, rising to the occasion
+like a man of this world. "Ye hev actially got ter the p'int o'
+quar'lin' over yer old land an' worldly goods an' sech. An' what
+diff'unce do it make? The line is thar, no matter what air one of ye
+say, an' I reckon the county surveyor air man enough ter find it.
+Mebbe ye 'low ye air powerful interestin', but I ain't listenin' much,
+through wantin' to interjuice this hyar plumb special apple-jack I got
+this evenin' from the cross-roads. Ye 'lowed ye hed never tasted sech,
+Mr. Kenniston. Now try this, sir, an' ye'll feel good enough ter set
+out an' sing psalms an' hymes an' speritchul chunes the rest of the
+evenin'."</p>
+
+<p>Adelicia took a pitcher which the languid Julia had alertly fetched.
+She spoke for her, as if Julia were dumb. She looked up at Kenniston,
+with her delicately tinted old-fashioned oval face set in smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef ye want ter temper it enny?" she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Git out'n the way, Ad'licia, with that pernicious jug o' cold water!"
+exclaimed Luther, shoving her aside. "Take it straight, stranger; don't
+spile the good liquor."</p>
+
+<p>The feminine members of the family had observed that Kenniston's
+glass was usually diluted, and in their eagerness to facilitate peace
+they gave him no excuse. He hardly liked to nullify his bluster of
+incipient farewell by accepting this show of good fellowship and
+further hospitality, and yet he could not rudely repel it. He felt
+that both he and his host had gone too far, much farther than he had
+intended. Yet nevertheless his was not the nature nor the practice to
+overlook an affront. He took the glass, with a slight laugh and the
+outward show of amity, but he was determined to adhere to his threat of
+departure. Their interests were too adverse to make a longer sojourn
+appropriate; time would render them even more inimical, and he was
+under no obligations to put up with indignities at the hands of Cap'n
+Lucy or any other man. Could he have thought anything humorous that
+affected his interests, he must have been moved by the serio-comic
+aspect of the old man, sedulously silent lest his tongue escape him,
+solemnly sampling the new liquor,—for his son had filially and with
+great show of courtesy waited upon him,—a sort of aged pallor upon the
+wrinkles of his face, where erstwhile his rage had glowed so ruddily.
+In drinking, Taft had unconsciously a knowing and discriminating air.
+He was comparing the quality of the beverage with the apple brandy
+of the Lost Time still. He looked very thoughtful as he lowered the
+glass, and let the flavor permeate his palate, and once more took a
+careful, considerate draught. It was more like business than pleasure.
+Luther himself did not indulge beyond the merest swallow for form's
+sake. He was occupied in guiding the conversation clear of difficulties
+and bellicose suggestions; and, considering his limited and uncouth
+experience, his efforts to reëstablish the decorums of peace were
+worthy of praise. He evidently considered that he had failed utterly
+when Kenniston rejoined him in the porch, after the rest of the family
+had retired for the night, and communicated his intention of immediate
+departure. "I can make the cross-roads by daylight or breakfast time,
+no doubt," he said, "if you will let me have my horse; and I can rest
+there an hour or so, and then ride on and reach the train, the night
+express, as it passes the tank and stops for water, about sundown."</p>
+
+<p>In vain Luther protested. Kenniston declared this his original
+intention. He would save time, and prevent making both journeys
+by daylight. "I don't believe I could stand the sun two days in
+succession, at this season. And if I like, I'll lie over at the
+cross-roads, and make another night ride." He urged Luther to say
+nothing to Cap'n Lucy or the other members of the family, as he did not
+want to combat any objections to his departure. "The old cap'n will
+think I bear malice, and—really I must go."</p>
+
+<p>Luther's hesitation in the matter was a trifle nettling to a free
+agent. He evidently hardly liked to take the responsibility of acting
+without the autocratic paternal concurrence. Kenniston himself felt the
+irking of leading-strings. "Cap'n Lucy or no Cap'n Lucy, I'm going," he
+said to himself, making a dash for liberty, as it were. "I believe the
+man thinks Cap'n Lucy owns the earth."</p>
+
+<p>Luther's obduracy gave way presently, although he persisted in
+saddling his own horse, also, and accompanying his guest as far as the
+cross-roads. Kenniston was oppressed with the sense of so punctilious
+a host, and the long ride in the dewy night, along the deserted roads,
+under the white silent stars, would have accorded better with his
+humor had he been solitary. But the freshening wind that came with the
+daybreak had a sense of liberty in the broad spread of its wings. Under
+the slow revelation of the clear gray skies of dawn, he marked how
+far the tumult of its flight extended in the stirring of the forests
+on the mountain sides, awakening from the lethargies of the night.
+He experienced a certain quickening interest in the unrolling of an
+unfamiliar landscape from the obscurities of the darkness. He had a
+keen zest for its beauty, the splendid symmetry of its setting amidst
+a new and strange conformation of the mountains; he was responsive,
+too, to that touch of pensive melancholy, that sense of loss, which
+one must feel in noting the day-star fade, the quenching of that
+white, tremulous, supernal lustre in the midst of the roseate mists;
+but his strong mundane heart stirred to see the sun sail majestically
+up amidst the full argosy of scarlet and amber clouds, freighted with
+the future, and the breathless expectation of the quiescent landscape
+merge into the certainty of largess to the present moment. And he had a
+yet deeper satisfaction: he noted the inferiority of the magnificence
+about him to the scene he had left, his own, his very own, and he dwelt
+upon the recollection of it with a personal triumph, as if he had
+himself designed and built it. It was with an influx of hopefulness,
+of content, of renewed interest in the world, that he shook hands with
+Luther, glad enough to part with him.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineer looked after him with a certain wistfulness. His
+experience was too limited, his idea of the world beyond too vague,
+for his thoughts to follow the traveler. It was only the sudden dim
+perception of that fresh, vital, alert turning to fields beyond his ken
+that smote upon him with a sense of deprivation or of discontent, too
+subtle to be definitely discriminated.</p>
+
+<p>It was, fortunately, fleeting. Luther's satisfaction to discover that
+old Cap'n Lucy approved of his course, and in fact was secretly pleased
+to be rid of Kenniston's presence, dominated every other consideration.
+As the day wore on, the old man's jaunty self-importance returned.
+From various meditative pauses, in which he evidently argued anew the
+situation, he visibly derived self-justification. He was altogether at
+ease and himself again in an indefinitely short time, for the father
+was hardly more worldly-wise than the son. He considered Kenniston's
+departure final. He assumed that his taunt and his sturdy resistance
+had bluffed the man off from the design of processioning the land,
+which, being a thing undreamed of hitherto, Cap'n Lucy vaguely feared,
+albeit sure enough that he stood well within his own boundaries. As
+time went by without incident or news, he began even to speak of the
+projected hotel as a thing of the past, a sort of mental mirage of a
+crack-brained visionary.</p>
+
+<p>It came upon him, therefore, with the force of an unexpected blow when
+Luther one day burst into the house with a paper in his hand giving
+notice of the proposed processioning, and blurted out that he had seen
+the public notice posted, according to law, at the voting-place of the
+district, which was the gristmill on Tomahawk Creek.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy, lapsed in the soft securities of peace, was stunned for
+a moment. That valiant essence, his temper, of all his faculties
+recovered its vitality first. He mounted his horse and rode to Sawyer's
+Mill, where, confronting the obnoxious notice, conspicuous upon the
+doorpost, he stood for an instant the centre of a curious group of
+idlers, frowningly contemplating it; then, with a single irate gesture,
+he promptly tore it down, in defiance of the law. He silently got upon
+his horse and rode away, leaving Luther and the kindly miller to patch
+the fragments together, and to replace the notice as before, where,
+the fractions not perfectly adjusted, it haltingly and disconnectedly
+continued to proclaim the date, some twenty days hence, when said
+Kenneth J. Kenniston designed to cause his land to be processioned,
+stating the corner at which he intended to begin, to ascertain and
+establish its boundary line.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's absence, however, Cap'n Lucy still appreciated as a
+boon. He was free to flounder about amongst the dense jungles of the
+laurel, "huntin' fur the line ez ef 'twar hid 'mongst the bushes like
+a rattlesnake, an' he mought find it by hearin' it rattle," Luther
+observed, with his first unfilial criticism. Since the full value of
+the improvements would doubtless be paid, should it be ascertained
+that the land was Kenniston's, the son could only think it a matter
+of inconvenience to be obliged to move, and a misfortune to that
+extent. But he regarded the contingency as untenable as a <i>casus
+belli</i>, having no realization of the reserves of obduracy in Cap'n
+Lucy's mind, or of that aversion to change so characteristic of the
+home-loving aged. He deemed the surveyor the fit discoverer of the
+line, and deprecated his father's long jaunts up and down the mountain
+from one "monument of boundary" to the other; for since there was no
+adversary to relish the spectacle, Cap'n Lucy's pride did not preclude
+him from daily patrolling the extent of his possessions so far as his
+strength and his horse's legs might serve. But Luther came to think
+this a frivolous objection indeed, in comparison with his view of his
+father's standpoint later.</p>
+
+<p>One day Cap'n Lucy rode up to the side of the cornfield, a late
+planting, where Luther, with a bull-tongue plough, was industriously
+engaged in "bustin' out the middles," since the land had been planted,
+in view of the backwardness of the season, without the preliminary
+"breaking up." The young man reluctantly came to the fence, his ruddy
+countenance shadowy, glimpsed beneath his broad-brimmed hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Mount an' kem along straight," commanded his father.</p>
+
+<p>Obedience, implicit and unquestioning, had been Luther's lifelong
+habit. He looked with desperation at his suffering corn. "Why, dad, I
+ain't got on no shoes," he ventured to urge.</p>
+
+<p>"I aint keerin' ef ye ain't got on no skin," the arbitrary elder
+declared. "Git on yer beastis an' kem along with me."</p>
+
+<p>The surprised old plough horse was released, and, with his clanging
+gear still rattling about him, and his owner on his saddleless back,
+began to take his way, following Cap'n Lucy's lead, up the precipitous
+slope of the mountain. The dark forests closed high above their heads.
+The change from the glare of the noontide of the open field to the
+chill twilight of the shade was grateful to the senses. The undergrowth
+and the jungle of the laurel seemed well-nigh impenetrable, except
+indeed for the traces in broken boughs and bruised leaves of Cap'n
+Lucy's former transits. They had journeyed nearly to the summit, and
+Luther was ruefully meditating on the loss of two good hours of farming
+weather, when the old man turned his head, glanced over his shoulder,
+and drew rein.</p>
+
+<p>"Luther," he said, excitement shining in his blue eyes and the color
+rejuvenating his face, "ye know that Kenn'ston 'lows his southeast
+corner air at that boulder, 'known ez Big Hollow Boulder,'"—he quoted
+from the notice with a sneer,—"ez ef it could hev been known ez a
+peegeon-aig boulder or sech."</p>
+
+<p>Luther nodded in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, he gins notice ez he begins thar."</p>
+
+<p>Luther nodded again in assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, sir, that thar boulder hev been moved."</p>
+
+<p>The young man stared for a moment. Then a blank alarm settled on his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, dad, it's onpossible!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Kem an' see! Kem an' see." And Cap'n Lucy rode on as before.</p>
+
+<p>Luther was never sure whether he really came upon the old landmark
+earlier than he expected to see it, or whether the anticipation of
+something novel and incongruous colored his mind. There it was,
+presently, lying on the steep slope in the midst of the wilderness,
+as he had always known it,—a vast boulder, weighing many tons,
+with a cavity in it which almost pierced through its bulk, and was
+large enough to accommodate a man standing at full height. The slope
+above was bare, for it was near the bald of the mountain, and with
+outcropping ledges of rock; athwart these several trees were lying,
+one apparently old and lightning-scathed long ago, the others freshly
+storm-riven, for the winds had raged in a recent tempest, and instances
+of its fury were elsewhere visible in broken branches in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"The wind couldn't hev done it," observed Luther, as his father pointed
+at the boulder with a wave of the hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Wind?—ye sodden idjit!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Pears like ter me it air whar it always war," said Luther, seeking
+refuge in conservatism from the hazards of conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>"Luther," said his father impressively, "I know that thar rock war the
+fust thing my gran'dad viewed in Tennessee, whenst he wagoned 'crost
+the range ter settle. I hev hearn him say that word time an' agin. He
+said he camped by it, 'count o' the spring close by, up over thar. I
+hev knowed it familiar fur better'n fifty year, an' I tell ye ez it
+useter war around the curve o' the bend o' the mounting up over thar,
+a-nigh the spring."</p>
+
+<p>"Hev ye viewed that spot lately?" asked Luther, drawing his horse to
+one side, and gazing blankly at the big hollow boulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Nuthin' ter view,—jes' rock an' laidges an' sech."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, dad, how could it hev kem down hyar?" demanded Luther.</p>
+
+<p>Old Cap'n Lucy broke into a high, derisive laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Ax Mr. Kenn'ston; don't ax me. I ain't 'quainted with them things
+he talks 'bout by the yard medjure,—'splosives an' giant powder an'
+daminite." (Thus Cap'n Lucy profanely denominated a certain cogent
+compound.) "Enny one o' them would be ekal ter fetchin' the rock 'known
+ez Big Hollow Boulder' down hyar whar he wants it to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Whut fur, dad?" demanded Luther.</p>
+
+<p>"Whut fur, ye fool? Ter make the line run ter suit him, ter take my
+house an' lot an' sech in his boundary, ter turn me out 'n house an'
+home ter suit his pleasure. He can't buy it, so he's a-fixin' ter take
+it,—take it by changing the corner fur the start o' the survey."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes dilated with anger, and his chin shook with the weakness of
+age and the vehemence of his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Luther's face grew grave. "That's agin the law, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ter move corner lan'marks or monimints o' boundaries air a felony,
+that's whut," said Cap'n Lucy, cavalierly swinging his feet in his
+stirrups. "Mr. Kenn'ston hed better gin keerful heed ter his steps."</p>
+
+<p>He grinned fiercely as he took up the reins, and, followed by the
+astounded, dismayed, and ruminating Luther, fared cheerfully enough
+down the mountain.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The roof beneath which Jack Espey had found shelter was the readiest
+expression of hospitality. Its several expansions beyond its builder's
+original gambrel design were betokened by the incongruity of the
+additions, and the varying tints and fashion of the warped and worn
+old clapboards. Two shed-rooms were obviously of a later date than
+the dank and mossy covering of the main building; a queer projection
+above a modern porch exhibited an aboriginal inspiration correlated
+to a dormer window, albeit lacking the aperture; a section of the
+limited porch itself was boarded up to serve further as house-room; and
+a valiant disregard of the possibility of leakage characterized the
+intrepid domestic architect. It further differed from the conventional
+roofs of the district in its surroundings. In lieu of the bare dooryard
+and the neighboring fields, or the low tangle of peach and apple
+orchards, great forest trees loomed above it, the gigantic poplar and
+white oak of the region; for the space about it was rugged with the
+outcropping rock that sheered off further down into the great precipice
+on the mountain slope, precluding the possibility of cultivation. An
+exhaustless freestone spring burst out from the rocks close at hand,
+the reason of the selection of its vicinity as a building-site, and
+the "gyardin spot" and the cornfields were lower down the slope at the
+side, out of view amidst the clustering foliage. So little industrial
+were the suggestions that hung about this roof, so allied was it in
+its rough, gray, mossy aspect to the rugged bark and gnarled boles
+of the great trees, that it too might have seemed some spontaneous
+production of the soil, as it rose from the ledges of the rock, mossy
+and gray and rugged, too, like the rest. It had an intimation, also, of
+an aspiration toward higher things, as it, like the trees, gazed out
+upon the environing lofty seclusion of the mountains, the very inner
+sanctuary of nature; for, save the mystic mist, or the sun and the
+pursuing shadow, or the vagrant wind, naught ventured into that vast
+semicircle of mountains and intermediate valleys that lay before it,
+refulgent with color, massive, multitudinous, illimitable, the compass
+of the human vision failing to trace further than the far horizon the
+endless ranges still rising tier upon tier.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the inmates of the house consciously derived aught from the
+scene, from its calm, its splendor of extent that might serve to
+widen the imagination, its vast resources of suggestion, one of them
+spent many idle hours in gazing upon it. Often Jack Espey lay all the
+forenoon upon the hay in the loft of the little barn, watching through
+the bare logs, guiltless of "chinking," the shadows dwindling on the
+hazy indented slopes, blue in the sunshine, amethyst in the shade. The
+white clouds would sail when the wind was fair, or in still noontides
+would lie at anchor off the great shimmering domes. Sometimes these
+loiterings were prolonged till the pageants of sunset-tide were on the
+march along the great purple western slopes, and from the shipping of
+the skies floated every pennant of splendid color; the sun, with the
+burnished dazzling quality quenched in the great blood-red sphere,
+would go slowly dropping down behind the western ranges, leaving
+the sky of a delicate amber tint with scarlet strata, amongst which
+incongruous gorgeousness the evening star would shine with a pure,
+pensive white radiance. The loft of the flimsy little barn, but now all
+aglow with bars of gold alternating with brown shadow as the sunlight
+fell between the logs, gilding even the tissues of cobweb and the
+masses of hay, would sink into a dull, dusky monochrome. A shadow would
+seem to fall upon his spirit. The anxiety to which the contemplative,
+languorous idleness had granted surcease roused itself anew; the voices
+from the house, never silent, were reasserted upon his attention,
+and the necessity would supervene of joining the family circle,—a
+necessity sometimes infinitely repugnant to his troubled soul, craving
+solitude for its indulgence of woe, and hardly able to maintain the
+cheerful disguise which must needs screen it.</p>
+
+<p>So poor were his arts of deception that perhaps they would scarcely
+have served his purpose elsewhere, but here he and his peculiarities
+were given scant heed. He could not have found another domicile, in
+all the length and breadth of the country, where he could have been
+installed and have excited so little attention and curiosity. And
+indeed, to Mrs. Larrabee, the head of the house, he was only one more
+in addition to the rest of the tribe that must be warmed and fed and
+housed, or, as she expressed it, "tucked away somewhar." She always
+was equal to the emergency, although whenever Espey entered the large
+circle about the fireside it seemed to have been recruited somewhere,
+and more numerous than at his last survey.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye 'pear ter hev a cornsider'ble head o' humans hyar, Mis' Haight,"
+he observed on one occasion to the old grandam who sat in the corner,
+the stepmother-in-law of Mrs. Larrabee, and whose reproval seemed the
+natural incident of all that her daughter-in-law did. The world had
+gone much awry with her, after the mundane manner, and in the evening
+of her days she had neither the softening influence of religion nor the
+resources of culture to mitigate the asperities of the result.</p>
+
+<p>"In course,—in course!" she exclaimed rancorously, gazing at him over
+her spectacles with little dark eyes, the brighter for exasperation.
+"Thar's me an' my old man,—he's got the palsy," as if this rendered
+him more numerous; "an' thar's Jerushy, my darter, an' her chil'n,
+five, an' her husband; an' S'briny Lar'bee herself, an' her son Jasper.
+An' ez ef that warn't enough, she hearn ez Henrietty Timson's husband
+war dead, an' they war burnt out an' hed no home, so S'briny Lar'bee
+jes' wagons down the mounting an' brung 'em hyar ter stay, seben
+of 'em,—seben with thar mammy makes eight. S'briny jes' tucks 'em
+away somehows, ez she 'lows, in this hyar leetle house!" She sneered
+toothlessly, then laughed aloud. Suddenly she leaned forward, and, with
+her knitting-needle in her hand, pointed at the group of floundering
+children. "See that thar brat, the leetlest one?"</p>
+
+<p>Espey, turning in his chair, descried a tow-head bobbing not far
+above the floor. The significant eye of the old woman fixed him as if
+reciting an enormity.</p>
+
+<p>"He war a infant whenst he kem,—a ill-convenient infant in arms,
+<i>with the rickets</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>As the subject of this criticism scampered out of the crowd, with a
+single unbleached cotton garment on, very rotund as to trunk, very
+fat and cherubic as to legs, very loud and blatant as to voice, very
+arrogant and impudent as to manner, the young man was moved to remark
+that he "'peared toler'ble hearty now."</p>
+
+<p>"Course he do," she assented, "through a-gor-mandizin' of so much fat
+meat; scandalous, impident shoat,—ez well ez a bear!"</p>
+
+<p>She loved a quiet life, did Mrs. Haight. She had been an only daughter.
+She had had only two children. She had always had her house to herself;
+and in this congregation of incongruous elements around her widowed
+daughter-in-law's hearth she beheld only inconvenience, perversity, and
+an unfilial disregard of her own very sage advice. It had even been
+advanced to exclude her own daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Let Jerushy's husband take keer o' her. She would marry him, spite o'
+all. Let her 'bide by her ch'ice."</p>
+
+<p>But poor Jerusha's husband was a drunkard, and the forlorn household
+had suffered hardship and very nearly grazed starvation before they
+made their happy advent into this populous haven.</p>
+
+<p>There were certain sensitive thrills of pride and shame in the
+fugitive's heart, as he listened to this arraignment of the numbers
+crowded about the hospitable hearth. He said to himself, in
+justification, that he was only one more among so many, but he felt
+that he was an imposition. There was no such thought, however, in Mrs.
+Haight's mind. She regarded him only as a visitor, a personable young
+man, and moreover as possessing a certain unique interest for her; for
+in her youth she had spent some days in Tanglefoot Cove, and, despite
+the wide diversity of their age, occupation, and outlook at life, they
+passed sundry companionable hours in gossiping of the people of that
+locality, and detailing the various chances that had befallen families
+known to both. During these sessions he was wont to hold her yarn for
+her to wind. She never slipped the hank across his wrists that he did
+not bethink himself of other wristlets destined for him, perchance,
+and made of sterner stuff. He was prone to be silent for a time during
+the winding of the skeins, but she improved the opportunity to talk
+to an attentive listener; for Sabrina was too liable to interruptions
+from her various charges to meet her somewhat exacting demands as an
+interlocutor, and she was at scornful variance with the other elders of
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Lar'bee 'pears ter be fond o' comp'ny," said Jack, as he leaned
+forward, with his submissive hands outstretched for the yarn.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman, peering keenly through her spectacles as she sought to
+find the end of the thread,—she had a cautious, skillful, alert air,
+as of a trapper,—paused suddenly, her knotted, withered hand poised
+like a claw.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't that!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Nothin' like it! Ye reckon
+enny 'oman in her senses likes sech ez that?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded acrimoniously, and Jack, following the direction of her
+eye, glanced over his shoulder at the turmoil of tow-heads scuffling
+together in the flickering firelight. Supper was in course of
+preparation, and they were even noisier at this glad prospect than
+their wont. One of them, under cover of Espey's preoccupation, had
+approached, and, slipping his hand under the arm held out for the
+skein, was venturing slyly to touch the pistols in his belt, with all
+the greed of the small boy for deadly weapons. Espey, his white hat
+far back on his head, looked down upon him, his suddenly scowling face
+all unshaded, and the little mountaineer fell back affrighted and in
+dismay; for, despite his humble estate in life, he had encountered few
+frowns.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, S'briny's reason ain't got no reason in it." Mrs. Haight had
+begun the winding now, and the red ball was whirling, ever larger, in
+her nimble fingers. "She jes' hed a son kilt in the wars. Leastwise the
+tale ez kem back war that he war wounded in a scrimmage, turrible; an'
+his folks war all on the run. An' he crawled ter a house nigh by, an'
+the 'oman tuk him in. An' he died in her house stiddier on the groun'
+or in a fence corner. That war the tale. S'briny never could find out
+who war the 'oman, nor edzac'ly whar it happened. But sence then, ter
+pay back her debt, she takes 'em all in, an' whenst they gits too
+crowded she knocks up a shed or suthin' an' packs 'em in; whenst like
+ez not the 'oman lef' Alvin ter die on the hard, cold groun', an' mebbe
+sot the dogs on him ter hurry the job."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence for a few moments, while the firelight flickered
+upon Espey's absorbed eyes and intent, listening figure. The wrinkled,
+parchment-like face of the old woman was partly in the shadow as she
+sat in the corner, but her spectacles gleamed with unwonted brilliancy
+as she actively moved and nodded her head under her big ruffled cap.</p>
+
+<p>"S'briny say, too, ez old pa'son Jenks say ez ye mought entertain
+angels unaware. An' <i>I</i> say, then agin ye moughtn't! Fur ef enny
+o' these hyar that S'briny <i>hev</i> entertained air angels, they air
+powerful peart at hidin' it, sure!"</p>
+
+<p>Once more she cast a caustic glance at the group, and her sarcastic
+laughter fell upon the air, sharply treble.</p>
+
+<p>If celestial visitants, these were certainly well disguised. Espey
+glanced at the bloated face of the inebriate husband of Jerusha,
+tremulous, full of sudden fits and starts; at Jerusha herself,
+slatternly, slothful, and down at the heel, a snuff brush in her
+mouth, and her forlorn discontent with life in general on her weak,
+flabby face; at the old, feeble-minded man dozing and muttering in the
+corner,—he had once in his life worked in the Lost Time mine, and
+he sometimes gave Espey a sudden start by bringing out the name with
+a deep, full, blood-curdling curse. Henrietta Timson's thankfulness
+had merged into a suspicion that too much gratitude was expected
+of her, and she was prone to magnify the lighter tasks which she
+selected, and went about with an overworked drudging air, and with
+some distinct proclivity for the rôle of martyr. It was a furtive,
+jealous eye which she cast upon Mrs. Larrabee, at home, competent, and
+emphatically in command. The children, nevertheless, were disposed to
+take undue advantage of their protectress; and the smaller they were,
+the more capable, by reason of her leniency, of imposing upon her. This
+disposition characterized even an infant turkey, which had contracted
+some disease by exposure to the inclemency of the weather, and, being
+put into a basket of cotton to recuperate, found its way out, from time
+to time, with a cotton girdle adhering about its middle, and, with a
+fifelike voice, made the grand tour of the hearth, in imminent danger
+of catching fire in its cotton gear, causing her acute anguish lest it
+should be baked alive and before its time.</p>
+
+<p>Even Mrs. Larrabee herself,—if there were aught spiritual about her,
+it must have been in the ends of her fingers. She was much given to
+wearing a sunbonnet, in the depths of which her thin, pallid face had
+a look like marble, with its keen, straight features. Her busy eye had
+not casual observation: she looked at the children to see if they were
+sick or cold or hungry; at Jerusha's husband to descry if perchance he
+were drunk again; at Jack Espey to discover if he wanted aught, and if
+he had no want or ailment she noticed him not at all. He could hardly
+have been more free to come and go as he would, and the long hours
+when he and Larrabee were away at the still passed altogether without
+remark. It was nevertheless to her that he resolved to open his heart.
+The door was ajar, and he could see that the long, loitering summer
+night had come at last. Through the gap in the trees the stars were
+visible, glowing white above the sombre mountains in the distance;
+he could not distinguish a constellation,—only a whorl of brilliant
+stellular points of light in the scant interval where the black leaves
+of the oak, as distinct and as dark as if cut of bronze, failed to
+fill the space between the threshold and the zenith. It was not long
+now before she would be at leisure, and sleep would silence the
+juvenile members of the family, except indeed the turkey, which, though
+unclassified amongst nocturnal fowl, was wont to pipe lugubriously
+in the dead watches of the night, necessitating the uprising of the
+mistress of the house with a draught of water and a light lunch of
+corn-meal batter to compose it once more to slumber. As Espey observed
+it gadding about on its long legs, disproportioned to the size of its
+body even when begirt with the cotton batting, he sagely thought that
+Mrs. Larrabee's tolerance toward its exacting idiosyncrasies was the
+result of no sense of obligation to it or its kind. "She's a powerful
+good-hearted woman, and smart, too," he said to himself; "she's got
+enough sense ter hev some feelin's."</p>
+
+<p>The evening, passed in winding the yarn, wore slowly away to him after
+his resolve. He was very taciturn and still, and Mrs. Haight, finding
+so acquiescent a coadjutor, grew industrious, and hank succeeded
+hank upon his motionless and submissive wrists. His silence did not
+discourage her flow of words. On the contrary, it assumed the narrative
+form in lieu of their usual dialogue; and as the fervor of reminiscence
+waxed, her small black eyes grew brighter, her parchment-like cheek
+flushed, and, with her red "shoulder shawl" and big white cap and
+snowy hair and blue apron, she looked like some fairy godmother. And
+indeed, as she briskly wound the thread, now blue, now red, and again
+gray "clouded" with white, it might have seemed that she wielded some
+sorcery to reduce to this humble fireside utility this wild-eyed,
+defiant spirit. The young desperado, his belt stuck full of weapons,
+was oddly at variance with the solicitude which he now and again
+exhibited when a troublous tangle developed, and the thread perversely
+knotted and broke. The firelight that flickered on his face, the fairer
+from his sojourn in the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, his
+great boots and spurs, his pliant attitude and submissive gestures,
+and his aged and incongruous companion served also to show what speed
+was made in disposing of the youthful gentry for the night. With that
+perverse disinclination for bedtime which betrays the old Adam in the
+youngest infant, they severally resisted, each to the best of his
+very respectable capacity. One or two of tender years, having been
+hustled up the ladder to the loft, came down again in scant attire,
+and he who had triumphed over the rickets, and whose bed was in a box,
+resuscitated himself from amongst the bedclothes whenever he was stowed
+away, but finally was overtaken, and fell asleep on the old house-dog's
+neck as he lay snoring on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>Espey was of that type of man to whom juvenility is neither comical nor
+alluring. Duty was revealed to him in graduated doses adapted to the
+age of the taker, and he was disposed to make no allowance to infants
+for delinquency. It seemed to him that Mrs. Larrabee's patience was
+much misplaced, and he now and again gazed with disapproving eyes at
+the group. He was obliged to linger long before she was at leisure and
+sitting in front of the hearth with the shovel in her hand, ready to
+heap the ashes over the coals to keep the fire till day. The two beds
+in the room were edged with the tow-heads of the children, sleeping
+crosswise; the baby's box-crib and the turkey's basket had each its
+wonted occupant; and if the dreams that went up from the conclave could
+have been materialized, what wild display of phantasmagoria they would
+have made! The door had been barred up against the possible marauder
+of the elder's apprehension, and the black bear of juvenile dread. The
+shadows of the two loiterers were on the red, dully illumined ceiling,
+two gigantic, distorted heads of dusky brown.</p>
+
+<p>"I war sorter waitin' fur Jasper," observed Espey disingenuously,
+having noticed that Mrs. Larrabee looked inquiringly at him. "I reckon
+he be a-visitin' down at Tems's."</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe so," she acquiesced succinctly, rasping the shovel on the
+hearth. She seemed indisposed for conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Haight's mighty good comp'ny," he continued, leaning sideways in
+his chair, with his elbow on its back as he supported his head in his
+hand. "Talkin' 'bout old times, an' her courtin' days, an' sech."</p>
+
+<p>For, according to Mrs. Haight's own account, she had been a truculent
+heart-breaker in her hey-day. There were few names that one might
+mention, native to her locality, which she could not have worn had she
+chosen. She always alluded cavalierly to the husband she had and to the
+one she had lost as "toler'ble samples o' the whole b'ilin'."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee's immobile face was more inexpressive than before, as the
+red light sought it out in the depths of her sunbonnet. She had her
+secret doubts as to this wholesale destruction of the peace of youth a
+half century ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Toler'ble interestin' ter me!" protested Espey suddenly. "I hev been
+sorter in love myse'f—leastwise"—He did not continue to qualify, for
+Mrs. Larrabee turned her face, illumined by maternal interest, upon
+him. "It's gin me a heap o' trouble, too," he broke out impetuously,
+divining her sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at him tenderly, remembering her own youth and her
+own young lover, dead and gone this many a year. Jacob Larrabee had,
+in happier days, laughed retrospectively at his own lackadaisical woe
+and wakeful nights and anxious doubts. "Sech a <i>funny</i> fool I
+war. Thar may hev been ez <i>big</i> fools, but I'll swar I war the
+<i>funniest</i>." But his woe had always appealed to her commiseration,
+and she was glad she had consciously been no factor in it. "I wouldn't
+hev hed ye so tormented fur nuthin', Jacob, ef I hed knowed," she would
+say gently.</p>
+
+<p>Jack's young face, worn with fiercer griefs and turmoils and keener
+fears, was appealing in its anxious lines; her warm motherly heart
+went out to him. He leaned his hands on his knees, and assumed a
+confidential tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mis' Lar'bee," he said, "I 'lowed I'd ax ye what this hyar gal
+means. I hev done everything I knowed how ter please her,—even whenst
+she tole me ter go a-perlitin' around another gal. I done <i>jes' like
+she ordered</i>, an' what ye s'pose she done?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" demanded his partisan confidante angrily, knitting her brows
+heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"She hit me."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she hurt ye?" exclaimed Mrs. Larrabee sympathetically, dropping
+her voice in contemplation of the enormity.</p>
+
+<p>Remembering the relative proportions and force of Adelicia and himself,
+Espey and his woe were out of countenance for the nonce. He laughed a
+little sheepishly. "Naw," he admitted reluctantly. "She didn't hurt me
+none ter speak on."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee's brow cleared. "Sonny, 'twar jes' love-licks," she
+suggested, in old-fashioned maternal phrase.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, sir! Naw, sir!" Espey shook his head with grave protest. "She war
+too leetle ter hurt me, she war bound ter know. She jes' wanted ter
+hurt my feelin's. An' she done it, too."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee's face was all commiseration; and suddenly a truly
+feminine curiosity became manifest. "Whar do the gal live? Hyarabouts
+or in Tanglefoot?"</p>
+
+<p>However far a man may trust a woman, he never trusts her completely.
+Jack Espey caught himself sharply. "It's fur off,—mighty fur, 'pears
+like ter me," he said mendaciously. "Now, Mis' Lar'bee, I wants ter
+git yer advices. What ails the gal ter treat me that-a-way, jes' 'kase
+I done her bid an' gin the t'other gal good-evenin', full perlite like
+she told me ter do? What ails her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pride," said Mrs. Larrabee sternly. She could be severe enough with
+people whom she did not see, and her mental image of a buxom termagant
+was far enough removed from the fragile and shrinking Adelicia.</p>
+
+<p>Espey looked at her with doubtful, troubled eyes. "Jes' turned on me
+an' smit me!" he protested. "I feel like I'll never git over that lick.
+I'll die of it yit!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pride!" fiercely reiterated Mrs. Larrabee. "An' ef ye wanter make
+her repent it, ye jes' perlite up the t'other gal fur true! Whenst I
+went back ter Tanglefoot Cove, I'd show sech manners ez it ain't used
+ter,—ye'd better b'lieve I would. That thar gal 'lows she kin git ye
+too easy, too powerful cheap. T'other gal good lookin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," drawled Espey uneasily, evidently contemplating apprehensively
+this heroic treatment for the small smiter, "nobody don't look purty
+ter me but one, an' she's plumb beautiful, ter my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shucks!" Mrs. Larrabee exhorted him scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"T'other gal hev got the name of it, though," he said reluctantly,
+plainly jealous for the preëminence of his lady love. "T'other gal is
+named a reg'lar gyardin lily fur beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, then, perlitin' 'round her won't go so turrible hard with ye,"
+said Mrs. Larrabee discerningly. "Though mebbe ye hed better let the
+'gyardin lily' inter the secret, 'kase she mought fall in love with ye
+an' yer perliteness."</p>
+
+<p>But Jack Espey shook his head; he had bitter cause to distrust candor.
+"I can't go 'round warnin' the gals against me," he said sturdily. "Ef
+she falls in love with me, she'll jes' hev ter fall out agin, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>He sat for a little time gazing moodily at the fire, and contemplating
+the details of this scheme of reprisal. Then, with a curt good-night,
+he rose and tramped off to the roof-room, which he shared with Jasper
+and a delegation of the larger boys; leaving Mrs. Larrabee covering the
+embers, and pausing now and again, as she knelt on the hearth, with the
+red light on her statuesque features, to ponder on the lover of her
+past youthful days, and the sensible advice she had given Jack Espey to
+reduce the inordinate pride of the arrogant, arbitrary damsel of his
+heart in Tanglefoot Cove.</p>
+
+<p>But the bars so stoutly made fast against the door were not destined
+to keep their place that night. The moon had long before slipped from
+the vaguely illumined limited space of the sky, which her own light
+had rendered faintly blue, down behind a jutting crag of the western
+mountains; it glowed a sombre purple as the crescent passed, with a
+pearly gleaming mist half revealed against the black summits about
+it. The white stars, whiter still, pulsated in the darkening sky. So
+pervasive a sense of silence was in their mute splendor that even the
+benighted mountain wilderness seemed to assert many voices, strange,
+murmurous, unknown to the light. Espey, stretched upon his pallet in
+the recess of the dormer window above the porch, with his wakeful,
+troublous thoughts, languidly sought to differentiate the sounds. He
+heeded the rustle of a vagrant zephyr, the twitter of a nestling,
+the murmur of the spring in the rocks near at hand, the never silent
+chirring of the cicada of the Southern summer night. But what was it
+in the insensate world of crag and forest and mountain and chasm that
+drew a long breath, and paused, and once more sighed heavily, and
+again resigned itself to silence? He could see in the rifts of the
+clapboards above his head a palpitating white star,—how its heart of
+fire beat! He felt his own pulses throb heavily, and the next moment
+they seemed to cease. A new sound intruded into the monotony of the
+mountain stillness. He heard it once far away, and then silence.
+He lifted himself upon his elbow and listened, with dilating eyes.
+Only the sense of the noiseless dewfall, the cracking of a sun-dried
+clapboard, the swift scurrying of a mouse amongst the rafters, and once
+more silence, or that mysterious voice of the night which rose and fell
+in the cadence of sighs. He was about to lie down when the sound came
+again,—distinct this time, unmistakable, so close at hand that it
+seemed the very malice of fate that he should not have distinguished
+it earlier. It was the hoofbeat of horses, and they came at a swift
+gallop,—so swift that he had hardly a moment to take counsel with
+himself, in a turmoil of doubt and fear; his foot was barely on the
+stairway when a heavy tread fell upon the little porch, and a sturdy
+fist thundered at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Into the dusky red darkness of the room below—for the glow of the
+embers could hardly be reckoned as light—a feeble white glimmer was
+stealing. Mrs. Larrabee, without her sunbonnet for once, had hustled
+on her homespun dress, buttoned all awry, and was striking a light for
+a tallow dip. Perhaps its dim flicker revealed the young man standing
+high in the deep shadows on the stair that led to the roof-room, or
+perhaps she only distinguished his step in the midst of the clamor at
+the door, for she called out suddenly to him, "Open the door, Jack,
+open the door, sonny, no matter who it be! Every chile in the house
+will be a-swarmin' up d'rectly ef that thar bangin' be 'lowed ter go
+on, an' I reckon we'll <i>never</i> git the baby inter bed agin!"</p>
+
+<p>The turkey was already awake and alert, its piercing pipe adding to the
+confusion and nervous stress of the situation, as Jack Espey, after one
+irresolute moment, strode to the door, and Mrs. Larrabee rose from her
+knees on the hearth and stood in the dusky brown background, shading
+with her hand the timorous flame of the candle.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was well for Jack Espey that the bars went down with so
+resolute and hearty a clangor, for, as he confronted the men at the
+door, they did not doubt that they faced the son of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Widder Lar'bee lives hyar?" said a keen, tall, dark-eyed man, with
+high cheek-bones and a hooked nose, above which his thick black
+eyebrows met. His soft black hat had a sort of peaked crown, and he
+wore a suit of plaided "store clothes," as befitted one having access
+to the towns, but which were much creased, and his boots were drawn,
+country fashion, over his trousers to the knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Air that enny reason ter bust the door down?" demanded Espey, looking
+at the stout battens as if expecting to discern injury as it swayed in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee interposed blandly, "I be Widder Lar'bee. 'Tain't no use
+ter talk loud. I got some mighty fractious chil'n hyar 'sleep."</p>
+
+<p>The fractious turkey stood upon the hearth and piped till the end
+of its tail quivered with the energy of its vocalization. A cricket
+was shrilling keenly. The trivial sounds seemed to throb in Espey's
+brain when the visitor said, "I be dep'ty sher'ff o' this county, Mis'
+Lar'bee, an' I hear ez thar war a stranger in the Cove a-puttin' up
+hyar."</p>
+
+<p>The two men behind the officer looked over his shoulder, their bearded
+faces sharply inquisitive.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, sir, I ain't got no stranger hyar; not but whut I would take 'em
+in,—me an' my son hev made a rule o' that,—but we-uns bide too fur
+off'n the road." She did not account Espey a stranger, so accustomed a
+figure had he become in the domestic circle.</p>
+
+<p>There was a definite disappointment in the officer's keen,
+high-featured face.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee turned to Espey. "Ye ain't hearn o' enny stray man
+hyarabouts, hev ye, sonny?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thar be a stranger down at Tems's," said Espey; "though I reckon
+he ain't done nuthin' agin the law,—saaft-spoken an' perlite an'
+peaceable."</p>
+
+<p>The high-featured face was contorted in a jocose grimace, to which the
+meeting of the black eyebrows gave a singularly sinister effect. Espey
+felt his heart sink as the official winked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perliteness would have been wuth mo' ter this man ef he could hev
+showed manners sooner. War mighty onpolite indeed in Tanglefoot Cove,
+Mis' Lar'bee, an' shot a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Kilt him?" she demanded in a bated voice, and turning pale. She held
+the candle awry, as she spoke, and the flickering light as the tallow
+melted and dripped heavily on the floor showed only her own straight
+features and masses of brown hair, dulled with gray, coiled at the back
+of her head.</p>
+
+<p>Espey's overladen heart thumped heavily. The cold drops stood thick on
+his face, all in the shadow, white and drawn with suspense.</p>
+
+<p>"In an' about,—a sorter livin' death. An' sence he hev got so much
+worse his folks want the malefactor apprehended straight. We hearn ez
+he air hyarabouts or in Persimmon Cove, one. An' ez the constable o'
+this deestric' air sick abed,—ailin' old cattle like him oughtn't ter
+be 'lowed ter hold office!—the high sher'ff sent me ter look arter
+him, ef I could come up with him. Waal,"—he was turning away,—"I'm
+sorry I hed ter roust ye and yer son up this time o' night."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee took no note of this misdescription. Her thoughts were
+engrossed by a sudden hospitable intention.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't a bite an' a sup hearten ye up sorter, arter so much ridin'
+in the night wind?" she drawled amiably.</p>
+
+<p>The deputy, despite his lean, lank, ill-nourished air, was susceptible
+to the allurements of the pleasures of the table. He hesitated, and a
+very little urgency sufficed to induct him into a chair by the side of
+the fire, while Mrs. Larrabee ransacked her stores for the bite and
+sup, which were more easily promised than provided.</p>
+
+<p>He was new to his office, and disposed to magnify its dignities and
+difficulties, as he and his two companions waited for the refection,
+while Espey stirred up the fire and rescued the turkey, which had
+burrowed into a mound of dead ashes, still permeated, however, with the
+grateful warmth of the embers.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye'd be plumb s'prised, Mis' Lar'bee, at the slyness o' sech
+malefactors, an' the trouble they'll gin. Now I be a stranger ter this
+e-end o' the county, an' what with the constable sick everybody sorter
+holds back 'bout informin' the officer o' the law; turrible 'fraid lest
+the folks in gineral takes it out on them, ye know. Some 'lows I be
+a-trappin' moonshiners; an' that ain't my business at all. I got no
+mo' agin moonshiners 'n I hev agin whiskey. It's all one ter <i>me</i>.
+I don't c'lect the tax, an' I don't pay it nuther. I drinks mos'ly on
+treats, sech ez this." He held up his glass, for Espey had proffered
+the product of the Lost Time still, and it seemed to him at the moment
+that the very jug looked conscious. "I couldn't git a critter ter kem
+with me ter-night 'thout reg'lar summonsin' a posse: one man ailin';
+t'other man, sick wife; another man, sore foot; another man, lame
+horse. Course <i>I</i> could hev <i>made</i> 'em kem," waving the hand
+with the glass in it with a capable gesture; "but I didn't want ter be
+harsh an' requirin' with the citizens, 'kase, ye know," with a sudden
+sly geniality illumining his countenance, "I mought want ter run fur
+sher'ff myse'f some day,—that is, ef the old man was ter git done
+with the office," he added, mindful of his tenure through the favor
+of the high sheriff. "Now this hyar man," pointing out one of his
+followers, who bore with a sort of wooden equanimity the united gaze
+of Mrs. Larrabee and Espey, "he be a stranger hyarabouts, too,—kems
+from my deestric', frien' o' mine,—so o' course he warn't acquainted
+hyarabout, nuther."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Larrabee's perceptions detected something embarrassing to a
+sensitive nature in this invited survey of the silent, bearded man, who
+had not opened his mouth except to put a biscuit into it. As amends,
+she handed him the plate anew, and the second biscuit silently went the
+way of the first.</p>
+
+<p>"Now this hyar other man,"—the officer indicated a short, square-set
+fellow,—"he war powerful leetle 'quainted round hyar, though he kem
+from neighboring ways, the Gap; so he ondertook ter p'int out yer
+house"—</p>
+
+<p>The short man interposed in great haste, and with his mouth full:—</p>
+
+<p>"Though I hev never hed nuthin' agin you-uns, Mis' Lar'bee, an' I hope
+ye won't lay it up agin me, marm. I knowed 't war mighty safe,—'kase
+you-uns warn't the sort ter harbor evil-doers 'gainst the law an' sech
+ez that,—hevin' been powerful well 'quainted with yer husband whenst
+he war a boy; an' this hyar dep'ty war so powerful partic'lar, an' I
+didn't see how ter git out'n it, an'"—The crumbs in his throat and
+the scruples in his heart combined to choke his utterance, and as the
+climax came in a paroxysm of coughing, Mrs. Larrabee turned to the
+officer.</p>
+
+<p>"I got nobody hyar wuss'n yerse'f, sher'ff," she drawled, with a slow
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, now, Mis' Lar'bee," said the officer, probably mindful of
+political hopes, "ef ever ye want ennything of me, ye jes' lemme know.
+I wanter show ye how I'll remember this hyar squar meal ter-night. I
+ain't one o' them ez can't remember dinner till it's dinner time agin."
+He smiled gallantly upon her from under his superabundance of brows.
+Then he turned to Espey. "I been so well treated it makes me plumb bold
+ter ax another favior. I want ye ter git on yer horse an' ride with me
+ter set me in the road ter Tems's. Nare one o' these men air 'quainted
+with the way."</p>
+
+<p>His dark eyes hardened under his sinister black brows, and Espey, who
+had taken heart of grace, felt his hope of escape annihilated in the
+instant. His eyes were fastened with a fixed stare on the officer's
+face; his nerves were all a-quiver; his heart seemed to stand still;
+a cold, insidious thrill crept along the fibres of his skin. The
+conviction seized him that the conversation which had seemed so
+incidental was merely a blind devised for the purpose of getting him
+apart from the women and children, that he might be captured with less
+ado or less danger to the bystanders, perhaps further from the chance
+of rescue. He thought of rescue, himself, of Jerusha's husband blind
+drunk in the shed-room, of Jasper away at the Lost Time mine. Through
+some other sense than that of conscious sight he was aware of the
+movements of the deputy's comrades: that one, seated in the chair, was
+carefully examining his revolver; that the other was standing beside
+the door with his hand on the latch. But Espey's eyes never quitted
+the face of the sheriff, who apparently took note of this fixed,
+unresponsive gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Air he deef?" he demanded of Mrs. Larrabee, and was about to repeat
+his demand in a louder key, when his hostess interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"No deefer than them in gineral be who ain't willin' ter hear," she
+muttered. "Go saddle yer critter, Jack. 'Twon't take ye long." Then,
+in a lower aside, "Ye'll jes' hev ter guide 'em ez fur ez Tems's,
+ennyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Her insistence constrained him; and indeed no alternative was definite
+to his mind. He turned with a bewildered, submissive mien toward the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>The chill midnight air, blowing freshly on his face as he held it
+open and the draught rushed through, revived him like the very breath
+of freedom. The obvious opportunity flashed through his mind like an
+inspiration. He could give them the slip while saddling the horse.
+He would have the start of them even if by only a few paces. Let him
+but once get foot in the stirrup again, with the kindly shield of the
+darkness about him, and he would give them a good run through this
+pathless mountain wilderness. He caught up his saddle that lay upon the
+floor, and made for the door again with a sudden eager alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>He heard an abrupt clanging noise, as one hears a sound in sleep,
+muffled, unreal, distant. It was only when he saw one of the men stoop
+and rise again and follow him that he realized what had happened. One
+of the stirrup irons had fallen from the saddle, unbuckled perhaps in
+the unwarranted juvenile curiosity of the meddling youngsters of the
+house. The deputy sheriff also followed. "I'll put that on agin whilst
+ye air a-ketchin' an' a-bridlin' of the nag," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Espey heard the loud, strident tones of his hasty farewells as he took
+leave of Mrs. Larrabee,—he evidently intended to return no more,—and
+then he was by the young man's side in the barn, followed by his two
+companions. For the horse was not in the pasture lot; he had repaired
+to the shelter of the barn, and had stretched himself on his bed of
+straw. At the first indication of the prospect of journeying the roan
+struggled up, and, with a sound of greeting that was almost articulate,
+came out from the stall, ready and willing to be saddled and bridled.
+Espey experienced a sort of animosity toward the creature for his
+unreasoning alacrity. He was even denied the poor respite which the
+usual delay in catching the horse might have given.</p>
+
+<p>In his numbing, silent despair as he buckled the girth and slipped
+the bridle over the horse's head and the bit into his mouth, he took
+no definite heed of his surroundings, and yet they were all impressed
+upon his consciousness. He noted, uncaring, how the horse tossed up
+his head askance at the stranger's touch, when one of the men laid his
+hand on the powerful shoulder and opined that he must be a "toler'ble
+good goer." He was aware, somehow, of the blue-black, translucent gloom
+of the air, and the differing darkness with its effect of solidity,
+of the fodder stack looming close by, of the fantastic roof of the
+little log cabin against the stars, and of a vague sense of motion
+where the invisible smoke curled up from the chimney, faring off into
+the dense shadow of the foliage of the great trees. The door was still
+open, and the yellow light fell far out into the darkness; in the
+interior he could see the gaunt, tall form of Mrs. Larrabee walking
+back and forth, and in her arms the baby, who had been roused by the
+falling of the spur. The child needed little tenderness, in his robust
+self-sufficiency, and was elderly indeed for such infantile coddling.
+His fat legs stuck far out of her arms, and his bawling objections to
+the interruption of slumber attested temper rather than delicacy. Espey
+realized how her heart would go out to a real trouble,—how she would
+feel for him if she only knew! Somehow the thought of that fictitious
+anguish of sympathy soothed him for the moment, and he was resigned to
+say to himself that it was best as it was. She could have done naught.
+He was no child like the others to cling to her in a sort of fervid
+faith in her omnipotence. No; resistance would only have endangered her
+and hers. And so he was strengthened to put his foot in the stirrup
+and ride away, with the sheriff at his right hand, and the other men
+close behind, all looking alertly forward into the gloom. The roan
+horse, fresh from slumber, was beginning to feel his hay and corn,
+snuffing the quickening wind, pulling on the bit, and forging on at a
+more speedy gait. The other men noticed this, for now and again, with a
+touch of the spur, they closed up, and the roan horse was in the centre
+of the squad.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As they went, the deputy sheriff's manner was little characterized
+by an official decorum. He seemed rather some bold roisterer who
+himself might have had ample cause to dread the law that he was sworn
+to administer. The rough humor of his sallies affected Espey as an
+incongruous sort of fun, taken in connection with his interpretation
+of their errand, and his recollection of the keen, sinister, thin
+face, with its piercing dark eyes, and its sharp hooked nose, and the
+straight, menacing eyebrows meeting above it. He had this mental vision
+distinctly before his contemplation, as it had impressed him in the
+flicker of Mrs. Larrabee's tallow dip, instead of the undistinguishable
+equestrian shadow that in the black night pressed close to his horse's
+flank, and now and again laid a sinewy hand upon his arm. For the
+officer, in a spirit of mock confidence, was detailing, much to that
+worthy's discomfort, the spectral fears of his friend from "the t'other
+e-end of the county," a believer in ghosts, and making an elaborate
+pretense of sharing them. Now and again, with a sepulchral voice and
+an agitated manner, he would conjure Espey to say if he saw nothing
+flickering, waving white, in some open stretch of the road that lay
+vacant and vaguely glimmering in the starlight before them. Then,
+hardly waiting for an answer, he would burst into a whoop of derisive
+laughter, startling the solemn silence of the night-bound mountain
+wilderness, and rousing strange echoes of weird mirth from rock and
+ravine. More than once the uncanny tumult of these wild, insensate
+cries moved the staid comrades of the deputy sheriff to remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance and the night and their repetitiousness, the sounds
+seemed curiously unrelated to those that had evoked them.</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't no rocks a-answerin' back," said the man from the Gap. "I
+b'lieve somebody is a-hollerin' at ye."</p>
+
+<p>The officer turned alertly in his saddle to look back over his
+shoulder. "That wouldn't s'prise me none," said the capable deputy,
+whose large experience would seem to furnish precedent for any given
+phenomenon. "I knowed a man out our way,—mighty loud talker and a
+toler'ble active cusser,—whilst callin' hawgs, hedn't tuk no special
+notice o' the rocks answerin', till one day whenst he war 'dad-burnin''
+an' 'all-firin'' round till the very shoats looked blue. He stopped
+ter take breath, an' he hearn a voice, powerful coarse, out'n the
+woods jes' yellin' like sin, 'Fire-burn!' 'Fire-burn!' an' he knowed
+that minit who't war. An' in course he jes' hedn't no mo' interes' in
+nuthin', an' jes' dwindled away."</p>
+
+<p>He paused abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"But—but—who war it ez said 'Fire-burn' with a coarse voice?"
+breathlessly demanded the believer in spectral manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Satan, to be sure, ye fool," replied the deputy. "I useter hear
+him myself a-callin' in the woods, 'Fire-burn!' whenst Ad Peters would
+git ter cussin' his hawgs! Jes' so"—He lifted his voice in a wild,
+fantastic cadence, and throughout the long stretches of the mountain
+fastnesses the words, as of some demented incendiary, echoed and
+re-echoed, varied presently with mocking cries of unpleasant falsetto
+laughter, set astir when the officer's gravity failed.</p>
+
+<p>The patience of his friend had given way. "Look-a-hyar, 'Dolphus Ross,"
+he broke out angrily, "this hyar ain't no way ter go ter apperhend
+criminals, a-hollerin' like a plumb catamount through the woods."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want ter s'prise nuthin'," said the crafty deputy sheriff,
+"that is nuthin' unyearthly, on its yerrands what no mortial knows
+about, an' mebbe git s'prised myself plumb down ter the doors o' the
+pit. Ye know them ez sees harnts either draps down dead or loses thar
+minds, one. They 'low now'days ez all the crazies kem so from seein'
+sperits. An' ye know yerse'f, an off'cer of the law needs brains."</p>
+
+<p>"Ef ye don't know yer bizness no better'n that, I be goin' ter l'arn
+it ter ye. Ye 'pear mo' like a jay-hawker'n a off'cer o' the law,"
+retorted the other tartly.</p>
+
+<p>But not even with this rude touch upon the sensitive nerves of official
+pride could he control the elusive and slippery deputy. "That's a fac',
+Pearce. But the truth is, I be all-fired 'feared in these hyar lonesome
+places, whar humans air seldom an' few, o' seein' suthin' or hearin'
+suthin' what no mortial eyes or ears air expected ter see an' hear. So
+I like ter hear the sound o' my own voice,—let 'em know I'm a-comin'.
+Even with two or three men with me, it's so darned fur an' lonesome!
+I 'pear less like a harnt myself, an' less apt ter meet up with one,
+ef I make myself sorter lively. I'm a mighty quiet cuss in town. I'm
+a—What's—what's that?" he broke off sharply.</p>
+
+<p>He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches.
+The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set,
+collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless
+proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the
+abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights
+of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven
+and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating
+white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight
+becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through
+the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the
+heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague
+moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in
+the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the
+others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments.</p>
+
+<p>"What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing
+horse with considerable skill.</p>
+
+<p>"Something white—beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood
+run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough
+from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming
+that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming
+graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and
+the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again
+protested in a loud, broken voice:—</p>
+
+<p>"Beckonin'—beckonin'—Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is
+a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the
+church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,—an' he
+may escape jedge an' jury,—an' he may cheat hemp,—but in the dead
+o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a
+v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"—</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin'
+back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the
+narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend
+crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the
+daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say."</p>
+
+<p>"Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my
+jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur
+from Tems's now,—air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey.</p>
+
+<p>With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the
+wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped
+in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly
+up alongside once more.</p>
+
+<p>It required, perchance, only a moment's reflection on the inexpressible
+loneliness of the miles of mountain woods, that must of necessity be
+traversed before the shelter of Mrs. Larrabee's house could be reached,
+to change the design of the deserter from the little party. The beat
+of his horse's hoofs annotated his continued presence, which was soon
+made even more indisputable by his raucous voice again lifted in
+remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye mus' see, now, 'Dolphus, ez n'ise an' ribeldry an' gamesomeness
+don't purvent ye from viewin' sech ez ye air intended ter view. Sech
+goin's-on ain't lawful fur citizens, much less off'cers o' the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ain't gone back, then?" commented 'Dolphus over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer to this, and after a pause the facetious deputy
+went on:—</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> ain't fur hollerin' an' rampagin' an' sech. <i>I</i> be a
+mighty quiet cuss in town, like I said,—a mighty quiet cuss indeed.
+The old man," he alluded thus to the high sheriff, "he sez ter me
+sometimes, 'I dunno, 'Dolphus, whether ye air in yer skin or no. Ye
+jes' 'pear ter be settin' thar, 'sleep or dead.' Wunst he tole me ez I
+warn't mo' lively 'n jes' a suit o' clothes hangin' outside the store
+door, an' a suit would cost less'n my pay ez a dep'ty. I tried ter
+brace up arter that."</p>
+
+<p>He had braced up considerably from the quiescent state he described
+if the sudden yell that he emitted might be received as evidence of
+his more stalwart condition. The sharp exclamations of surprise from
+the rest of the party afforded him intense delight, which was not
+mitigated by a blood-curdling shriek, as it were in response, set up
+by a catamount on the opposite heights, so close at hand by the direct
+line across the spaces above the valley through the air, despite the
+intervening miles of trackless mountain desert below, that they could
+hear the creature snarl before it lifted its thin, keen, inarticulate
+voice shrilling again into the black night.</p>
+
+<p>There was no definite remonstrance, for he forestalled their outbreak,
+beyond a few words, by declaring tumultuously that he saw it
+again,—something a-waving, a-beckoning.</p>
+
+<p>"No use talkin'!" he exclaimed. "The guilty sinner is 'mongst us, an'
+hyar he be!"</p>
+
+<p>He leaned out of his saddle and passed one arm around Espey, pinioning
+the young fellow's right arm to his side. Espey, startled beyond
+control, despite his expectation of this contingency, with which,
+however, hope and suspense had juggled painfully, detected with
+sharpened senses the dull clanking of handcuffs. He hardly knew how it
+came there, he had no definite intention of resisting arrest, but a
+pistol was in the hand over which the rude wristlets dangled; a jet of
+red light that showed the dark-eyed, laughing, grimacing face near to
+his own, the whizzing of a bullet so close between the officer's side
+and arm that the blazing powder singed and burned his "store clothes,"
+an abrupt report, and once more the night, rent by the sound, clamored
+with echoes.</p>
+
+<p>From the dense darkness the officer's voice, with a changed tone, a
+sharp note of surprise, was crying, "Look out! Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>The other men were stunned with amazement. They had only a vague sense
+of struggling mounted figures which the darkness did not suffer them to
+descry. And suddenly a second swift funnel-shaped glare for an instant
+invaded the gloom,—it came from the officer's pistol this time,—a
+second clamorous report rang amongst the rocks. The frightful, almost
+human scream of a wounded horse, a wild plunging on the side of the
+rocky bridle-path, and Espey and the yellow roan disappeared over the
+verge of the cliff. The three men standing in the road, hearing with
+sickening horror the dull thud far below, might judge of the terrors of
+the fall by the time elapsing before the sound reached their ears.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The household at the Tems cabin were keeping late hours that night.
+Except for a certain reserve of cogitation, which at times held him
+silent with a burning thought in his eye, his superficially moving
+lips framing unspoken words, and occasionally a keen, sarcastic smile
+irradiating his features with the light of some satiric expectation,
+Cap'n Lucy had resumed his wonted aspect and mental attitude and the
+habits of his simple existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye fetch yer book out'n yer pocket," he said imperatively to Jasper
+Larrabee early in the evening, when the young man had joined them
+on the porch. "The gals ain't goin' ter run away,—leastwise 'thout
+cornsider'ble mo' incourage<i>mint</i> 'n they hev hed. They'll keep!
+Ye jes' sot awhile by that thar taller dip in thar an' read yer book,
+an' I'll listen out hyar."</p>
+
+<p>The penalties of the acquisition of knowledge, from the days of the
+Garden of Eden to those of the hero of the horn-book, have not been
+few. They fell somewhat heavily on Jasper Larrabee, debarred the fresh
+air, heavy with perfumed dew; the vicinage of dank vines; the glimmer
+of the firefly in the bosky gloom; the scintillating stars in the sky
+above the massive mountains; the sweet, low voices of the two girls,
+silenced now; and the trivial chatter so dear to the heart of youth.
+The room, with the low red glow of the embers, was warm to-night; the
+tallow dip melted and sputtered and cast a wan, melancholy, ineffective
+radiance into the dusky spaces, rendering the aspect of the familiar
+furnishings strange and spare and dull, instead of all ruddily
+a-flicker with the dancing firelight in which he was accustomed to see
+them. Even the dogs had deserted the hearthstone, and went in and out
+with lolling tongues, and hot, sleepy eyes, and an inattentive manner.
+Moths and strange winged fire-worshipers, unknown to his observation
+hitherto, would fly in from the cool darkness without, circle swiftly
+about the white jet of the candle, and now and then, with a sudden
+dart, would fall, shriveled cinders but for the convulsive throes of
+lingering life, on the page of the volume.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered sometimes, as he droned on and on, if Adelicia were
+listening, or if Julia could see him from where she sat. From the
+lighted spaces he could not distinguish their shadowy figures, albeit
+Cap'n Lucy, close at hand and with the red glow of his pipe, was
+plain enough. Sometimes Larrabee felt the vague sense of a gaze fixed
+upon his clear-cut face, all etherealized, illumined by the soft
+pallid white light within against the brown shadows. He was unaware
+of any valid embellishment of his aspect from the pensive gleam,
+the irradiated square of the window, the ascetic gravity of his
+expression, intent and pondering on the longer words, which it was his
+pride that he need not pause to spell. On the contrary, he was often
+conscious of cutting a sorry figure when Cap'n Lucy, with the rigor
+of a most rational reason and all the fervid insistence of a personal
+interest, would plunge at him, and require him to recant, to spell
+out syllable by syllable some questioned dogma, and at last, with all
+the nonchalance of a sophisticated theologian, take refuge in the
+equivalent of a plea of mistranslation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye can't haffen read, boy!" he would exclaim roughly. "Ye don't
+read ekal ter what ye hev done. Keep on goin' back'ards, an' ye'll
+git thar arter a while. 'Agree with thine adversary!' My stars! ef
+ye war wuth a grain o' gunpowder, ye could see ez that air obleeged
+ter be '<i>Dis</i>-agree with thine adversary.' It stands ter reason!
+'<i>Dis</i>-agree' with him, early and often, else the dad-burned
+critter will git up the insurance ter disagree with you-uns. I know
+thine adversary! Been 'quainted with him this many a year! Read on,
+read on, Jasper; git shet o' thine adversary."</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that, with the shadowy, snarling, intent old face
+vaguely visible in the dusk, just at his elbow, outside the window,
+ready to spring forward at the first intimation of an unacceptable
+doctrine; with the sense of responsibility for all the biblical dogmas
+irreconcilable with Cap'n Lucy's tenets and the tenor of his way; with
+the spectacle of glamour, lure, catastrophe, and death furnished by
+the unrestrainable moths, Jasper Larrabee found his preëminence of
+learning a comfortless pinnacle, and even the wonted sweet solaces
+of complacence in his superiority were denied him. He was forced to
+appear before the eyes of his lady love as an ignorant pretender, of
+ridiculous and inadequate assumptions,—and that by a man who could
+not read his own name,—humiliated and browbeaten; for how dared he
+answer Cap'n Lucy? More than once he wished himself back at the Lost
+Time mine, where he knew Espey thought him to be, and where Lorenzo
+Taft needed him. The work, unpalatable as he often found it, would be
+welcome indeed, and his untutored, unquestioning, often inattentive
+audience there a happy exchange from Cap'n Lucy in the character of
+polemic. He made some effort to shift the subject, to turn from the
+preceptive and doctrinal pages upon which he had chanced to fall to
+the chronicle of events in the nature of historical detail, as less
+liable to elicit Cap'n Lucy's contradictory faculties. It availed him
+naught. Cap'n Lucy's interest was fairly roused, and he imperatively
+negatived the proposition. The guest felt, still later, that it was not
+hospitality in its truest sense which so flatly declined to heed the
+suggestion of departure. And thus constrained, he read on, so conscious
+of the shadowy face at his elbow that he seemed to see it, with the
+light of excitement in the wide blue eyes, the alertness in every
+line, the lips intently parted, the glow of the pipe dying out as it
+was supported motionless by the uplifted hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" shrieked out Cap'n Lucy suddenly, as if he had been poignantly
+pinched. "Ef he takes yer coat, gin him yer cloak! Jasper, ye air
+demented! Ye ain't 'quainted with the dad-burned ravelings out o' the
+alphabit, let alone the weft of it! My sakes!" in an outraged falsetto,
+"ye tell me that's sot up ez Christian doctrine in the Book! Take yer
+coat, gin yer cloak! Whar's the man ez hev done it! Trot him out! Great
+Moses an' Aaron! I'd like ter look at him! Take yer corner-stone an'
+monimint o' boundary, an' gin him yer line an' yer lan'!—ha! ha! ha!
+Let him take yer rock known ez Big Hollow Boulder, an' gin him yer
+corner-stone!—ha! ha!"</p>
+
+<p>Luther rose precipitately. The significance of the paternal discovery
+of the removal of the corner-stone was fraught with great perplexity
+and foreboding, and he hardly knew what ill-judged disclosure was to
+follow. He had intended to interpose, albeit he scarcely had a pretext.
+It came to him at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that? I 'lowed I hearn suthin'!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy turned upon him with the breathless acrimony of one
+interrupted in some cherished pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>"Hearn suthin'? Jes' the rustlin' o' yer own long ears,—that's all.
+I"—He stopped abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his strident raised tones an alien sound smote his
+attention. There was an approach of horsemen from down the road. Cap'n
+Lucy's acrimony was merged in curiosity and excited expectation. Still
+holding his pipe, filled with dead ashes, as stiffly and cautiously
+before him as if its wonted coals glowed in the cob-bowl, he rose from
+his chair, and advanced a pace or two nearer the rude steps, peering
+out into the darkness. The two girls had turned their heads toward the
+sound. Larrabee was leaning on his arms in the window, and Luther had
+started down the path to the bars. His deep bass voice sounded in a
+bated, thunderous mutter, as he rebuked the barking dogs, whose menace
+subsided into low growls, punctuated now and then by a clamorous yelp.
+Perhaps the insistent tone of these canine threats influenced the
+new-comers, for it was at a goodly distance that the party called a
+halt and hailed the house.</p>
+
+<p>Luther returned the halloo with a ringing response in kind, but Cap'n
+Lucy added a genial "'Light and hitch" to the unknown guest that
+the midnight had convoyed hither, his habit of broad hospitality
+all unmindful of the individuality or intent of the new-comers. "Me
+an' Luther air ekal ter all sorts," he would sturdily answer to the
+occasional remonstrance that times were not what they once were, and
+that he might thus "at sight unseen" be inviting in the marauder or the
+devil. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter 'em."</p>
+
+<p>The tone of this hospitality seemed a sore-needed encouragement in
+this instance. Rodolphus Ross had flung himself, metaphorically, upon
+the fraternal bosom of Luther, as he hastily sought to summarize the
+misfortunes that had befallen him; the slow young mountaineer, all
+unprepared for so dramatic a recital, staring, uncomprehending and
+amazed, at his interlocutor, hardly knowing whether to ascribe his
+fluent diction to drink or to histrionic talents; as fact he did not
+take it into account.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!" the wild-eyed Ross was saying as he came up the steps,
+"flung over the bluffs, horse an' all,—dead or alive, I dunno!
+Cap'n Tems, yes, sir; plumb proud ter shake hands," mechanically
+acknowledging the introduction to the head of the house. "Jes'
+purtendin' ter handcuff the fool,—jes' fur fun,—an' he fired at me!
+Yes, sir, fired at the off'cer o' the law! I dunno what ailed him,
+'thout he thunk I war in earnest. But Lord! he war bound ter know I war
+arter another man. I tole him so. I hed nuthin' agin this hyar Lar'bee.
+I war jes' purtendin' ter handcuff him, jes' shuck the bracelets at
+him, jes' fur fun,—ye know, Cap'n Tems, it's powerful dull an' drowsy
+a-ridin' so stiddy arter malefactors 'thout no sort'n entertainment
+or enjyemint,—an' this hyar Jasper Lar'bee jes' ups an' fires at the
+off'cer o' the law, jes' scorched my clothes." He held up his arm, and
+caught the pallid light of the candle on his coat and powder-singed
+sleeve. "Not that I keer fur the josie, 'ceptin' it's too durned near
+the meat fur thar ter be enny fun in shootin' through it."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed in a constrained falsetto tone,—his wonted laugh, but with
+all the mirth eliminated from it. It had a sort of wooden quality, and
+ended with a nervous catch in his throat. The light falling through the
+window showed his dark eyes, set a trifle too close together, and the
+straight black brows meeting above them. His teeth gleamed, for the
+laugh left his lips mechanically distended. Larrabee, leaning on his
+folded arms in the window, a mere silhouette upon the pallid lustre of
+the aureola of the candle behind him, gazed silently on the stranger's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>One is apt, in thinking of a man of experience, to associate
+sophistication with the idea. But life presents varied aspects of
+mental development, and the caution, the silence, the reserve of
+judgment, with which Cap'n Lucy hearkened might have seemed gleaned
+from the observation of the juggle of cause and effect in a far wider
+sphere. The two comrades of the deputy sheriff said not a word, and
+once more the officer began to elaborate the justification of his
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>"It takes a toler'ble stiff backbone ter set on a saddle an' let a man
+shoot at ye fur nuthin'. It 'stonished me powerful. I war jes' funnin',
+an' purtended ter be aimin' ter handcuff this young rooster, an' he
+jes' whurled roun' an' let the bullet fly. I b'lieve he 'lowed I war in
+earnest, yes, sir. This hyar Lar'bee hev been up ter suthin' agin the
+law,—moonshinin', I reckon,—else he wouldn't hev been so dad-burned
+handy with his fi'crackers."</p>
+
+<p>"Why—why"—blurted out Luther, amazed at the lack of symmetry in the
+situation, and incapable of the paternal wisdom of silently awaiting
+developments, with the incongruity of the sight of Larrabee in the
+window mutely hearkening to the reflections upon the "Larrabee" who
+took so vehement a part in the officer's reminiscences—"'twarn't
+Lar'bee, mebbe; some other fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, sir," returned the deputy. "This hyar man," laying his hand
+on his bulky companion's shoulder, "knowed whar Lar'bee's mother, a
+widder lady, lived, an' we-uns called him 'Lar'bee' an' 'Jasper,' an'
+he answered ter 'em both; an' his mother called him 'Sonny.' He's a
+wild-catter, sure. He's"—He caught himself suddenly, remembering the
+prepossession against the revenue force which often animates even
+law-abiding citizens of this region. "But he needn't hev fired at
+<i>me</i>! I got nuthin' agin moonshiners. I b'long ter the County, not
+ter the Nunited States,—to the County!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's this man now?" demanded Cap'n Lucy circumspectly.</p>
+
+<p>The alert, sinister face of the deputy changed. But he sought to bluff
+off the anxieties and conscious criminations which crowded upon him. He
+swung his hat, which had a bullet-hole in it, gayly in his light grasp,
+and his dark eyes twinkled as he met the gaze of his host.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye air a powerful good hand at axin' riddles, but this'n air too
+hard fur me! I <i>dunno</i>, an' these men <i>dunno</i>! I fired back
+in self-defense at the miserable fool—I hed been funnin' all along,
+cap'n. I shot his horse, I know, an' the critter slipped, an' the whole
+caboodle went back'ards over the bluffs—an'—an'—he mought be dead or
+alive—Air—air that a cheer?"</p>
+
+<p>He had suddenly lost his self-control; he sank back into a seat and
+seemed gasping for breath.</p>
+
+<p>The details of their immediate errand thus devolved upon his
+comrades,—a lantern and a guide to search the slope where the victim
+of the deputy's pleasantry had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dolphus air sech a turrible bouncin' wild buck," said his friend
+from "the t'other e-end o' the county," who had begun to resume
+his remonstrant air, as of "I-told-you-so." He was a slow and
+serious-minded man, with a scant appreciation of even the most
+symmetrical jest, but when the joke seemed furnished with such
+distortions of sequelæ his gravity grew aggressive. "'Dolphus kin crack
+a toler'ble funny joke wunst in a while, but this hyar one air goin'
+ter make him laff on the t'other side o' his mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"Who war it ez ye war arter, sure enough?" asked Cap'n Lucy.</p>
+
+<p>"A stranger what they 'lowed war puttin' up with you-uns, Cap'n Tems."</p>
+
+<p>"Hey?" cried Cap'n Lucy, with a high quaver of excited delight. "He hev
+gone; but, my stars! what a hearty welcome ye mought hev hed with him!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's he done?" demanded Larrabee, speaking for the first time,
+addressing the friend of the deputy.</p>
+
+<p>"Shot a man in Tanglefoot Cove," he replied, looking somewhat intently
+at the silhouette in the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What did ye 'low his name war?" asked Larrabee, placing one hand
+behind his ear as if he had not heard what indeed they had not
+disclosed.</p>
+
+<p>"Espey,—John Espey from Tanglefoot, o' course. He hev been hidin' out
+cornsider'ble time."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden significant silence which the stranger felt, but did
+not comprehend. Then Cap'n Lucy, recovering his poise, remarked:—</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, the stranger ez we-uns hev hed hyar air named Kenneth Kenn'ston,
+from Bretonville. He air a town man, an' aimin' ter build some sort'n
+tavern in the Cove."</p>
+
+<p>The three men—for the officer was himself again—looked at one another
+with the pathetic helpless disgust of hunting dogs on a false trail.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that their quest was hopeless from the beginning, and in its
+interests they had deeply involved themselves in the toils of the law
+which they sought to aid.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," said the deputy's friend, "we-uns hed better git the lantern,
+an' take ter the woods agin an' find the corpse,"—the deputy winced at
+the word so palpably that even his sturdy, literal-minded companion
+was moved to seek some euphemism; "leastwise find out what's the damage
+we-uns hev been an' done."</p>
+
+<p>His stolid, unflinching shouldering of such responsibility in the
+matter as might fall to his share was oddly contrasted with the nervous
+excitement and agitation of the man from the Gap, who had served as
+guide to the party to Mrs. Larrabee's house.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, <i>I</i> ain't done none o' the damage," he protested, nodding
+his head emphatically. "I thunk I hed ter kem along o' the off'cer o'
+the law whenst required. I hed no idee o' junketin' 'roun' with the
+wildes' buck this side o' hell, a-caperin' like a possessed lunatic,
+an' a-shootin' of 'spectable citizens off'n the bluffs. Jasper Lar'bee
+done nuthin' ter me,—never laid eyes on him afore. <i>I</i> done none
+o' the damage. I call ye ter witness, Cap'n Tems, ez I hed nuthin' ter
+do with his takin' off."</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy, always adorning the opposition, gave a high, fleering
+laugh. "<i>Me ter witness!</i> Me! Why, man, I been settin' hyar sence
+dark, a-readin' o' the Holy Scriptur's. I hev no part in yer ridin' an'
+raidin'."</p>
+
+<p>That repulsion to the idea of taking life, and all its ramifications of
+moral responsibility, apart from the legal consequence, natural to the
+civilized man, had yielded in the deputy sheriff to his habitual mental
+impulses. His wild, fierce, shallow personality was in the ascendant
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll guarantee ye, Bob," he declared, with his wonted swift smile of
+dark eyes and red lips and lifted meeting eyebrows. "Ef the g'loot is
+dead, he died resistin' arrest by the off'cer o' the law. Ef he be
+'live, I be durned ef he don't hev cause ter resist the off'cer o'
+the law, fur I'll swar ter glory I'll nose out what this hyar Jasper
+Lar'bee hev been a-doin' of ter be so monst'ous afeard o' the bracelets
+bein' put onto him,—murder or moonshinin', it's all the same ter me.
+I'll set the bloodhounds o' the law onto him, sure! He hain't gin me
+sech a skeer ez this fur nuthin'!"</p>
+
+<p>As the blood came surging hotly along its accustomed channels, his fury
+mounted higher. It jumped with his humor to threaten as living the man
+who he feared was dead. He sought to spurn that possibility from his
+consciousness. It renewed his confidence in himself, too, to protest
+so jauntily that if the man had lost his life it was in resisting the
+law legitimately enforced. He reviewed, with a burst of anger, the
+fright of the other two men and his own anxiety that had suffered this
+lapse of attention to his own interest, and allowed the true detail
+of the case to be rehearsed here publicly. Naught could obliterate
+this; naught could justify him save to prove that the surprised Jasper
+Larrabee had been guilty of some offense against the law, and was
+resisting arrest legally attempted.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fix him! I'll follow him like a bloodhound! I'll nose him out and
+pull him down! Bless God, I will!" he cried out with sudden vehemence.
+Then he turned roughly to his two companions. "Kem on, ye two
+mud-turkles! Ye got jes' about ez much life an' sperit ez a couple o'
+old tarripin. Stir yer stumps, bubby," to Luther. "Git yer lantern, an'
+bring yer slow bones along ter aid the off'cer o' the law! An' ye, too,
+my frien' in the winder, ez quiet ez a cat stealin' cream; ye 'pear ter
+be young an' able-bodied. I summons ye ter kem an' aid the off'cer o'
+the law!"</p>
+
+<p>The tallow dip, which had been for some moments sputtering in the
+socket of the candlestick, suddenly flared up with a wide illumination,
+then sunk as suddenly almost to extinction, feebly rose again, and,
+in a gust of wind, was extinguished, leaving a tuft of red sparks
+on the drooping wick, and a pervasive odor of burning grease in the
+room and porch. Perhaps it was because of the brighter light for the
+moment, perhaps because of the keener observation of the officer, whose
+faculties were once more well in hand, but no one else had noticed a
+strange stillness in the figure of Adelicia, as she sat in her wonted
+place on the edge of the floor of the porch, leaning back against the
+post.</p>
+
+<p>"One o' yer darters hev fainted, I b'lieve," he said to Cap'n Lucy.
+"Suthin' ails her." Then, turning away, "Kem on, fellers; mount an' git
+out'n this. We-uns hev been hyar too long now."</p>
+
+<p>As Jasper Larrabee rode away in the little troop toward the scene of
+the disaster, to search for the body of the supposititious Jasper
+Larrabee, his mental faculties began to recover from the torpor of
+surprise which had benumbed them. That cautious self-control which
+sometimes seems an added faculty in a certain type of law-breaker had
+held him mute as he watched the development of events. Now, as he began
+to take cognizance of the disclosures of the evening, he adhered of
+sober intention to the policy he had intuitively adopted. He feared
+the acknowledgment that he had received and harbored Jack Espey, a
+fugitive from justice, more than the acrimonious search of the deputy
+sheriff for the misdeeds of Jasper Larrabee. This, indeed, might result
+in his apprehension for the violation of the revenue laws, and the
+discovery of the moonshiner's lair, and this would mean many years of
+imprisonment; but the other might involve him, and possibly his mother
+as well, in a trial for murder, as accessories after the fact. It might
+be impossible to establish their ignorance of Espey's crime, and their
+lack of connivance in his escape. He had that pervasive terror of the
+law, as of technical and arbitrary construction of crime, common to
+the unlearned. His heart burned with rancor against his whilom friend.
+He would not recognize Espey's share in these ignorant terrors of the
+law. He argued that if his friend had been open with him, he would at
+least have been a free agent in receiving him, have had some voice in
+the degree of responsibility he assumed. As it was, his open-handed
+hospitality had been grossly imposed upon, and as a return he was given
+the choice of the jeopardy of a charge as accessory to a murder, or
+of an infringement of the revenue laws. He realized the whole drama
+as it had been enacted. He understood that Espey, conniving at the
+officer's mistake, and allowing him to suppose him to be Larrabee, had
+thus shielded his own identity as the fugitive from justice whom they
+sought. And this ruse Espey fancied was discovered, when the deputy,
+in his wild horse-play, had facetiously endeavored to handcuff him; he
+had therefore strenuously resisted, and thus had possibly come to his
+death. This possibility did not soften Larrabee toward him; perhaps
+he did not altogether accredit it at once, for death is difficult to
+realize even when a certainty. He dwelt upon his own danger, even more
+upon his mother's possible jeopardy; upon her untiring and laborious
+hospitality; upon his own labors which had rendered such entertainment
+practicable, for the money earned without her knowledge at the still
+went, much of it, to this pious use.</p>
+
+<p>The sharpest sting of ingratitude is often the sense that the giver
+has been a fool. Larrabee harbored a surly grudge against himself as
+he rode silently on, and Luther, uncomprehending his friend's reason
+for not disclosing his identity, and suspecting that Jack Espey was
+the man they sought, was silent too. The loud voices of the others in
+acrimonious criminations and recriminations accented the stillness of
+the night, and the sound of their horses' hoofs as they filed along the
+mountain passes, multiplied by rock and ravine, and far echoes from
+distant heights, might have seemed the march of squadrons of cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>The skies had taken on that unfamiliar aspect of the hours which
+straitly precede the dawn. Far, far, on their pauseless way the
+constellations fared. Stars were low in the west, which on these summer
+nights had seemed the familiars of the meridian. A strange sense
+of loneliness, of silence, pervaded the firmament. The breathless
+pause that heralds the miracle of dawn bated the pulses of nature.
+No more song of cicada, no more stir of wind. Once a meteor, with
+an incongruous irrelevance of effect, shot athwart the sky with its
+gleaming trail as of star-dust; the motion was like a sacrilege in the
+holy stillness and breathlessness of the world.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly in the midst of the myriad scintillations a brilliant
+white jewel was ablaze, which Jasper Larrabee could have sworn was not
+there before; pellucid, splendid, tremulous, a star of stars. He knew
+the skies only as the herder or the shepherd knows them in lonely,
+lowly paths of earth, but even an ignorant man may feel that the
+circuit below is narrow and the ways above are wide, and the heart is
+lifted up. Not the name of one of the stellular glories visible to the
+naked eye could he syllable, but he had marked them all; he was wont
+to dwell for hours upon their contemplation; he knew the contour of
+their most brilliant whorls and scintillating arabesques as he knew
+the intricacies of the woodland ways in the wilderness. He had drawn
+his horse hastily back upon the haunches, and again his eyes sought
+the alignment of the stars as his fancy had marshaled them. There was
+one more,—one that he had never before seen; one unknown to all the
+splendid nights that had ever shone upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The voices of the men patrolling the slope below the point, where they
+had paused, rose excitedly on the still air. The horse was found, he
+gathered vaguely, dead, shot through the brain. The man was gone. The
+officer, in a frenzy of energy, beat the bushes far and near, lest the
+fugitive, wounded and disabled, might have crept away in the midst of
+them, and still lay hidden in the leafy covert. The hour wore away; the
+dawn came on apace, and, with the quest still fruitless, the officer
+presently mounted his horse and rode speedily off, fearing less,
+perchance, the review of his conduct by his superiors in the county
+town than the arbitration of the few citizens of the scantily settled
+region, who might take an inimical view of the disappearance of the
+guide of the jocose officer.</p>
+
+<p>Only when the gray day came with the tremulous wind over the mountains,
+and the craggy ranges grew darkly distinct, and the unpeopled wooded
+valley distinct and vaguely drear, and the deep blue sky faded and was
+colorless, and one by one the stars noiselessly, invisibly slipped away
+without a trace, like some splendid promise never to be fulfilled, did
+Jasper Larrabee turn rein, perplexed and disquieted and greatly awed.
+For in his unlettered ignorance he had never heard of that simple fact
+known to astronomy as a temporary star.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the days that ensued, no trace of the fugitive was developed. Cap'n
+Lucy experienced a certain relief in the fruitless result of the
+extended search instituted by the friends that Espey had made in the
+Cove. In their opinion the conclusion was inevitable that, despite
+the lack of his horse, he had made good his escape, and did not lie
+wounded or dead in the jungle of laurel, awaiting their humane succor,
+or burial at their hands. He was glad that Espey was gone, doubtless
+never to return, and that the matrimonial problem was gone with him.
+He was not quite frank with Adelicia in regard to this expectation.
+Her constitutional hopefulness instantly adopted the general belief of
+Espey's safety as fact, and she fixed her expectant eyes on the future
+with such fidelity of certainty that it seemed they must constrain the
+return she so definitely awaited.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll find out ez them off'cers 'lowed 'twar Jasper Lar'bee, an' never
+knowed they hed <i>him</i>. An' then, uncle Lucy, he won't be 'feared
+ter kem back," she said many times a day.</p>
+
+<p>"Course not," assented Cap'n Lucy. "He'll be hyar afore long, jes' ez
+good lookin 'ez he knows how ter be."</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps a pious fraud, for the girl's despair and grief had been
+so wild that Cap'n Lucy was glad for her optimism to be reasserted on
+whatever terms and to have the pleasant thing in the house once more.</p>
+
+<p>Luther had necessarily been enlightened by the recent events as to the
+sentimental phase of the matter; for Cap'n Lucy had hitherto sedulously
+kept it secret, since he did not favor a fugitive from justice as a
+suitor for his niece, and was determined to break off the affair at
+all hazards. Luther looked with disapproval upon his father's crafty
+methods.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno what ails ye ter make Ad'licia b'lieve ez Espey will kem
+back," he once ventured to say aside to his father. "He air sure ter
+'low ez they never tuk him fur Lar'bee, else he wouldn't hev tried ter
+break away."</p>
+
+<p>"Luther," said Cap'n Lucy, "I hev noticed ez a man air obleeged ter hev
+a powerful strong stommick ter be able ter tell the truth at all times.
+An' ez I git old, I hev sorter got the deespepsy."</p>
+
+<p>The son merely gazed at him with a sort of literal-minded bovine
+stare, as he sought to entertain this statement of the moral effect of
+debility.</p>
+
+<p>"An' then, whenst I war a leetle boy," continued Cap'n Lucy, "I war bit
+by a rattlesnake; an' sometimes whenst I hear myself sayin' sech ez air
+agin the actial fac' it don't s'prise me none, fer I know it air jes'
+a leetle meanderin' o' the venom o' the sarpient in me yit, 'kase, ye
+know, he war a deceiver from the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>What impression the strange and unexpected events had made upon the
+impassive and reserved Julia, none had taken thought to observe. The
+demonstrative, expressive characteristics of the other members of the
+household filled the domestic stage. It was only when the poignancy of
+Adelicia's grief and anxiety had given way to a resolutely patient and
+hopeful waiting, and Cap'n Lucy's vehement interest had subsided into
+a trivial occupation with the passing details of life, that it chanced
+to be noticed that Julia was wont to sit idle at her spinning, the
+thread in one hand, the other lifted as if to regulate the whirl of the
+motionless flax-wheel; her wonderful blue eyes fixed upon the distant
+purple mountains, glimpsed through the parting of the gourd vines above
+the porch; her head, with its smooth plaits of glossy hair, held up and
+alert; some unspoken thought upon her marble face that filled every
+still line with meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye 'pear ter be palsied, Julia," said the unobservant Luther, smoking
+his pipe on the porch one evening. "Ye hain't moved hand or foot fur a
+solid hour."</p>
+
+<p>She started slightly at the sound of his voice, fixing her attention
+on him with obvious effort. Her mind was evidently coming back
+from distant removes, and Adelicia, with vague curiosity, demanded
+suddenly,—</p>
+
+<p>"What air you-uns studyin' 'bout, Julia, whenst ye air lookin' like
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Studyin' an' a-studyin'," said Julia, dropping her hands in her lap
+and leaning back in the chair, her eyes once more turning to the
+high, massive mountains afar off as if they possessed some magnetic
+attraction, "'bout'n whar pore, pore Jack Espey kin be now, an' how
+powerful cur'ous 'twar ez ye wouldn't marry him whenst he axed ye."</p>
+
+<p>The fore-legs of Luther's tilted chair came down to the floor with a
+thump. With a hand on either knee, and the cinders and burning tobacco
+dropping from his pipe unheeded to the floor, he sat fixedly staring at
+his silent sister. To his comprehension she was speaking her mind very
+unequivocally now. Despite the vaunted feminine quickness, Adelicia
+heard in it only personal upbraiding, for a certain remorse had made
+her sensitive on this score, and prone to protest her constraining
+dutifulness.</p>
+
+<p>"I hed uncle Lucy's word agin it!" she exclaimed, with a rising flush
+and angry bright eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Julia slowly shook her head, her eyes, her thoughts, far, far away.
+"I wouldn't hev keered fur no 'uncle Lucy's' word," she declared
+iconoclastically. "I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, dad hisself
+married ter suit his own taste. Leastwise, I ain't never hearn o' no
+old uncle or aunt or dad, or sech kinfolks, ez ondertook ter make a
+ch'ice in marryin' fur him."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, sir," Luther interposed, in a tone of shocked propriety,
+"settin' up hyar an' talkin' by the yard medjure 'bout marryin' an'
+men-folks, an' I'd bet my best heifer that Jack Espey ain't gin
+air one o' ye a single thought sence he lef' hyar. No, nor nare
+'nother man. Ef the truth war knowed, ye hain't got a haffen chance
+apiece,—without it air 'Renzo Taft, down yander at the Lost Time
+mine, an' he can't make out which air the hardest favored 'twixt ye!
+Ye hed both better go ter work. Jack Espey'll never kem back agin. Dad
+jes' say he will ter pledjure Ad'licia. An', Julia, ef ye don't spin
+up that thar truck,"—he pointed with fraternal imperiousness at the
+wheel,—"ye'll be toler'ble scant o' new clothes, an' ye'll look wuss
+like a skeercrow 'n ye do now."</p>
+
+<p>Julia received this taunt to her beauty with the equanimity of one
+whose title is unimpugnable; but Adelicia, all unheeding any subtler
+sense than the obvious meaning his words conveyed, protested against
+even this conjectural banishment of poor Jack Espey. He would come
+back, she declared. He had doubtless found out by this time that he was
+mistaken in supposing the officers cognizant of his true identity, and
+that they were jesting, thinking him still Larrabee. And now that the
+nine days' wonder had blown over, and people were interested in it no
+more, and so much was going on in the Cove to usurp public attention,
+she looked for him any time just to slip back in his old place. "I
+never kem out on the porch but I look ter see him in that thar cheer
+whar Luther be. I hev 'peared ter see him thar."</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't the way I 'pear ter see him," said Julia suddenly. "I
+dreampt he war a-kemin' on his claybank horse, a-lopin' down the road,
+a-wavin' his big white hat at we-uns like he done that day he kilt the
+wolf an' fotched home the pelt. That's the way I view him ever sence I
+dreampt that dream."</p>
+
+<p>"Then ye hev the nightmare," said Luther, surly and helpless to stem
+the tide of sentiment, "an' ye hain't got no mo' sense sleepin' than
+wakin'; fur that claybank roan will lope down these rocky roads no mo',
+partly through bein' dead, an' partly through old Miser Miggins hevin'
+gone down the gorge an' tuk off the critter's shoes. Ye better content
+yerself with the claybank roan ez a nightmare, fur ye ain't goin' ter
+view Espey an' the critter a-lopin' round no mo', no matter how much be
+a-goin' on in the Cove."</p>
+
+<p>For the Cove was indeed in a phenomenal ferment. To the astonishment of
+the leisurely and dilatory mountaineers, the work on the new hotel had
+begun, and was being pushed forward on parallels inconceivable to their
+ideas of progress.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy, his mind recalled to his more immediate personal interests,
+watched it with a sort of avidity of observation from the porch of
+his own house, where he was wont to sit with his pipe. His sneer, his
+silent laugh, his acrid enigmatical phrases, grew frequent as the
+blasting for the cellars proceeded, and the flying fragments of rock,
+which had elicited such formidable prognostication, fell far short of
+his cabin or his inclosures, indeed seldom coming to the ground beyond
+the jungle of laurel at the base of the great natural terrace, the site
+of the work.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't git the edzact range, Luther," he would say in affected
+surprise; or, sarcastically, "This hyar Kenn'ston would hev made a
+powerful spry gunner in the old war times,—sech a eye for distances!"</p>
+
+<p>Adelicia, observing the circumstance, also remembering Kenniston's
+expressions of fear for their safety, only saw cause for gratulation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kenn'ston 'lowed ez we-uns mought hev ter move an' leave home
+whilst the blastin' war goin' on!" she exclaimed. "An' he made a
+powerful mistake, uncle Lucy."</p>
+
+<p>"So he did," said Cap'n Lucy, with a twinkling eye. "He air a great man
+fur movin' ginerally. He b'lieves in movin' things."</p>
+
+<p>Luther, remembering the peripatetic corner-stone and the impending
+processioning, understood the allusion, but he had a foreboding of
+trouble, and his heart sunk within him. He was glad when the blasting
+was concluded, which it was shortly; for he feared a premature or
+ill-advised accusation, and it seemed to him that the meaning of those
+thinly veiled sarcasms must presently be revealed to others as well as
+to himself. The foundations were laid, and the framing of the building
+followed promptly; soon the gaunt skeleton of the hotel, an outline
+of modern frivolity and summer pleasuring and flimsy vastness, was
+incongruously imposed upon the silent, solemn mountain behind it, with
+the rugged, austere crags below it; with the unfamiliar mists shifting
+through it and drifting along corridor and ball-room and scaling the
+tower; with its prophetic shadow, like a line engraving, flung by the
+moonlight on the dark surface of the top of the dense forest below.
+More than once furious mountain storms assailed it; but its builder's
+philosophy had taken account of these inimical forces, and it held fast.</p>
+
+<p>The unbroken mountain wind, however, played havoc with the light
+shanties of the workmen in this exposed situation on the promontory of
+rock, and when rebuilt the camp was moved below the terrace, down in a
+sort of gorge, shielded and safe, albeit the distance from the work was
+a matter of some inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>They proved civil folk, the town mechanics, and answered gravely
+many a queer question put from a vast distance in civilization and
+sophistication, albeit at arm's length from the natural body; for from
+far and near the mountaineers visited the unfinished structure. Often
+a wagon with a yoke of oxen would stand, the patient beasts humbly
+a-drowse, for an hour or so in the sandy road, while the jeans-clad
+owner would patrol the new building, solemnly stepping from timber to
+timber over the depths of the cellar, or with the utmost simplicity
+of assurance make a critical circuit about the whole, and offer
+suggestions looking toward improvements. Sometimes the visitor was of
+shyer gentry: a red fox was glimpsed early one morning, with brush in
+air, speeding along the joists of the ball-room; it might seem they
+would never know the weight of aught more graceful or agile; a deer,
+doubtless a familiar of the springs, was visible once, leaping wildly
+down the rocks in great elastic bounds, evidently hitherto unaware
+of the invaders of these preëmpted sylvan wilds. Others, too, of the
+ancient owners of the soil came on a more prosaic quest, but in the
+dead hour of darkness or the light of the midnight moon. A young bear,
+who had long harbored predatory designs upon a certain fat shoat, a
+denizen of that pig-pen of Cap'n Lucy's upon which the owner and Mr.
+Kenniston looked with such differing eyes, was brought to a pause,
+in a cautious reconnoitre, by the fragments of food, scraps from the
+workmen's dinner, which might be found by nosing about among the
+shavings. Perhaps it was this alone that led him about the angles and
+turns of the building; but as he went between the sparse substance of
+the timbers and their scant linear shadows that, in the sorcery of the
+moonlight, appeared hardly less real, he seemed as censorious a critic
+as Cap'n Lucy himself. Sometimes he would pause in his clumsy shamble,
+and, with the moonlight a-glitter in his small eyes, lift himself on
+his hind feet and gaze about the solitary building, indescribably
+melancholy in the loneliness and the wan, pensive sheen; grin with his
+white teeth, a-gleam with a sarcastic, snarling contempt; fall to all
+fours again; and, shrugging his heavy shoulders to his ears, scud along
+with the aspect of clumsy sportiveness common to his kind.</p>
+
+<p>It chanced that a light, portable forge had been in use that day,
+in the process of the work; the foreman had himself looked to the
+extinction of the fire, albeit the scene of the operation was upon the
+solid rock, and far from any possible communication with the building.
+The wind could never have turned over the low apparatus set in the
+hollow of the ledges, but the bear could, and did. Then he sat down
+suddenly to lick his singed paw, for the metal was still hot. The fuel
+had been charcoal; it still sustained heat, and even combustion. There
+was a steady spark in a few of the scattered cinders, quickening,
+reddening, as the eager night air touched them. The shavings amongst
+which they had fallen, further down the slope, were slightly astir
+for a moment; then a timorous blaze sprang up along the more tenuous,
+lace-like, curling edges.</p>
+
+<p>How the destructive element fared, whether by slow, insidious, fearful
+degrees, as of conscious but furtive evil intent, or as animated by
+a wild, tumultuous, riotous impulse, more and more rapacious with
+impunity, as of some turbulent, maddened thing escaping control, none
+but Bruin might say, for, save the impassive, neutral night, the event
+had no other witness. Before the flames had fairly taken hold of the
+studs and joists his cowardly fears had gained the ascendency over his
+gluttony. More than once he paused, in gnawing his trophy of a beef
+bone, to growl fiercely, his remonstrant, surprised eyes illuminated
+by this alien flicker. As the skies began to redden, and the pale
+moonlight to fail, and the great massive mountains to appear, dark and
+weird, from the deep and silent seclusions of the night, he left his
+booty and retreated toward the verge of the woods, pausing now and
+again in the dun-colored shadows, all veined with shifting pulsations
+of red and white, to look with eyes aglow, reflecting the fire, upon
+its ravages, growling fiercely at times; then, with his recurrent
+fears, setting out once more on a lumbering run.</p>
+
+<p>Perchance the reflection flung upon the clouds, all lurid and alight,
+before which the stars shrank away invisible, apprised the traveler
+journeying in far-away coves and ranges, or the herder of the lofty
+solitudes of the balds, or the hunter in distant coverts, of the
+disaster in progress before the nearest neighbors were roused. The
+angry glare of the conflagration seemed to pervade the world, like the
+vivid searching terrors of the red day of doom, when the workmen, down
+in their sheltered nook beneath the crags and the dense shadows of
+the forest, discovered the untoward fate of their handiwork. Into the
+crevices of the batten shutters of Cap'n Lucy's glassless windows the
+keen rays at last pierced, like some sinister, pestilential, dazzling
+sunburst, illuminating the homely scenes with an uncanny flare, and
+displacing the broken dreams with a terrified awakening.</p>
+
+<p>Naught could be done. It might be accounted a spectacle in some
+sort,—to watch the airy acrobatic feats of the lithe flames leaping
+from beam to brace, from joist to rafter, of the three tall stories,
+seeming of vaster proportions with all their detail illustrated in
+these living tints upon the subsidiary, flickering night. There was a
+series of wild, dancing, tangled blazes a-whirl in the lengths of the
+ball-room, white and red and orange and blue, an uncanny rout. High up
+on the battlemented turret a vermilion banner flaunted suddenly out to
+the moon, and then it was struck amidst a myriad of sparks, and the
+echoes clamored out against the crashing of the tower.</p>
+
+<p>For days thereafter the smoking, charred ruin was the terminus of many
+a pilgrimage amongst the simple folk of the region, who had never
+beheld wreckage on such a scale. The idle workmen hovered about it,
+dispirited and anxious, awaiting orders. There was much mysterious
+talk of incendiarism, and a rumor pervaded the Cove that the matter
+had already been reported in this light to the authorities, and that
+Rodolphus Ross was on his way to the scene of action.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy, seated on the rocks about the limpid spring, at a
+comfortable distance from the hot, smouldering mass, smoked his pipe,
+as he contemplated it, in more placidity of mind than had for some
+time fallen to his share. He was not a man who would deliberately
+seek to injure his enemy in person or property; but Cap'n Lucy was
+eminently human, and he could but admire the wisdom of the uncovenanted
+dispensations of Providence, through which Mr. Kenniston's game was, as
+he conceived it, so handsomely blocked. He had a most buoyant sense of
+irresponsibility in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't so much as once spoke to the Lord 'bout'n that man," he said
+privately to Luther, as if his prayers must needs have been inflammable.</p>
+
+<p>He was not the only one of the spectators who thought, in view of the
+magnitude of the ruin, that the whole project was necessarily ended,
+and who looked on Kenniston's invasion of the Cove as a thing already
+of the past. It was a matter of very general surprise when the "town
+man" suddenly reappeared upon the scene in a bounding fury, and, in
+the metaphorical phrase of the mountaineers, "primed and loaded for
+b'ar." They little dreamed how literal a reason he had to hold a grudge
+against Bruin.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The season seemed full of menace to the troglodytes of the Lost Time
+mine. The work went on about the still as hitherto, but with added
+precaution—various and vain, for the limits of their ingenuity had
+already been reached—and with a heavy sense of presage. The old moods
+that had prevailed here were gone, whether of brag and bluster, or wild
+hilarity, or jocose horse-play, or the leisurely and languid spinning
+of yarns to help the hour to pass. Even the industry of old Zeb Copley,
+the veteran of the force, was mitigated by sudden long pauses and a
+disposition to hearken fearfully for unaccustomed noises, and by eager
+and earnest urgency that the work should be pretermitted for a time.
+The youngest moonshiner of all felt it a dreary world to look at with
+sober eyes, and, despite his morose abstinence and surly staidness, a
+less discerning judgment than Taft's might have foreseen the brevity
+of this enforced drought and the danger of a relapse, with all his
+reminiscences at his thick tongue's end, were he free to fare about the
+world without. Espey's vacant place was ever significant of the reason
+for it, and Larrabee would sit for hours brooding over the untoward
+chances of his own fortunes; his gloomy eyes on the ever-glinting line
+of light playing through the furnace door, his motionless pipe full
+only of dead ashes in his heedless hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye air a toler'ble dangersome neighbor," Taft remarked one day; for
+the complication of the mistaken identity had come to his ears during
+a sortie from his stronghold, and the threats of the deputy sheriff
+against the supposed Jasper Larrabee coupled with his suspicions as to
+moonshining.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee looked up fiercely. "Move, then, ef ye don't like yer
+neighbor."</p>
+
+<p>He was like a fox run to earth; he had no further resource. His
+one idea of dealing with the law was by evasion and subterfuge and
+concealment. He had no remote expectation of justification. By a series
+of deceits he had persuaded his mother to go on an immediate visit to
+a bedridden great-aunt who lived in an adjoining county. The horse
+she rode belonged to a neighbor of the aged relative, who chanced to
+be in this locality, and who was taking home with him a led horse, a
+recent purchase. Jasper himself was to go after her in the indefinite
+period when the corn should be laid by and her own horse at leisure.
+The infant conqueror of the rickets went with her, mounted behind her,
+his chubby arms stretched at their utmost length clasping her gaunt
+waist, and with as unchastened a vainglory and pride in the earnest of
+this great journey and the envious wonderment of the other children as
+if his bourne were the north pole. Thus Mrs. Larrabee set out, with
+the grim-visaged neighbor of the aunt in advance, and with a frisky,
+dapper colt—already <i>en rapport</i> with the pilgrim youth by reason
+of mutual juvenility, irresponsibility, and frivolity—kicking up his
+admired heels in the rear. And Henrietta Timson reigned in her stead
+under the queer little sylvan roof that seemed no more made with hands
+than the cups of a triple acorn.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that Jasper Larrabee was roofless for the nonce, save for
+the strata of the Lost Time mine.</p>
+
+<p>That Lorenzo Taft would fain be rid of him he saw grimly enough, and
+this he grimly refused to heed. He had incurred the suspicion of
+moonshining by reason of Espey's choosing to wear his name for an hour
+or so. He had incurred it through no fault of his own. The infringement
+of the law was common to them all, and involved a danger which they
+should share.</p>
+
+<p>At all events, there would be nobody to answer for harboring the
+fugitive, should Espey's true identity become known to the law, and
+Rodolphus Ross find his way again to the little house on its airy
+perch. Taft had thought it wise that Larrabee, already tainted with
+suspicion in the mind of the officer of the law, and thus a source of
+great danger, should follow Espey to parts unknown. But the world, to
+the unlodged of earth, is doubtless of aspect like the face of the
+waters to the dove when first loosed from the ark, without foothold or
+friendly sign.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee replied even to the innuendo:—</p>
+
+<p>"Go whar? An' leave you-uns a-cuddled down hyar so snug in the groun'
+that the devil hisse'f will sca'cely nose ye out on the Jedgmint Day?
+Naw, sir. I see nuthin' but resk fur me on all sides, but less hyar
+'n ennywhars. I hev stood in ez much danger ez enny of ye. I hev tuk
+my sheer o' the resk 'thout wingin', but I won't be kicked out like a
+stray dog an' gin up ter the law 'kase you-uns air 'feared 'Dolphus
+Ross 'lows I be a moonshiner. He can't find or hear o' me hyar. I got
+ez much right hyar ez you-uns, 'Renzo Taft. I own my sheer in the
+business, an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."</p>
+
+<p>The other two moonshiners, Copley and young Dan Sykes, regarded him
+askance and with sullen eyes. This minority might seem to be fraught
+with no small danger. His chief fear lest Espey should be overtaken,
+and the details of his refuge with the Larrabees be elicited, involving
+himself and his mother as accessories to the crime, he never mentioned.
+It so absorbed his thoughts, however, that for a time he did not
+observe a symptom of the antagonism of his confrères which deeply
+augured its seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>A shaft hard by the still-room, if such the nook where the apparatus
+was worked might be called, which was sunk into the very deepest
+limits of the mine, came near relieving them of their perplexity on
+this score, one day. Larrabee's foot slipped in the rotting refuse of
+pomace on the verge while he was handling the bags of grain, and as he
+came heavily to the floor, barely saving himself, he saw like a flash
+a sudden irradiation of hope on the flushed, foolish face of the boy,
+a keen expectation in Taft's eyes, and even in the elderly drudge's
+wooden wrinkles a sort of disappointed resignation as he scrambled to
+his feet, that daunted him more than the immediate danger.</p>
+
+<p>His precious book he read no more by the light of the furnace
+flicker, after this. Not that he now brooded over his cares, but his
+watchfulness never flagged. Whether the accident suggested the idea to
+Taft, or whether it were the flimsy fiction of the inimical atmosphere
+and his own alert apprehensiveness, Larrabee thought that he was given
+several opportunities to take leave inadvertently of the world. Once,
+in cleaning a pistol said to be unloaded, the ball in the last chamber
+whizzed sharply by his head. Again and again he was set to handle the
+heavy bags of grain on the slippery verge of the shaft. After a time
+a new cause of alarm was developed. Despite his crafty vigilance in
+his determination to remain at all hazards, he did not notice, until
+it became very marked, their unwillingness that he should leave the
+still at all, and Taft's expertness in disallowing every pretext. The
+truth dawned upon him at last, with its most valid reason. Although
+they would be glad were he to quit the country, yet, since his
+permanent absence could not be compassed, any chance excursion into
+the Cove or neighborhood was fraught with danger, as he might be seen,
+identified as Larrabee, and followed by the man who had spotted him
+as a moonshiner to Taft's house, where, spending days and nights, the
+mystery would soon be unfolded.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee came upon this discovery with a suffocating sense as of a
+prisoner. Instantly he was possessed by a wild urgency for the outer
+air and the freedom beyond that seemed as if its own impetus might
+break through the barriers of a thousand feet of the solid ground. He
+almost felt the wind blow in the strength of his keen desire; and when
+he set himself instantly to compass his deliverance, eagerness outran
+tact in his first demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, 'Renzo," he said in a cheerful, incidental voice, strikingly
+at variance with the gruff tones that had of late served him in the
+absolutely essential colloquies between them touching the work.</p>
+
+<p>Taft's keen senses instantaneously apprehended the difference. He
+glanced around with a quick eye, illumined by the feeble white gleam of
+the lantern in his hand, for he had but just emerged from the tunnel.
+He did not simulate. He looked as he felt, interrogative, expectant, as
+he sat down on the side of a barrel without pausing to extinguish the
+lantern. Its pallid glow suffused his florid face and yellow beard, and
+brought out the tint and effect of translucency in his blue eyes. They
+were fixed steadily on Larrabee, who was suddenly out of countenance.
+He had intended a more casual disclosure of his project than the
+impending interview permitted,—a sort of unpremeditated announcement
+of his determination, as of being free to do as he would. He felt
+that his face had changed, and he knew that the change was noted. A
+new rush of alarm seemed to surge through his nerves. For, guarded as
+Taft evidently was, he too had betrayed somewhat the importance which
+he attached to the plans, even the words, of his employee, or his
+partner, or his prisoner, as Larrabee might be variously regarded. It
+daunted Larrabee: the latent ferocity that lurked in Taft's character,
+repudiated in his burly good comradeship of manner and in his florid
+face,—save for a certain beaklike outline of the nose that gave a
+rapacious, cruel intimation,—was instinctively known to the young
+mountaineer, who was not skilled in the craft of a knowledge of his
+kind, and had no habit of analysis. He somehow flinched to be made
+anew so definitely aware that he was a factor, and a troublous one, in
+Taft's schemes. He felt no match for the elder tactician. He wished
+he had gone long before, when the moonshiner sought so openly to be
+rid of him. At all events, he would go now, and without chicanery or
+subterfuge. He blurted out his plan, which he had intended to trench
+upon with great care and circumspection, and which should have appeared
+a natural evolution and outcome of the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"'Renzo," he said, with a distinct abatement of his former genial
+inflections, but still with a pliable, amiable tone,—and for his life
+he could not suppress an intonation of appeal,—"'Renzo, I'm a-studyin'
+'bout takin' yer advice. Ye air old'n me an' hev got mo' 'speriunce
+an'"—</p>
+
+<p>"What advice?" Taft interrupted succinctly. The sentence seemed very
+short in his big, mellow, sonorous voice; it was like a key struck
+inadvertently on some great organ; the heavy vibrations in themselves
+seemed to promise continuity.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout goin' out'n the Cove. I been studyin' it all out, an' I 'low
+'twould be safer fur all consarned ef I war ter cut an' run."</p>
+
+<p>Taft remained silent. His illumined eyes were glassy and fixed;
+somehow, the absorbed, introspective thought seemed to eliminate their
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' cl'ar out," said Larrabee, as if in explanation; he could not
+repress the manner of asking a permission, although he raged inwardly
+at himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Whar'bouts?" Taft's great voice boomed out once more as it were
+inadvertently.</p>
+
+<p>"Ter Buncombe County in old Car'liny, whar I got some kinfolks
+a-livin'," said Larrabee. "That's what I war a-studyin' 'bout," he
+added, still striving for a more incidental effect.</p>
+
+<p>The furnace door was open, for the fire was low, the still but just
+emptied, and the work intermitted for the nonce. The bed of red coals
+filled the place with a dull glow. In its dreamy light he saw suddenly
+the broad, flabby face of Dan Sykes, the youngest of the moonshiners,
+distorted with silent mirth, like the face of a caricature. He sat upon
+a billet of wood in a lowly attitude, frog-like with his upturned head
+which was supported by his two hands, his elbows resting on his knees
+drawn high under his chin. His distended grin of evident delight in
+Taft's answer showed that it was not unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, law, Jasper," exclaimed Taft,—but the unctuous tone would not
+mix with the lie of the intent, and floated in its midst like oil
+on water,—"I couldn't make out <i>now</i>, jes' <i>now</i>, 'thout
+you-uns. I be short-handed now, 'count o' Espey, an' I got word ter-day
+from the cross-roads fur two barrels o' corn juice quick ez it kin be
+got thar. Yer kin in Buncombe,"—his eye twinkled, for he suspected
+the kin in Buncombe to be of that airy folk known only to dreams and
+deceits,—"they'll keep. Ye'll hev jes' ter put off goin' fur a leetle
+spell,—bein' so short-handed, ye know."</p>
+
+<p>"What air they aimin' ter pay fur them bar'ls?" demanded Larrabee
+calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he drew the conversation aside to the commercial aspects of the
+situation, as if he acquiesced in Taft's view, and recurred to his
+proposition no more. He controlled his voice, but his heart sunk like
+lead. He had not dreamed but that they would be glad to let him go if
+he quitted the region. He had not even feared that this resource was
+in jeopardy. He could not imagine the turn of events which must needs
+preclude his flight abroad, as well as his familiar appearance in his
+wonted haunts about the Cove. He cursed his fatuity again and again
+that he had not escaped when he could. What were the dangers of the
+world at large in comparison with the mysterious menace that environed
+him here? He dwelt continuously on these thoughts for a time, and it
+was only gradually, and chiefly by reason of Sykes's leering grin and
+secretly gleeful eye, that he became aware that this Benjamin amongst
+them had been specially deputed to watch him. In the days of his own
+terrors of the world without, he had ceased to go out for his meals or
+to sleep. He subsisted on "snacks" which Taft fetched down from his own
+table,—which abstraction caused no surprise to his small housekeeper,
+for Miss Cornelia Taft had long since exhausted her capacities for
+astonishment at any prodigies of food consumption on the part of her
+father, who took such big bites in comparison with old Mrs. Jiniway's
+custom,—and he slept at broken intervals, as his uneasy thoughts
+permitted, on the empty meal sacks in the shadow of the piles of
+barrels. This life continued now of necessity, as formerly of choice.
+Larrabee's apparent acquiescence, he had a vague idea, surprised and
+perturbed the others. They were evidently prepared for resistance
+and harsh measures. They had lost their balance in some sort; their
+attitude was like that of one who makes ready for a running leap,
+and stops short of the jump. Thus, their unsteady, balked surprise
+bore scant relation to their persistent, unchanged purpose, for their
+watch upon him was not for one moment relaxed. Even in the network
+of wrinkles about the sunken eyes of the elder distiller, a sort of
+staggered, dumfounded suspicion expressed itself, in conjunction with
+an observant heed of Larrabee's every movement which hitherto would not
+have been allowed to absorb so much of the attention he was wont to
+bestow on the still.</p>
+
+<p>At first the discovery came near to breaking down Larrabee's reserve of
+endurance. His heart thumped so loudly, so heavily, that he sometimes
+thought they must hear its treacherous clamors as he sat and smoked in
+the dull red glow, assuming a calm and somnolent, satisfied aspect.
+Occasionally, with that terrible sense of the key turned, the door
+closed, the realization of restricted liberty, so overwhelming to the
+free habit of the mountaineer and the woodsman, with a charter to
+wander as wide as the wilderness, the blood would surge to his head,
+the copper boiler spin round and round, his companions slowly wheel
+about in that dim space of shadow and light; and he thought he lost
+consciousness at these times. But always when he came to himself he
+was sitting as before, calmly smoking in his wonted place, seeming
+a trifle disposed to shirk his work, perchance; and latterly he had
+begun to drink heavily, as it were upon the sly. He could not have
+said how the idea had come to him: it was not gradual; the scheme
+was full fledged in an instant. He knew that his every movement was
+under surveillance, and that he was under the special guard of the
+young drunkard, who had been longer sober now, perhaps, than for many
+a month. Dan Sykes watched with glistening eyes Larrabee's furtive
+hand reaching for the jug of whiskey, the trick of the hasty swallow
+aside, and presently Larrabee had a companion in his covert potations.
+He trembled lest the young fellow's scanty powers of self-restraint
+should not be adequate to conceal long enough to serve his plan the
+swift ravages of drink in his recent abstinence. He seemed insatiable
+and frantically keen of thirst, and the necessity of concealing his
+indulgence from Taft, who had evidently sent forth some fiat against
+it, developed an almost incredible deftness of craft. On the day that
+the liquor was barreled and removed, Sykes had been drinking almost
+without cessation. His share in the work was scant, his duties as guard
+serving in substitution. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because of
+the absorption in the enterprise, neither of the two elder moonshiners
+noticed his condition; and indeed he had become singularly skilled
+in assuming a sort of veneer of sobriety. It passed muster in this
+instance.</p>
+
+<p>Taft got away early in the night with his load, taking note,
+apparently, of nothing beyond some extra hazard of the enterprise, as
+Larrabee gathered from the caution with which he loaded his revolvers
+and his frequent conferences aside with Copley, who enjoyed his special
+confidence, being his near kinsman as well as coadjutor. The barrels
+were to be concealed in the wagon under bags of feathers, dried fruit,
+ginseng, and other strictly rural commodities of barter. Two barrels of
+innocent and saccharine sorghum found themselves, too, in the unholy
+company of those barrels that the still had furnished forth. It was
+somewhat difficult to make out the load. Copley was eager for it to be
+off, notwithstanding, but Taft persisted until all the probabilities
+had been satisfied. There was much passing back and forth in the
+tunnel; through its long lengths Larrabee could hear the commotion
+in the room beneath the store. When the preparations were completed
+at last, he knew as well as if he had seen it how the great white
+canvas-covered wagon looked, standing with its two stanch mules before
+the door of the store, under the early dusky night sky and the burly
+overhanging purple heights, the yellow light streaming out from the
+open door upon it, and all the cheerful bustle of departure rife as it
+were in the very air. Taft came back at the last moment for his coat.
+As he swung himself alertly into it, and crushed his big hat down on
+his big yellow head, he had all the breezy impetus of one who is about
+to start on a pleasant and successful journey.</p>
+
+<p>"All loaded!" he cried cheerfully. "A kentry merchant a-goin' ter buy
+goods can't be too keerful—oughter take along all the gear he kin ter
+trade—ha! ha! ha! Good-by! Take keer o' yerse'fs!"</p>
+
+<p>And thus he strode out with his light, elastic tread. Larrabee listened
+as it beat on the dirt path, and then to the echoes that duplicated its
+progress, till it ceased to sound.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the void about the circle was not without melancholy
+intimations, the normal incident of departure, whether it be regretted
+or cause for gratulation. Perhaps because of the sudden disordered
+quiet and loneliness in the quitted scene, the unoccupied mind must
+needs always reach forward into the unknown journeyings, meeting in
+speculation the varied events denied to the home-abiding. Larrabee sat
+still for a time in the low red glow of the furnace fire, exchanging
+now and again an incidental comment with his companions on the subject
+of the journey and its chances. The intervals of silence grew longer;
+the shadows gathered and deepened; the younger man's head occasionally
+nodded grotesquely in sleep, but more than once, as Larrabee was about
+to rise to his feet, he saw in the obscurity the large bloodshot eyes
+opened and fixed soberly upon him. He had waited long; long for the
+certainty that Taft would not return on some forgotten errand; long
+for the drunken sleep that must needs overcome the inimical vigilance
+of the young moonshiner. He could wait no longer. With an abrupt,
+shrill cry like that of a savage panther, he flung himself upon his
+elder companion. Copley was a man of powerful physique, and his every
+muscle was developed by the heavy labor in which it was exercised. In
+his undiminished strength his age gave no advantage to his adversary,
+whose slight bulk he might have flung from him with a single arm but
+for the surprise and suddenness of the attack in which he was borne to
+the ground. All Larrabee's strength hardly sufficed to hold him there
+for a moment. There was a fierce struggle; a pistol ball whizzed by
+Larrabee's head, and the narrow precincts were filled with the echoes
+and with Copley's hoarse calls upon Sykes for help. The young fellow
+rose in response, stupidly echoing the cries of his own name, took
+one tottering step forward, and fell like a log, flabby, nerveless,
+helpless, on the floor. Larrabee wondered afterward that it could all
+be so quickly done. It was by virtue of surprise, desperation, sleight
+of hand, deftness, and quickness rather than by strength or courage. A
+meal bag served as a gag, and a rope, used in transporting the heavy
+barrels up the steep incline to the store, to pinion the arms and
+shackle the feet. Larrabee was almost exhausted by the capture of the
+first prisoner, and it was perhaps auspicious for his freedom that
+the young drunkard, beyond an ill-directed blow or two, could make no
+resistance. The rope was made fast around the solid masonry of the
+furnace; and as Larrabee contemplated his work, he felt sure that the
+two prisoners, one yet vainly struggling, the other already sleeping
+the sleep of the very drunk, would find no means of deliverance till
+Taft's return the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again in his durance Larrabee had prefigured how swift would
+be his flight along the tunnel to the free outer air. Now he feebly
+plodded, and trembled, and faltered, and again went groping along
+the densely black way, essaying to keep a straight line, but feeling
+himself continually touching the wall, now on the right, and again on
+the left, in his zigzag course. Once he paused with an alert start. A
+sound of human voices had struck his ear, and at the merest possibility
+that his escape was not complete, certain, every flaccid, exhausted
+muscle was tense again. He lifted up his head, hardly breathing, that
+he might listen, but heard only the uncontrolled motion of his own
+heart plunging like an unruly horse. All else was silent in the black
+stillness of the deeps of the earth, save for the slight purling of the
+thread of a stream which farther on intersected the tunnel. No stir,
+no sound from the still-room, his late prison-house, where his jailers
+lay bound hand and foot; and yet he had thought he heard voices—human
+voices—words—he could almost have sworn it. And suddenly the sound
+came again. This time he recognized it,—louder than its custom, more
+distinct, for he had heard it before,—the sound of the strange,
+unexplained voices that at long intervals were wont to reverberate
+along the tunnel of the Lost Time mine, and that were accounted by
+the moonshiners echoes from their own wrangles or mirth or talk as
+they toiled. He was certain that it did not come now from the still;
+his fear that his work had been slack, and that his comrades were
+liberated, was without foundation, but an earthly rational fear is a
+wonderful exorcist of a ghostly terror. Otherwise, when he thought
+of it afterward, he felt that he must have been struck dead with the
+horror of it, when he suddenly heard, close at hand, the sound dulled
+by the dense medium of the earth, a word of command, as it were, in a
+queer, strained, false-ringing voice, and then the regular strokes of
+a pick cleaving the earth with a workmanlike steadiness and precision.
+His blood ran cold; for his credulity harbored no doubts. It was the
+sound of the drowned miners, lost in the flooded shafts, still vainly
+digging the graves that the niggard earth denied them. The thought
+mended his speed; he flew like a shuttlecock from side to side of the
+narrow passage, where he could but grope, for the lack of a lantern;
+and although he often put forth his hands expecting to touch the boards
+of the partition at the further end, he thrust into his palms a score
+of the hairy splinters of the reverse side of the rude puncheons long
+before he could have reasonably expected to reach his goal. He observed
+none of the precautions and silence common to the moonshiners in their
+exits from the still; and indeed the feat was hardly expected to be
+attempted in the dense darkness. He dropped one of the boards, and the
+deep, cavernous, clamorous echo coming up from the hollow vaults below
+almost overwhelmed him, as it resounded again and again. He had lost
+control of his nerves. He stumbled over the empty boxes and barrels in
+the room beneath the store, tumbled up the ladder, and as he clambered
+from the door beneath the counter he realized for the first time that
+the room was built, as were many of the meaner cabins of the region,
+without a window, depending on the door for ventilation and light. This
+was a matter of precaution with Taft, and being a not uncommon feature
+in the district occasioned no surprise; but Larrabee trembled as he
+remembered that it was Taft's cautious habit to lock the door when
+he himself was not in the store. Feeling that the bars were in place
+against the battens, he was apprised that it had been thus secured
+by the worthies down at the still, and perchance the key was now in
+Copley's pocket. His only resource would be to retrace his way, all the
+toil and risk of his escape to be repeated. But no, the bolt turned
+in his hand, and as he stepped into the passage outside his eyes were
+dazzled almost to blindness by a tallow dip blazing in the hand of
+little Cornelia Taft, summoned by the noise to investigate its source.
+Behind her, looking over her head, was Joe's round, careless, plump
+face. Larrabee was little less staggered by the monition that there
+might be other persons at hand in the house than by the expression
+of Cornelia's prim, disapproving, unfriendly, intelligent little
+countenance. The next instant he cared for neither; a salient change
+in the aspect of the cabin claimed his attention. The open passage
+between the two rooms had been boarded up, and a stout door fitted in,
+barred and bolted, on which gleamed a strong new lock. There was no key
+visible. He gazed at the lock with greedy eyes, silent, till the girl's
+question had been twice repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Me—doin' hyar? Oh, I been doin' some work fur yer dad," he said,
+more at ease, for he had seen her occasionally as he came and went,
+presumably in the character of customer, and he detected recognition in
+her calm and non-committal countenance. "I got shut up in thar,—mought
+hev been noddin',—an' I war 'feared the door war locked." He advanced
+upon the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye can't git out'n that one," said the little girl coolly; "hit's
+locked on the outside, an' dad hev goned away ter the cross-roads with
+the key in his pocket."</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee's first impulse was to try his strength to burst it open, and
+once more that salutary monition of the probable presence of others in
+the house controlled him. He turned toward the door of the opposite
+room, partly to settle this doubt, and partly to discover—it had never
+before occurred to him to notice—whether it had a window. The room was
+vacant, and his eager eyes ranged the walls in vain for an aperture.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like a trap," he muttered, as he sunk exhausted into a chair.
+"What ails 'Renzo ter lock up the house an' make off with the key, an'
+leave you-uns inside by yerse'fs?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>The two children had followed him into the room. Joe stood by the
+door, holding by the frame, swaying back and forth, attempting some
+distortion of attitude impossible to the human configuration; but the
+little girl had seated herself staidly in a chair opposite, and showed
+herself not averse to conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"'Kase thar be sech a lot o' strange, idle folks in the Cove," said the
+prim Miss Cornelia, with an expression of strong disapprobation.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee could not restrain an exclamation of surprise. It was indeed
+like a new world, the familiar Cove, so long he had been shut out of it.</p>
+
+<p>"What folks?" he asked succinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"Them ez hev been building the new hotel," said Sis. "Them, in course."</p>
+
+<p>"What they doin' now? Ain't they buildin'?" he hazarded tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw,"—the small Cornelia Taft pursed up her lips
+contemptuously,—"jes' a-roamin' round the Cove in gangs, a-foolin' an'
+a-idlin', an', my sakes, a-drinkin' whiskey, thick ez bees!"</p>
+
+<p>A new light was breaking in on Larrabee. Taft had at first desired
+that he should leave the Cove,—slip away quietly; now, since it was
+infested with a troop of scattered workmen, apparently out of a job,
+all of whom had doubtless spent an idle hour agape over the story
+of the supposed Jasper Larrabee, the last nine days' wonder of the
+Cove,—the facetious freak of the pretended arrest, the miraculous
+escape of the fall from the cliffs, the mysterious disappearance, the
+suspicion of moonshining, and the threatened vengeance of the deputy
+sheriff,—it was scarcely probable that he could get away without
+exciting notice which might lead to recognition, pursuit, and arrest.
+He was safer at the still,—this he himself admitted now,—far safer in
+the depths of the earth; except, indeed, for Taft and his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you-uns see the fire?" demanded Joe suddenly, still writhing and
+twisting against the door frame. "<i>I</i> did!" in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye wouldn't ef I hedn't a-woke ye up," said Sis, with acerbity. "I
+'low ye didn't see much nohows, bein' so sleepy-headed."</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee sat looking in surprise from one to the other, his questions
+anticipated by their eager relish of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad never seen nuthin'!" cried the boy triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad wouldn't b'lieve thar war a fire till he went an' viewed the
+cinders of the hotel," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>The hotel! A sudden suspicion smote Larrabee, a recollection of
+the threat to burn the building which had originated amongst the
+moonshiners before a stone was laid in mortar or a timber lifted. He
+did the craft injustice in this instance; Taft and his associates
+had no part in the conflagration. But with Espey out of control, and
+Larrabee touched with the suspicion of moonshining, a chance word might
+fix upon the distillers this far more serious crime known to them both
+to have already been broached here. There was much reason for his
+detention,—too much. He must be going, and that shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder ye all ain't 'feared o' burnin' up in hyar, locked up," he
+said suddenly, the catastrophe seeming to render the danger of fire
+more imminent, although he knew it to be the habit of the country folk
+to lock small children in when convenient to leave home without them.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl's thin lip curled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef we-uns hain't got no mo' sense 'n ter set the house or ourse'fs
+afire, I reckon we'd be wuth ez much roasted ez raw," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, he locked the door so we-uns kin tell them stragglers ez he be
+gone, an' they can't git in ter trade fur drink," put in Joe.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee said nothing more. He knew full well that the children were
+not so alone as they seemed, since Copley, who was their mother's
+half-brother, was wont to be in the store, in Taft's absence, often
+enough to be at hand should he be required to suppress any disturbance;
+and being a near relative, he had a personal interest in their safety.
+Miss Cornelia Taft was a fine combination of her father's shrewdness
+and her grandmother's preciseness. As Larrabee felt her small,
+discerning eyes studying him, he became conscious that he was looking
+about wildly and with manifest anxiety as to his next step. He made an
+effort to allay her dawning curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Things look powerful nice an' cle'n up in hyar," he remarked casually.</p>
+
+<p>He was unprepared for the effect of his words. If Miss Cornelia Taft
+had a soul, it was expressed in her housewifely instincts. In a dozen
+frantic and funny juvenile misconceptions, the precepts brought from
+Mrs. Jiniway's domicile were put into practice here. The basis of
+them all, cleanliness and an effort for order, was plainly apparent,
+and Sis spent the better part of her days in seeking to impress upon
+Joe's unwilling mind the value of an occasional dish-washing, and
+the utility of wood ashes in scouring. An evil day, Joe considered
+it, when she came into his ragged, soapless, happy-go-lucky life; but
+Taft connived at their wranglings over their primitive housekeeping
+and Joe's subjection. "Keeps Sis busy, an' lets me git on her blind
+side,—ef she hev got enny blind side," he added grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Her pallid face flushed, her eyes sparkled; she cast a glance of
+triumph at Joe, who had seated himself in a chair, and was twisting his
+bare feet in and out of the rungs in a way painful to witness, if not
+to experience, writhing his body to and fro, and rolling his head from
+side to side over the high back of the chair in a restless frivolity of
+motion that certainly had no family resemblance to the staid "manners"
+which Mrs. Jiniway's disciple exhibited.</p>
+
+<p>She had entered volubly upon a detail of her exploits here in reforming
+Joe's misrule amongst the pots and pans and kettles.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad's so 'way from home, an' Joe's so tur'ble shif'less," she
+complained.</p>
+
+<p>The task of redding up the Augean stables was slight in comparison, one
+might believe, to judge from her show of horror now and then, and there
+was considerable difference between the size of Sis and of Hercules.
+She had succeeded in reaching some sense of culinary propriety in
+Joe, or pride, for he now and again became sufficiently still to look
+poutingly sullen, and to ejaculate, "'Tain't true!" "'Twarn't!" and
+similar disaffected negations.</p>
+
+<p>"I l'arnt all that whenst I lived with my granny," she concluded her
+exposition of the true methods of dealing with the trivet and the
+skillet and setting the house in order. "An' when we war done, we'd
+knit stockings an' tell tales."</p>
+
+<p>"Tales 'bout what?" asked Larrabee, seeking to conciliate her, for he
+began to have a shrewd suspicion that she could aid him if she would.
+His interest was the more easily simulated, for he had a literary taste
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried, with a little bounce forward, not unlike Joe's
+elasticity, "them in gineral we-uns hearn the rider read,—'bout Sam'l."</p>
+
+<p>"I hev read 'bout Sam'l," said Larrabee quickly, with an air of playing
+willingly to her lead; and indeed she had struck him on his strong
+suit. "An' old Eli. Eli war an able man, but he never 'peared ter me
+ter hev much jedgmint."</p>
+
+<p>"I jes' <i>lo-o-oved</i> ter hear 'bout leetle Sam'l an' his mother,
+an' her a-bringin' of him new clothes. He wore a white shut, an' she
+brung him a leetle coat every year," continued Sis, with placid eyes
+shining with the delighted reminiscence of the little prophet's fine
+gear.</p>
+
+<p>"Eli never could hev led the children of Isrul through the wilderness
+like Moses done," said Larrabee meditatively, reverting naturally to
+the elder character; whereas with Sis the <i>personnel</i> of the Bible
+was chiefly juvenile, rarely attaining a greater height than four feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' ter think," she cried, "they put Moses whenst a baby in a leetle
+dug-out, an' anchored him 'mongst the willows under the ruver bank, an'
+lef' him by hisself! Don't ye know, he hollered an' hollered! An' he
+wondered whar all the folks war gone."</p>
+
+<p>"An' Dan'l I hev read about," continued Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>"In the painters' den! Oo—oo!" The little girl shivered with a sort of
+enjoyment of the terror of the situation, drawing up her shoulders, and
+holding both hands over her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"He warn't 'feared. I reckon he mus' hev been a powerful hunter whenst
+young. I wonder ef he ever hed enny 'speriunce with wolf an' bar, an'
+sech?" Larrabee speculated.</p>
+
+<p>"Them bars! Warn't that awful,—plumb turrible!" exclaimed Sis
+suddenly, her scanty brows knitted as she frowningly recoiled into the
+back of her chair, and her small eyes grew large. "Them two bars what
+eat them forty childern,—though 'tain't manners, an' it never war, ter
+make game o' yer elders."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't true! No two bar ever eat forty childern. They'd hev bust!"
+Joe interposed realistically. "Sis jes' made that up out'n her own
+head."</p>
+
+<p>"It air true," protested the little Biblical student. "I hearn the
+rider read it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Them childern war obleeged ter be sorter sizable ter hev quit bein'
+bald-headed tharse'fs, ef they war able ter run an' p'int thar fingers.
+An' shucks! I hev been sassier 'n that a many a time, an' no bar hev
+eat me yit," said Joe hardily.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye air savin' up fur Satan, I reckon," retorted Miss Taft, with
+acerbity. "I hev a heap o' trouble with this boy," she added, turning a
+dreary, disgusted little face toward Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>Their unity of literary interest had fostered a degree of sympathy for
+her. "Ye oughter go down sometimes an' set at Tems's," he suggested.
+"He hev got a darter an' a niece, though they air older 'n ye be."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind old folks," said Cornelia, evidently with no idea of the
+gradations of age. "I be used ter granny. I wisht dad would marry one
+of 'em at Tems's," she added.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee glanced keenly at her.</p>
+
+<p>"What ails ye, ter say that?" he asked jealously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like ter see a tuck took in Joe," said Sis bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She obviously spoke without further information or meaning. Larrabee
+rose restlessly, the interest of the literary symposium at an end.</p>
+
+<p>"I wisht ye could let me out'n hyar somehows," he said, glancing
+uneasily about. Then, with a sudden recollection, "Ain't you-uns got a
+key ez would open the sto' door, what ye brung from yer granny's house?
+Mebbe 'twould open t'other."</p>
+
+<p>"Dad took it; he didn't want the sto' do' opened whenst he hed locked
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hain't you-uns got no mo' keys, no kind o' keys?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, but he had won upon her somewhat obdurate predilections;
+his acquaintance with the heroes of the tales that she had learned at
+her grandmother's home was a pleasing and fresh bond of interest. She
+divined his sympathy, and had seen his approval of the works she had
+wrought in the service of order and cleanliness; he saw in her little
+prim face that she had keys at hand, and presently she nodded brightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try 'em," he urged, as if the experiment had a mutual interest.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bunch of two or three rusty old keys which she produced,
+held together with a rough leather string, but they meant liberty
+and life to Larrabee. He could hardly be still long enough to clean
+and oil them before the attempt which should be decisive. The little
+girl rubbed one with a will, while he busied himself with the other.
+She held the candle as he knelt tremulously on the floor and applied
+them successively to the lock. One slipped in and turned futilely all
+round,—too small. The other would not even enter the keyhole.</p>
+
+<p>As he knelt there, the tallow dip showed a white, set face. He was
+remembering his comrades, bound hand and foot down at the still, and
+prefiguring Taft's alarm,—which was in itself formidable in its
+valiant disregard of all but his own safety,—his resentment and
+revenge, when their imprisoned estate should be discovered to him.
+Whatever might betide in the world without, it was death, indubitably,
+to remain. He rose suddenly, almost overturning the child at his
+elbow, starting toward the door of the store to get some implement to
+serve to break the lock.</p>
+
+<p>"Try a file," said Sis reasonably, misunderstanding his intention.</p>
+
+<p>She was still holding the candle as he came back, its white light on
+her precise little face and smooth hair put primly behind her ears,
+and a tall womanly caricature of her aped her gestures as her shadow
+stretched up on the new poplar weather-boarding of the partition.</p>
+
+<p>Her suggestion worked like a charm. A few moments of a sharp, rasping
+noise, while she set her little teeth, a second essay at the lock: the
+bolt slipped back as if made for the rusty old key that had worked no
+miracles before save that of opening old Mrs. Jiniway's "chist;" the
+door swung open. A glimpse of the windy night, the clouds, the tossing
+woods, and Sis, putting up the bars again, heard the last echo of
+Larrabee's swift step as he strode away.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The day fixed for processioning Kenniston's land dawned with an element
+of perplexity all its own to add to the troublous questions which it
+was expected to decide. The weather was the aptest illustration of
+uncertainty. The first gray light came with a rolling cloud and a dank
+wind sweeping along quick gusts of rain; then the sun rose, diffusive,
+promissory, with a great lavishness of red and yellow suffusions, a
+range and degree of rank, heavy color that seemed nearer to the hues
+of sunset than to the luminous purity and delicacy of wonted matutinal
+freshness. The slate-tinted clouds were massed once more, the beams
+failed, the wind brought the rain anew, and when it ceased at last,
+light mists were stealing along the heavy purple mountains, and rising
+from every chasm and depression; even far away amongst those vague
+contours, gray and dun-tinted and brown, that were like the first
+lifeless sketch of the dazzling azure ranges that the sunny days were
+wont to paint with such brilliant softness upon the fair field of the
+horizon, these vapors, white, soft, opaque, flocculent, could be seen.
+So from the furthermost reaches to the nearest limits invisibility was
+visibly garnered.</p>
+
+<p>As Kenniston, perturbed because of the weather signs, turned ever
+and anon in his saddle, as he rode up and up the mountain to the
+tryst at the Big Hollow Boulder, he saw now the great outward bend
+of the mountain, with heavily wooded green slopes under the gray
+sky, all the coloring heightened by the impending tufty white of the
+masses of silent approaching vapor; the surly crags of the terrace
+dark with the moisture and the shadow; and the great black mass of
+the charred wood still sending up a slow, melancholy thread of smoke
+where the hotel lay in ruins. And again, looking over his shoulder to
+verify some half-forgotten detail of the scene, the trees twenty feet
+away were barely visible in the encompassing medium, so fleetly did
+the impalpable cloud press upon them. To him, unversed in mountain
+weather, the enterprise of the day seemed impracticable; and he was
+half surprised to see the surveyor, with his Jacob's staff and his
+chain-bearers, already waiting at the boundary corner. The figures
+of the group of men, with their horses picketed hard by, stood out
+against the inexpressive whiteness about them with the distinctness
+of sketches on otherwise blank paper. They were easily recognizable
+even from a distance, and Cap'n Lucy's slim proportions and grace of
+movement further served to differentiate him from the burlier forms of
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, colonel," called out Kenniston as he dismounted, "you here?"</p>
+
+<p>It might hardly be believed by one who had experienced its causticity,
+but Cap'n Lucy's tongue was blunted of much of its capacities under
+his own roof-tree by the exactions of hospitality. Now he felt the
+franchise of the free outer air.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a mighty confidin' young critter, I know," he replied, advancing
+a few paces with his hands thrust in his pockets, "but this hyar
+man"—he nodded at the surveyor and affected to lower his voice
+confidentially—"hev got the name o' bein' sorter tricky, an' I 'lowed
+I hed better kem along like a good neighbor ter holp ye some, else he
+mought cheat ye out'n a passel o' lan'."</p>
+
+<p>The surveyor, a tall, saturnine, businesslike body, took not the
+slightest notice of this fling, but his two young chain-bearers grinned
+their appreciation, and the other men laughed outright with evident
+enjoyment, notably a tall, dark-eyed fellow, whom Kenniston presently
+recognized as the deputy sheriff, with whom he had already had some
+slight colloquy touching the possibly incendiary origin of the fire
+that had destroyed the new building. The recollection furnished him
+with a retort. He had flushed darkly, and his eyes were angry.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be surprised to be ill treated in any way now in the
+Cove—after what <i>has</i> happened."</p>
+
+<p>The laughter was checked by his tone. The men glanced at one
+another constrainedly. Before his coming, the event had promised
+to the volunteer assistants an episode of sociability affording
+the interchange of ideas and jocular converse, the interest of the
+developments sufficiently great to repay them for the hardship of
+the steep scramble down the mountain side. The significance of the
+proceeding was reasserted, and the silence was unbroken until the
+surveyor, busily adjusting his compass, remarked to Kenniston that he
+had noted one or two blazes indicating an old line, as he came up the
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye won't go a-nigh them blazes!" cried Cap'n Lucy sarcastically,
+waving his hand along an imaginary line. "Ye take my word fur it, ye
+won't see them blazes 'twixt hyar an' the mounting's foot."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston detected a covert meaning in the tone, and glanced keenly
+around at the speaker. But Cap'n Lucy's face was as enigmatically
+satiric as his laughter; and as Kenniston's questioning stare sought
+out the son, Luther turned away to avoid meeting his eyes, lowering,
+anxious, and it seemed somehow conscious. Conscious, too, was the
+hang-dog manner with which the usually bluff young mountaineer spoke to
+the deputy sheriff Ross, observing that he did not see how the surveyor
+could get his bearings such a shut-in day as this.</p>
+
+<p>The deputy sheriff had found it easily compatible with his
+interpretation of his duty to spare the time to assist as idle
+spectator at anything promising so much interest and excitement as
+the processioning of the Kenniston tract. For the antagonism between
+the disputants had already been noised abroad, and Rodolphus Ross,
+albeit a "peace officer" within the meaning of the statute, was not
+so attached to the service of the white-winged goddess that he did not
+cherish a lively expectation of whatever sport could be extracted from
+Cap'n Lucy's and Kenniston's belligerent idiosyncrasies. He protested
+now so clamorously that it might seem he feared that this unique
+opportunity would be wrested from him, and, assuming the rôle of a
+trustworthy weather prophet, maintained that whenever it rained before
+twelve o'clock, noon, an early clearance was the certain sequel. The
+discussion and the aspect of the weather diverted the general attention
+from Cap'n Lucy's singular words, and from Luther's unwillingness to
+proceed and surly disaffection.</p>
+
+<p>But Kenniston, whose already keen observation was whetted by the
+appreciation of the enmity he sustained and the magnitude of the
+disaster that had befallen him, followed Luther's motion with an alert,
+apprehending eye, and hardly lost sight of him even when the mists
+swept between them and gave him but a distorted looming presentment
+of the young mountaineer; though thus caricatured, Luther never lost
+for a moment his uncharacteristic and already significant demeanor.
+Small as the group was, the figures of two or three were now and again
+abstracted from it, as if literally caught up in the clouds, slowly
+materializing again as the mists shifted. The horses hard by were
+sometimes invisible in the dense white medium, and anon only their
+heads would appear here and there in various attitudes, like studies
+for a cavalry subject. Even the Big Hollow Boulder, the corner of
+the lines, seemed to recede, and again was near at hand, in a manner
+altogether inconsistent with its accepted attributes of immovability as
+a monument of boundary. The great felled trees, lying close by athwart
+the outcropping ledges of rock,—traces of the mountain tempest,—were
+obliterated and invisible in the encompassing whiteness. The chilly
+sound of the rain beating heavily below in the valley rose on the dank
+air, and more than once the white gauzy suffusions of the encompassing
+vapor were pervaded with a transient yellow glow, broad and innocuous
+reflections of the lightning of the storm-cloud of the lower levels.</p>
+
+<p>The surveyor was a tall, well-knit man of forty-five or fifty, with a
+square, short, grizzled beard decorating his chin, high cheek-bones, a
+blunt nose, a far-seeing gray eye, and a quid of tobacco that seemed to
+render him indifferent to the joys of conversation. His high boots were
+drawn to the knees over his trousers,—a style affected by the rest
+of the party; Kenniston's correct equestrian garb being sufficiently
+dissimilar to give him that air of peculiarity and modishness that
+somehow seems so unworthy and flippant among plain and humble folk, as
+if they cared for better things than fashion. It made him a trifle ill
+at ease, and he had a sense of being out of his sphere, added to the
+conviction of the vicinage of enemies. He stood with his riding-whip in
+his hand beside the surveyor as he adjusted his instrument, conscious
+of sustaining the curious attention of the chain-bearers, two stalwart
+young fellows arrayed in brown jeans and heavy boots, amply competent
+for the task of carrying the chain through that rugged wilderness;
+conscious, too, of Cap'n Lucy's brilliant, laughing, handsome eyes, the
+doubtful, furtive glances of the others, and Luther's anxious, troubled
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with an infinitely light, elastic effect that permeated
+all its vast area, the cloud began to uplift; the great grassy bald
+of the mountain towering above them showed its vast green dome as it
+were between precipitous white cliffs of still higher cloud mountains.
+An eagle's wing caught the sunlight as he soared above, beyond rifle
+range, and as he felt the rising wind his keen, exultant cry floated
+down to them. A tempered white glister suffused all the clouds about
+them; the sun was out, and as the illumined masses parted, the blue
+mountains afar off now glimmered with a dusky section of the quiet
+valley below, and again were veiled with the gleaming gauze. Between
+its shining folds a glittering green avenue opened out down the woods,
+as the surveyor, bending first to take sight, then holding his Jacob's
+staff stiffly before him, set out from the Big Hollow Boulder with a
+fair start and a long, elastic step; the two chain-bearers in file
+alertly followed, alternately bowing down and rising again, while the
+chain writhed through the grass between them like some living sinuous
+thing, ever and again drawn out tense and straight, and the echoes
+rang with the strophe and antistrophe of their sudden short cry,
+"Stick!" "Stuck!" "Stick!" "Stuck!"</p>
+
+<p>It might seem that all the oreads of the Great Smoky were set to flight
+by this invasion of their sylvan haunts, so many a flitting white robe
+fluttered elusive among the dense shadows of the trees, gone ere you
+could look again; so often a glistening white arm was upflung in the
+deepest green jungle of the laurel. They sprang up by every shadowy
+cliff and lurking chasm, by every hidden spring and trickling stream,
+and fled with tattered white scarfs streaming in the wind behind them.
+All the way the rout continued as Science came down the slope, led by
+a compass rather than the sun or the shadow, and with her votaries to
+mete out the freedom of the wilds, and the grace of the contour of the
+slopes, and the beauty of herbage and flowering growth, and the largess
+of the gracious earth, and to reduce all to an arbitrary scale, and
+judge it by the rod or perch or pole.</p>
+
+<p>The grizzly old surveyor saw naught of this,—not even when, in
+advance of all the company, he threaded the sun-glinted green glade,
+and strode almost in the midst of a bevy of white gauze-draped
+fleeing figures. Nor his chain-bearers, young though they were,
+and presumably impressionable,—not even when they rose from their
+alternate genuflections, and their sudden call "Out!" resounded on the
+air, though they stood idle and looked about them while the surveyor
+paused to mark the "out." Nor Cap'n Lucy, as light and swift on his
+feet as the youngest, fierce, jaunty, with his clear, defiant eye. Nor
+Rodolphus Ross, finding great opportunity for mirth behind Cap'n Lucy's
+back as he scuffled along amongst the knot of spectators, keeping up
+as best they might, skirting the barriers that the surveyor and his
+chain-bearers, constrained by duty, went over, and tumbling, pulling,
+and struggling with each other now and then for the best and foremost
+place. "Look at old Cap'n Tems!" cried Ross. "Ain't he the very model
+of a game rooster? He ain't big, an' he ain't strong, an' he ain't
+heavy, but Lord! how he thinks he is!" Nor Kenneth Kenniston, beginning
+to pause now and again,—albeit he did not flag, despite the hard pull
+over the impracticable ground, for he was a man of stalwart physique
+and a practiced pedestrian,—to look instead at the memorandum of the
+calls of the title-deed, which original paper the surveyor held in his
+hand, in doubt at first, in growing dismay, then in hot and mounting
+anger. At the next "out," when the surveyor set down his Jacob's staff,
+Kenniston strode over and tapped him somewhat imperatively on the
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"My good friend," he said, with an evident effort at self-repression,
+"are you not making some mistake? You surely are not following the
+calls as they are set forth in these papers?"</p>
+
+<p>To the professor of an exact science the suggestion of mistake is an
+imputation of incapacity. The claims of the quid of tobacco were
+disregarded for the nonce. The surveyor spoke, albeit with his mouth
+full, and spoke to the point:—</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I know what I'm about, Mr. Kenn'ston. If you don't like the
+way I'm runnin' this line, run it yerse'f."</p>
+
+<p>"The blazes on those trees on the side of the mountain, that you called
+my attention to, indicating the old line, are away over yonder on that
+sharp ridge." Kenniston waved his hand with the paper in it toward
+a high rocky crest to the left; then he fixed insistent eyes on the
+surveyor, and stroked his full brown whiskers mechanically with the
+other hand.</p>
+
+<p>The surveyor followed with perplexed eyes the direction pointed out. He
+gave a little puzzled sniff, as if he sought to smell the line. Then he
+reverted to that prop of common sense, his Jacob's staff.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye want me to run the line according to the compass and the calls
+of the title papers, or by the old blazes scattered about in the woods
+on the trees?" he demanded. "You don't know whether they ever were
+intended to mark the line, nor who put 'em thar, nor for what. I know
+they ain't no kin ter the line I'm runnin' now, 'cordin' ter the calls
+an' the compass."</p>
+
+<p>Once more he took his bearings, and, holding his Jacob's staff before
+him, walked steadily forward into the deeps of the wilderness; the two
+sworn chain-bearers, who had listened with indignant, sullen brows to
+the wrangle, and reflection on the work, again began diligently to bow
+down and rise up, as they ejaculated their "Stick!" "Stuck!" "Stick!"
+"Stuck!"—the clanking of the chain sounding loud and metallic in the
+sylvan quiet. The other men, with their shadows, all pressed forward in
+a close squad, for the pause had given the stragglers time to gather.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was aware that Cap'n Lucy carried the sympathies and good
+wishes of all the company, save perhaps the impartial surveyor, who
+would suffer himself to be influenced by nothing less just than his
+compass. He realized that he was looked upon as the "town man," and a
+rich one, desirous of wresting, by a slight technicality of the law, a
+very little land from a poor man who had in good faith built his house
+upon it. He had grown extremely bitter in his sentiment toward the
+people of the section because of the fire in which so much of value had
+perished, for he believed its origin incendiary. He was conscious of
+sustaining much antagonism, and he had fiercely resolved to deserve it.
+He had, in his first uncontrolled rush of anger, declared that he would
+punish somebody,—the true culprit, if possible; but <i>somebody</i>
+should kick his heels in jail for a while, and go to the penitentiary
+if might be. He did not in reality go so far in feeling as in
+expression, but his was not a prudent tongue. He earnestly desired
+success in the matter of the processioning; the scheme of the new
+hotel had grown very close to him; it seemed to him that one log cabin
+might serve the mountaineer as well as another, and that, moreover,
+in justice to himself, he should claim his own. He had felt sure,
+perfectly sure, that his deed called for the land that Cap'n Lucy held.
+For the first time, as he clambered with the rest down the rugged
+slopes, a doubt of this entered his mind. It made him wince from the
+probable result. He was not prepared to occupy the position of having
+sought to despoil a man, and a poor man, of his own, his very own, and
+fail. He knew that if he succeeded the countryside would wish that he
+had failed, and Cap'n Lucy would be a popular and picturesque object of
+commiseration. But he could not endure the idea of the rejoicings in
+his failure. To work a hardship to another was bad, indeed, and he had
+never contemplated it without the salve of an ample money compensation.
+To futilely seek to work a hardship was far worse. Again and again he
+knit his brows, as he gazed at the treacherous annotations in his hand,
+while the interchange of glances behind him commented on his attitude
+and his evident state of mind. Cap'n Lucy, who could not have read a
+word of the notes, strode on, apparently indifferent to fate, the "very
+model of a game rooster," esteeming Kenniston's show of anxiety the
+merest subterfuge; for would that monument of boundary known as the Big
+Hollow Boulder have become so nimbly peripatetic, despite its tons of
+weight, if the line run out therefrom were not to be materially altered
+for the betterment of the claimant at whose instance the processioning
+was held?</p>
+
+<p>And still the chain clanked and writhed its length along the ground,
+and the cries "Stick!" "Stuck!" of the chain-bearers alternated as
+before, until the sudden call "Out!" resounded, and the surveyor paused
+to mark the "out" once more.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As the surveyor planted his Jacob's staff anew he drew a long sigh of
+fatigue, and gazed out discerningly at the weather signs from over a
+craggy, jutting precipice at one side, which in its savage bareness
+disclosed from the midst of the dense forest a vast expanse of the
+tremulous mountain landscape below. The uncertain flicker of the
+sunshine was now on the green of the wooded valley, which presently
+dulled to the colorless neutrality of the persistent shadow, albeit the
+summits of the far horizon line gleamed delicately azure, as if the
+tint possessed some luminous quality and glowed inherently blue. To the
+right hung masses of vaporous gray; and beneath, fine serried lines
+were drawn in myriads against the darker tints of half-seen slopes,
+where the rain was falling. Still beyond, a great glamourous sunburst
+appeared in the mist, with so rayonnant an effect of the divergent
+splendors from its dazzling focus that it might seem a fleeting glimpse
+of the actual wheel of the chariot of the sun. It rolled away speedily.
+A rainbow barely flaunted its chromatic glories across the sky, and
+faded like an illusion, and all the world was gray again; from a dead
+bough starkly thrust out of the wooded slopes half way to the valley a
+rain crow was calling and calling.</p>
+
+<p>The other men, too, were looking over the valley, so long obscured by
+the dense forest trees and still denser undergrowth through which they
+had taken their way. It seemed much nearer than when they had last seen
+it from the dome, even allowing for the distance they had traversed,
+and they noted, with that interest always excited by a familiar scene
+from a new standpoint, the aspect of the well-known landmarks, all
+changed and strange. Kenniston had drawn near the verge; he stood
+sharply outlined against the sky, a field-glass in his hand, which
+again and again he brought to bear upon the smouldering black mass on
+the cliffs far below that once was the new hotel, only to be located
+now by the thinly curling smoke from its ruins. The instrument was
+familiar enough to the mountaineers, who had most of them observed its
+use during the war; but to a certain type of rustic an affectation of
+ignorance is the prettiest of jests.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, mister," Rodolphus Ross adjured him, with a show of eager
+anxiety, "air yer contraption strong enough ter view enny insurance on
+that thar buildin'?"</p>
+
+<p>The echo caught his laughter and blended it with the rain crow's call.
+He was not sensitive himself, and he could not appreciate sensitiveness
+in others. The fact that the building had perished in the flames,
+without insurance, was well known to the community; and how could it
+help or hinder that he should sharpen his wits by a little exercise on
+the theme?</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston made no reply, still sweeping the landscape with his glass.
+As the surveyor bent to take sight, Kenniston suddenly turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop," he said; "you will stop this farce right here. This is a
+conspiracy!"</p>
+
+<p>The surveyor, still in his stooping posture, looked at him in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey?" he exclaimed, as if he did not believe his senses.</p>
+
+<p>"A conspiracy!" Kenniston reiterated.</p>
+
+<p>The surveyor, in the course of his brawny career, had been offered
+few insults, and these he had promptly requited with stout blows. But
+the sight of a man who has lost reason, temper, and policy together
+has sometimes a steadying effect on the spectator. Besides, he was in
+the performance of a sworn duty, and, being a faithful and efficient
+officer of the county, he had a high ideal of the functions of his
+office. He was nettled by Kenniston's self-magnifying attitude, but
+it was obviously in order to give him the correct measurements, not
+of himself, but of his land, and although he retorted, it was in good
+enough temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Conspirin' with the meridian line?" he demanded, with a sneer,
+thrusting his quid of tobacco into his leather jaw with a tongue
+grown expert by long practice in thus clearing the way for its own
+utterances. "Or maybe ye think the points o' the compass have got in a
+mutiny against ye?"</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy came alongside the Jacob's staff, and gave Kenniston a
+rallying wink, sly, malicious, sarcastic, and altogether unworthy of
+the fine eye that it eclipsed. "Conspirin' with a monimint o' boundary
+knowed ez Big Hollow Boulder?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Luther turned away suddenly, with an accession of hang-dog furtiveness
+in his manner, and Kenniston's fury was stemmed for the moment by his
+surprise and doubt and bewilderment. Still with choleric color mantling
+his face, his eyes bright and wide, his white teeth pressing on the
+lip which he was biting visibly despite the thick abundance of beard,
+with all the fire eliminated from the angry facial expression that he
+yet retained, he stared silently at Captain Lucy, who was scornfully
+laughing. The surveyor took advantage of the seeming lucidity of the
+interval to seek to rehabilitate pacific relations.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help <i>how</i> ye expected the line ter run out, Mr.
+Kenniston. I'm runnin' it 'cordin' ter the calls an' the compass. Ye
+an' Cap'n Tems are here as owners o' the adjoinin' tracts, ter see it
+done fur yerselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Not me!" cried Cap'n Lucy. "I ain't looked at yer durned bodkin" (thus
+he demeaned the magnetic needle) "sence I kem out. It mought waggle
+todes the north pole, like ye sez it do,—'pears onstiddy enough fur
+ennything,—or it mought waggle todes the east pole. I ain't keerin'.
+It may know the poles whenst it sees 'em,—though I dunno ef that
+needle hev got an eye. My main dependence air in that monimint o'
+boundary knowed ez the Big Hollow Boulder—corner rock—corner o' the
+lines—oh my!—yes!"</p>
+
+<p>The significance of this was hardly to be overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Cap'n Lucy," said Kenniston, suddenly dropping his
+aggressions even to the unusual point of giving the old man his
+accustomed title, "what do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy gave him a broadside of big bright eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't you-uns know that monimint o' boundary knowed ez Big Hollow
+Boulder—corner mark—been thar so long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what about it?" demanded Kenniston impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's <i>known</i> ez Big Hollow Boulder, 'cordin' ter yer own
+notice posted up at the mill," said Cap'n Lucy tantalizingly.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston still stared, and the surveyor, seeking to cut short a futile
+waste of time, bent once more to take sight. "The only way ter git
+things settled is ter run out the line 'cordin' ter the calls an' the
+compass, an' I'm a-doin' of it fair an' square."</p>
+
+<p>"There is something radically wrong," persisted Kenniston angrily. Then
+turning to Cap'n Lucy, he continued vehemently, "I know—and <i>you</i>
+know—that Wild Duck River is on my land, and doesn't touch yours in
+any of its windings; and look there!—Wild Duck Falls!"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed diagonally across a ravine, where, amidst the dusky depths
+of green shadows, and close to a gray cloud that came surging through
+the valley, a narrow, gleaming, white, feathery mountain cataract, with
+an impetus and a motion like the flight of an arrow smartly sped from
+the bow, shot down into the gorge.</p>
+
+<p>It transfixed Cap'n Lucy. He stood staring at it, motionless, amazed,
+it might seem aghast. For the boundary line that the surveyor was
+running according to the compass and calls had thrown within his tract
+this mountain torrent, this wayward alien, which he had known for many
+a year as the native of the Kenniston woods.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference, gentlemen, what ye hev 'lowed ye owned, an'
+what ye didn't," interposed the surveyor: "this boundary line I'm
+runnin' out will show ye the exac' extent o' yer possessions." And once
+more he bent to take sight.</p>
+
+<p>Then he rose and stalked forward, his Jacob's staff held before him,
+his eyes intent and fixed, the links of the chain once more dully
+clanking as it writhed through the grass, and the chain-bearers, with
+their cabalistic refrain, "Stick!" "Stuck!" bowing down and rising up,
+as they ever and again drew it out taut to its extreme length between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The spectators followed on either hand, plunging into the deeper
+forest, which, as it interposed before the cliffs, cut off the view
+of the wide landscape, that seemed lifted into purer light and more
+transparent color by the contrast with the bosky shadows as it
+disappeared, and again was vaguely glimpsed between the boles and
+hanging branches, and once more vanished, leaving the aspect of the
+world the bare breadth of the herder's trail through the laurel.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the men—shaggy of beard and of hair, and shabbier far of
+garb than the others—gazed at the proceeding with the eyes of deep
+wonderment and reluctant acceptance, as if it were some formula of
+necromancy which revolted credulity. They were denizens of a deeply
+secluded cove near by, lured hither by the report of the processioning,
+and looking for the first time upon the simple paraphernalia of
+land-surveying,—the chain, the Jacob's staff, and the compass; even
+the surveyor and the chain-bearers were only the verification of wild
+rumors that had reached them. They were not unintelligent; they were
+only uninformed. The knowledge and experience of the commonplace
+process which the others possessed might hardly be considered an
+adequate set-off against such fresh and illimitable capacities of
+impressionability. Few people can so enjoy a day of sight-seeing as
+fell to the share of these denizens of "Painter Flats."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston lingered for a few minutes, still sweeping with the
+field-glass the rugged ravine where Wild Duck Falls gleamed white,
+swift, amidst the deep, dusky green shadows: disappearing beneath the
+approaching gray cloud as its filmy gauzes expanded and floated into
+the larger spaces of the ravine, then piercing its draperies with a
+keen, glimmering shaft of white light, and vanishing again as the cloud
+thickened and condensed in its passage through the narrowing limits
+of the gorge. He turned away at last, the glass still in his hand,
+following hard on the steps of the surveyor, marking all the successive
+stages of the proceedings with a keen, alert, inimical observation. He
+wore a grim, set face, and his manner expressed a sustained abeyance,
+watchfulness, and a dangerous readiness.</p>
+
+<p>The landmarks were such as were easily common to any line. When the
+deed had called for four hundred and fifteen poles northwest to a white
+oak-tree, the chain-bearers had brought up, without a link amiss, at
+the gnarled foot of one of a cluster of such trees. A half-obliterated
+indentation upon it the surveyor accepted as the specific mark of
+identification, although others considered it an old "blaze" indicating
+an ancient trail, and Kenniston declared it merely a "cat-face." Again,
+the line, diverging, ran due north eight hundred poles to a stake
+in the middle of Panther Creek. The chain found the middle easily
+enough, though not the stake, which was, of course, in the nature of
+things, a temporary mark, and liable to be carried away in a freshet,
+or broken down by floating logs or other obstruction. The stream,
+however, kept an almost perfectly straight line—barring the slight
+sinuous meandering inherent to a natural channel which did not affect
+the general direction—for more than a mile through a grassy glade
+almost free of undergrowth, purling along under the shadow of the great
+trees and rocks. Thus, if the previous markings were correct, this of
+necessity depended upon them. The surveyor had a stub driven down, in
+place of the missing stake, in the middle of the stream, re-marking the
+line according to the law. Once more the chain-bearers, dripping like
+spaniels from their excursions into the water, began their series of
+genuflections and their ringing outcry, "Stick!" "Stuck!"</p>
+
+<p>All had observed Kenniston curiously during the halt, and the doubt
+and discussion as to the missing mark, expectant of some wrathful
+demonstration. If he did not coincide with the surveyor's opinion, he
+made no sign. In one sense, his demeanor balked them of the amusement
+which they had ravenously looked for. He made no protest, which,
+reasonable or unreasonable, they would have relished. His attitude,
+his face, his words, were constrained to a stern neutrality and
+inexpressiveness. He seemed only grimly watchful, waiting. The change
+itself afforded food for speculation, an entertainment more subtle
+and of keener interest than his previous outbreaks, although less
+alluring to the maliciously mirthful spectator. It seemed, however, to
+disconcert the surveyor more than active interference and aggression.
+Submissiveness is so abnormal a trait in a man of Kenniston's type
+that its symptoms indicate a serious moral crisis. Now and again, the
+surveyor, pausing to mark the "out," appealed directly to him. To be
+sure, the remark was in relation to the weather, for the clouds were
+gathering overhead, a slate-tinted canopy, seeming close upon the
+summits of the tall trees, till a white lace-like film scudding across
+it in contrary currents of the wind served to show, by the force of
+comparison, the true distance of the higher vapors. Kenniston had only
+monosyllables for reply, and the man of the compass could but mop his
+brow, and listen anxiously to the distant rumblings of thunder, and
+wish this troublous piece of work well over, and take his bearings
+anew. When the call in the deed for a girdled and dead poplar-tree was
+found to have no correspondent mark on the face of the earth, being,
+as he observed, a mark bound to be obliterated in the course of time,
+since the tree was dead when the deed, which was of remote date, was
+written, Kenniston's silence had evidently an unnerving effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, look here," the surveyor broke out in self-defense at length. "I
+ain't got no sort o' interest in the line except to run it according
+ter the calls an' the compass. I'll git my fees, whether or no. 'Tain't
+nuthin' ter me which gits the most lan', you or Cap'n Tems."</p>
+
+<p>As Kenniston still continued silent, he looked appealingly at Cap'n
+Lucy, and, receiving no encouragement, set his teeth, addressed himself
+to his work, and communed thenceforward with naught more responsive
+than his Jacob's staff.</p>
+
+<p>But what, alack, had befallen Cap'n Lucy? Did ever a gamecock, that
+had never so much as felt his adversary's gaff, drop his feathers so
+suddenly? He was all at once old, tired, anxious, troubled. He tugged
+along at the rear of the party, lagging and flagging as he had never
+done on certain forced marches that had seemed a miracle of endurance.
+For Cap'n Lucy's frame had been upborne by his spirit in those ordeals,
+and now that ethereal valiance had deserted him. For what mystery was
+this? The moving of the monument of boundary "known as the Big Hollow
+Boulder"—he thought of it thus for the first time without the sneer
+of inscrutable offense which the rotund phrasing had occasioned—had,
+instead of stripping him of his possessions, resulted in throwing much
+land, which he doubted not belonged to his neighbor, within his own
+lines. That Kenniston had himself moved the corner landmark or connived
+at the commission of this felony, if not otherwise preposterous, was
+thus rendered absolutely incredible. But who, then, could have moved
+it? When? How? For what unimaginable reason? How strange that he should
+have discovered the change! And what mad freak of fate was it that it
+should be he, he himself, who should profit by it, acquiring the legal
+title to hundreds of acres at Kenniston's expense? Cap'n Lucy was
+an honest man, and the thought made him gasp. Had it been possible,
+he would at that moment have flung all the Great Smoky Mountains at
+Kenniston's feet. No recantation was too bitter, no renunciation was
+too complete, rather than be suspected, with any show of reason, as
+he had suspected Kenniston. Not that he cared for the groundless
+suspicion, but for its justification. This consideration summoned his
+tardy policy. He must needs have time to think. Were he bluntly to
+declare the corner-stone to have been moved, it might seem to criminate
+himself; for albeit the line was running to his advantage here, who
+could say how its divergences might affect his possessions lower down
+on the mountain? "Windin' an' a-twistin' like the plumb old tarnation
+sarpient o' hell!" Cap'n Lucy vigorously described it in a mutter to
+his beard.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, even if the later results were also to his benefit, as it
+had been notoriously contrary to his wishes that the land should be
+processioned at all, it might seem that moving the boulder had been
+his scheme to thus thwart any definite establishment of the line of
+boundary,—and this was a felony.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy experienced a sudden affection of the spine which seemed
+to him abnormal, and, at the moment, possibly fatal, so curious, so
+undreamed of heretofore, were its symptoms. A cold chill trembled along
+its fibres; responsive cold drops bedewed his forehead. His hand had
+lost its normal temperature, and was cold to the touch. For the first
+time in all his life Cap'n Lucy's nerves were made acquainted with
+the shock of fear. He did not identify it; he could not recognize it.
+He was spared this acute mortification. He only felt strangely ill
+and undecided and tremulous, and he doubted his survival. He began
+to wonder if Kenniston suspected aught. He no longer questioned the
+genuineness of his enemy's demeanor earlier in the day, when each
+unexpected divergence of the line had seemed by turns to perturb and
+to anger him. Cap'n Lucy noted the cessation of the protestations, the
+grimly set jaw, the smouldering fire of the eye, the attitude of tense
+expectancy and waiting. He wondered if Kenniston were "laying for" him
+now as he had been "laying for" Kenniston. He thought of the intention
+deferred from "out" to "out" to loudly proclaim his discovery of the
+removal of the corner landmark, of his relish of his enemy's fancied
+security in outwitting him. He had only given Kenniston a little line,
+a little more, as it were, that he might hang himself with it, and now,
+forsooth, this noose was at his own service.</p>
+
+<p>He felt a moderate and tempered gratulation that he had not been
+precipitate in the matter, that as yet no one knew of his discovery;
+but suddenly he remembered his ill-starred confidence to Luther. For
+the first time he marked his son's furtive, skulking, downcast manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a sheep-killin' dog!" said Cap'n Lucy to himself, in a towering
+rage. "What ef he do know it's been moved: did I move it?"</p>
+
+<p>He remembered, too, his reiterated allusions to the perambulatory
+boulder, and Kenniston's amazement, which then he had thought
+affectation, but which he now believed to be quite genuine. Were they
+the exciting cause, so to speak, of that grim air of abeyance and
+biding his time?</p>
+
+<p>"The boulder can't be put back," said Cap'n Lucy to himself, suddenly
+on the defensive. "Nobody could make out whar it kem from fust, 'kase
+it never lef' a trace on the rock; an' a dozen horse couldn't haul it
+up sech a steep slope. It mus' hev been blowed down by dam-i-nite."</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine illustration of a moral descent, impossible to be
+retraced; but Cap'n Lucy did not think of that. His mind was full of
+the complications of his position, the dangers of disclosure, and
+the impossibility to him of accepting the boundary line, thus taking
+possession of another man's land, even if the owner would compose
+himself to sleep upon his rights. Judging from Kenniston's looks, it
+was easily to be argued that he would prove very wide awake in this
+emergency.</p>
+
+<p>But for the changing weather signs the old man's altered demeanor might
+have encountered other notice than Kenniston's keen watchfulness.
+Now and again the thunder pealed among the mountain tops, and the
+slate-colored cloud had spread until it overhung all the visible world,
+when they once more drew so near to the verge of the precipice as to
+have glimpses of the densely wooded cove and the circling mountains.
+The ranges were all sombre gray or deeply purple, save far away, where
+some rift in the clouds admitted a skein of sunbeams suspended in
+fibrous effect over a distant slope that was a weird yellowish-green
+in this scant illumination which had fallen to its share, rendered
+more marked by the dull estate of its dun-tinted and purple compeers.
+Nearer at hand, the shadows were deepening momently in the forest.
+Once or twice, when the sharp blades of the lightnings cleft them, the
+lifeless bronze aisles of the woods sprang into a transient glare of
+brilliant green that was hardly less dazzling, and again the thunder
+pealed.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three of the mountaineers left the party, evidently with no
+mind to be drenched. A man with a hacking cough remained, animated by
+that indisposition to self-denial, that avidity of enjoyment, that
+determination to seize all which niggard life holds out, characteristic
+of a type of consumptive invalids. "'Tain't goin' ter rain," he
+declared buoyantly. It might seem that nothing less potent than powder
+and lead could wean from the sight of processioning the land the two
+denizens of Panther Flats. They patrolled every step that the surveyor
+took. Whenever he paused, they came up and stared, fascinated, and at
+close quarters, at the Jacob's staff. They counted the chains from
+"out" to "out." As one of them observed to the other, he "was just
+beginning to get the hang of the thing." He could keep under shelter at
+a more convenient season.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden flash that seemed to pierce the very brain, so did it
+outdazzle the capacity of vision, a simultaneous deafening detonation,
+beneath which the mountains appeared to quake and to cry out with
+a terrible voice, while again and again the echoes repeated the
+thunderous menace, and then all the air was permeated by a swift
+electrical illumination, visibly transient, but so instantly succeeded
+by a similar effect that it seemed permanent,—in this weird glare the
+surveyor bent once more to take sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man sticks ter his contrac' like a sick kitten ter a hot brick!"
+cried Rodolphus Ross to one of the chain-bearers.</p>
+
+<p>But the chain-bearers had scant sympathy for the spectators, and
+visited upon the company in general their displeasure because of the
+reflections upon the "old man's" work, for which Kenniston alone was
+responsible.</p>
+
+<p>"Whyn't ye wear yer muzzle, 'Dolphus?" the one addressed retorted
+gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the party had now deserted the spectacle, in deference to a
+timely admonition as to the fate of the horses picketed on the "bald,"
+and their peculiar susceptibility to the fear of lightning. When the
+progress of the surveying again brought its adherents to the verge of
+the mountain and an extended outlook over the valley, there remained
+only the two men from Panther Flats, Rodolphus Ross, Cap'n Lucy, the
+chain-bearers, the surveyor, Luther, and the owner of the tract at
+whose instance the processioning was made.</p>
+
+<p>As they looked out over the gray valley, distinct under the sombre sky,
+as though only color, and not light, were withdrawn,—Cap'n Lucy's
+cabin, the inclosures, the grim black crags beyond, the smouldering
+mass of the ruins of the burnt building, even the shanties of the
+workmen in the gorge at the foot of the cliffs, all perfectly
+distinguishable in their varied interpretation of gray and brown and
+blurring unnamed gradations of neutral tones, all overhung by the
+storm-cloud definitely and darkly purplish-black, with now and again,
+one knew not how, fleeting lurid green reflections,—Kenniston, brisk
+and dapper, lightly tapping his spurred boots with his riding-whip,
+smiling debonairly, but with a dangerous sarcastic gleam in his fiery
+eyes, stepped up to the surveyor. He carried his field-glass in one
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you will come a few paces this way,—and you, colonel," in
+parenthesis to poor Cap'n Lucy,—"and use your telescope, you are
+obliged to see that if you run out the line seventeen hundred poles
+to the north, according to the deed, you will go beyond the site of
+the hotel. I seem to have built my house on the colonel's land. It was
+<i>your</i> house that was destroyed, colonel. Let me beg you to accept
+my condolences,—ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+
+<p>A flash brighter than all that had preceded it, and his satiric
+laughter was lost in the roll and the reverberation of the thunder.
+A sudden darkening overspread the landscape, like a visible
+thickening of the clouds; the form of a horse darted along the verge
+of the precipice, so swift, so gigantic, defined against the green
+suffusions of that purple-black storm-cloud, that it seemed like the
+materialization of the hero of some equine fable. A wild cry went up
+that the horses had broken loose, and were stampeding through the
+woods. A terrible wrenching, riving sound followed another flash,
+and they could see a stricken tree on the slope below, in the instant
+before the blinding descent of the torrents. The wind rose with a wild,
+screaming cry; the forests bent and writhed; no one of the party could
+discern his neighbor's face; and, despite the pluck of the surveyor,
+the processioning of the Kenniston tract remained unfinished.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy enjoyed in his own family an immunity from interference,
+criticism, and filial insurgency that was truly patriarchal. His word
+was law; his every thought was wisdom; all his dealings embodied the
+fullest expression of justice. Until his unlucky disclosure to Luther
+of his discovery of the strange removal of the Big Hollow Boulder,
+and the interpretation he placed upon it, imputing to Kenniston a
+crime of such importance, involving consequences so grave, his son had
+never entertained a moment's doubt of the sufficiency of his prudence,
+the absolute infallibility of his judgment, the integrity of all his
+prejudices, notwithstanding his arbitrary temper, his high-handed
+methods, and his frequent precipitancy. Such remonstrance as ever was
+ventured upon usually emanated from Adelicia, in the interest of her
+pacific proclivities; or to sue uncle Lucy's clemency for some object
+of his most righteous displeasure; or to prevail upon him to blindly
+consider some untoward chance a blessing in disguise. Now and then,
+too, she indulged in some solicitude lest the affluence of his courage
+should lead him into danger. But to his own children "dad" had always
+seemed more than capable of coping with all the forces of nature,
+animate and inanimate; and as the day of the processioning of the land
+wore on, Julia listened, with her silent smile of sarcastic comment,
+to Adelicia's monologue of argument of alternate fears and reassurance
+for uncle Lucy's sake. First, lest Mr. Kenniston succeed in unjustly
+wresting some of his land from him. "But," she declared buoyantly, "the
+surveyor won't let him!" Then, lest a personal collision ensue, to her
+bellicose relative's injury. "But uncle Lucy ain't been often tackled;
+ennybody kin see he'd hev a mighty free hand in a fight." And again she
+was reduced to fear simply that things in general might fall out to the
+magnate's dissatisfaction. "But uncle Lucy's been mighty mad a heap o'
+times before, an' 'tain't set him back none," she argued blithely. And
+so the atmosphere within cleared as the sky without darkened, and the
+domestic industries went forward apace.</p>
+
+<p>It was during one of the deceptive withdrawals of the lowering
+storm-cloud, revealing great expanses of blue sky, when the sunshine
+was a-flicker once more over the landscape, albeit somewhat wan and
+tremulous, and a wind had sprung up, faint and short of breath, and
+disposed to lulls and sighs, but still setting mists and clouds astir,
+that Julia went forth upon an errand some distance up the Cove. It had
+chanced that a hen, with the preposterous hopefulness of the species,
+had gone to "setting" in the orchard upon an unremunerative assemblage
+of fallen apples, in default of more appropriate material; for, in
+ignorance of the fowl's intention, Adelicia had fried the last eggs
+for breakfast. Her momentary dismay was dispelled by the recollection
+that Mrs. Larrabee had promised her a "settin' of special an percise
+tur-r-key aigs," and, equipping Julia with a basket, she sent her forth
+to claim this pledge.</p>
+
+<p>But in lieu of the hospitable welcome and the eager fulfillment of
+the promise, the reminder of which Mrs. Larrabee would have regarded
+in the light of a courtesy and a favor, Julia encountered at the door
+of the queer little house Henrietta Timson, her snuffbrush, her small
+unlighted eyes, her narrow discontented face, and her little brief
+authority oppressively in evidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I do declar'," she said, regarding Julia sourly, when the errand
+was made known. "I dunno what Sist' Lar'bee means,"—for Mrs. Timson
+was unfailing in the appellation of church-membership, and enjoyed no
+closer relation to Mrs. Larrabee. "She done gone off a-pleasurin' an'
+a-jauntin', an' lef' me hyar with this whole houseful ter 'tend ter,
+an' ter work fur, an' ter feed, an' ter mend, an' the neighbors ter
+pervide with aigs—an' tur-r-key aigs at that!"</p>
+
+<p>Julia Tems's experience of life had been crude and scanty and
+monotonous. She had lived the successive uneventful years since her
+infancy at the little cabin down in the Cove in the humble domestic
+routine, without education of any sort, except perchance such as might
+be gleaned from the sermon of a stray circuit rider; without the
+opportunity of observation; with the simplest, most untutored, most
+limited association. It was to be doubted if she knew a score of people
+in the world. But this was her first encounter with discourtesy.</p>
+
+<p>She flushed scarlet under the shade of her brown sunbonnet, not with
+anger, but with shame: she was ashamed for Mrs. Timson. She hardly
+felt the affront to herself at first; the flout at the proprieties
+in the abstract nullified for the moment all personal consideration.
+She was not conscious of a retrograde movement, for her instinct was
+to terminate the interview. She found herself murmuring, "It's jes'
+ez well,—jes' ez well," in an apologetic cadence which would have
+befitted Mrs. Timson's voice, and moving backward continuously, in her
+eager haste to be gone. Rather than prolong the ordeal for a moment she
+could with philosophy have beheld every hen that had ever owned the
+Tems sway in the grotesque catastrophe of patiently seeking to hatch
+apples.</p>
+
+<p>But Henrietta Timson had hardly anticipated routing the invader so
+promptly. Noting Julia's eagerness to be gone, she perversely thwarted
+it by stepping briskly down out of the door, remembering to put her
+hand to her side, with a suffering look and an affected limp.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'lowed ez I hed <i>hed</i> tribulation, but I never seen none sech
+ez now. Sist' Lar'bee gone,—tuck one o' my chil'n with her!" She shook
+her head with a dolorous accusation that might have become her if
+"Sist' Lar'bee" had been a kidnapper, and if the hero of the rickets
+had gone for aught but to insure being properly fed and provided for.
+"Jasper Lar'bee's disappeared; an' old man Haight I do b'lieve hev gone
+deranged,—sets an' cusses the Lost Time mine all day; an' Jerushy's
+husband's drunk,—'pears like a rat-hole, ye can't fill him up;
+an'—hev ye seen Jasper Lar'bee down yer ways?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not fur a long time," faltered Julia, still retreating a few steps at
+intervals down the rocky, ledgy dooryard.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I'll tell him ez ye war hyar, an' 'lowed it 'peared like a long
+time sence ye seen him," said Mrs. Timson perversely, with the air
+of taking a message. "An'"—her small eyes narrowed—"ef I find enny
+tur-r-key aigs, I'll let ye know."</p>
+
+<p>She looked with a sour smile after the girl's light figure, for Julia
+was now fairly routed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let ye know, too," she muttered, "ez we ain't got none o' Mis'
+Lar'bee's slack-twisted ways hyar now,—givin' away a settin' of
+tur-r-key aigs, I say! Ef I find enny tur-r-key aigs, I'll send 'em
+down ter the store ter trade. I be mos' out o' snuff now."</p>
+
+<p>Then she meditated swiftly upon her theory that Mrs. Larrabee had
+reasons of her own for all her good works; that they were subtle
+investments, as it were, sure of a return in better kind, and
+quadrupled in value. She could evolve no view in which the promised
+"settin' of tur-r-key aigs" could figure as assets save for a general
+conciliatory purpose; and then she remembered that Cap'n Lucy was
+a widower. A sneering smile stole over her face, arrested suddenly
+by a grave afterthought; if for this reason the family were worth
+conciliating for Mrs. Larrabee's sake, surely more for her own. "Lord
+knows, I need a house, an' home, an' land, an' horse critters, an'
+cows, an' sheep, an' hawgs—he hev jes' two childern, an' them growed,
+an' that niece gal could be turned out" (she hastily went over the list
+of Cap'n Lucy's earthly gear, omitting only that important possession,
+himself)—"a sight more 'n Mis' Lar'bee do, ennyhows."</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden change of heart, she ran to the road, holding her hand
+to the level of her eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun; but
+look as she might, there was not a flitting vestige to be seen of the
+dark brickdust red, the color of the dress which Julia wore. She called
+again and again without response. She thought the girl must surely have
+heard; then she reassured herself by the reflection that the wind was
+blowing a gale, and doubtless the sound of her voice went far afield.</p>
+
+<p>Its shrill pipe might have been easily enough distinguishable to ears
+that would heed, although the surges of the wind beat loud on every
+rock and slope. Julia took angry note as she went swiftly on and on,
+her skirts flying, her bonnet blown back, her heart hot with wrath
+against Mrs. Timson, against herself, against Adelicia who had sent her
+on so ill starred an errand. Her eyes and her gesture were singularly
+like Cap'n Lucy's, as, threading the narrow path above the precipice,
+she paused and flung the empty basket into the wilderness below,
+and then walked on less swiftly, her tense nerves relaxed by this
+ebullition of rage. Like Cap'n Lucy, too, she felt the better for it,
+albeit she realized as he never would have done that the basket would
+be sorely missed at home. With the riddance she somehow discharged her
+mind of the thought of the Larrabee threshold, of her inhospitable
+reception there, of the whole ignoble episode. She looked out with a
+sort of enjoyment at the muster of the clouds, the gathering of rank
+after rank; ever and again her unaffrighted eyes followed the swift
+yellow lightnings darting through the gray masses, and she seemed to
+be just opposite them as she stood on the verge of the precipice on
+the mountain side. Lower down on the wooded slope across the narrow
+valley, she could see the track of the wind, which never touched those
+silent, vaporous congregations, motionless, or coming with contrary
+currents from opposite directions. The trees below bent and sprang
+back into place, and she could hear the sibilant shouting of the
+leaves. It was like a myriad of shrill tiny voices, but they combined
+into a massive chorus. The growths hard by were adding a refrain; the
+wind was winning new territory as it came up the mountain. She could
+see far away a cloud torn into fringes, and presently the rain was
+falling. It was coming nearer and nearer; she would meet it long
+before she could reach home. She quickened her steps at the thought.
+Sometimes the growths intervened on both sides of the path, and shut
+out the observation of the coming storm. Whenever she emerged, she
+noted the darkening aspect. More than once the thunder shook the very
+mountains. Suddenly, a searching, terrible illumination, the rising
+of the tumultuous wind, a frightful succession of peals, brought her
+to a pause. She hardly dared to face a storm like this, shelterless,
+and the store at the Lost Time mine was close at hand. Nevertheless
+she hesitated for a moment. Cap'n Lucy's well-worn jest as to the
+"perfessional widower" was hardly so funny to her as to him. She stood,
+disconcerted, conscious, averse, in the teeth of the storm, her dress
+fluttering, her bonnet tossed back from her shining coiled hair, her
+eyes bright and wide and wistful, and the breath almost blown back
+from her lips. Then she noted suddenly the portal of the Lost Time
+mine. She did not pause to reflect; to dread the long, darkening,
+solitary afternoon in its dim recesses; to remember the terrors of
+its traditions, and what ghastly presence she might meet, and what
+sepulchral voices she might hear, in the awful isolations of the coming
+storm, when all the laws that govern the outside world seemed set at
+naught; for if ever the supernatural should break bounds, it might be
+at a place like this. She ran against the wind as swiftly as she might;
+skirted the water on the stones in the channel at the mouth of the
+cave, now more deeply submerged than their wont, for the stream was
+rising visibly, its underground tributaries already fed by the rains
+falling elsewhere; felt with a shiver the chill of the place, as the
+high, grim, rough-hewn rocks towered above her head; climbed up on the
+inner ledges; and as the first floodlike outbreak of the torrents came
+down with a crash of thunder, and a glare of lightning, and a wild
+shrieking of swirling winds, she sat down, high and dry, and drew a
+breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant her heart gave a great plunge, and then seemed to
+stand still. She was not alone. A man in a further recess appeared
+suddenly, approaching cautiously. He evidently had not seen her. Her
+entrance into the place had preceded his appearance only by a few
+seconds. He was watching the rain with intense interest. She would have
+said that he had been apprised of it by the rise of the water within.
+He bestowed an eager, careful, calculating scrutiny upon the stream
+below the high shadowy point where he stood; then he looked toward
+the portal where the descending sheets of rain cut off all glimpse of
+the world without. He was turning away, with the furtive, skulking,
+cautious air that had characterized his approach, when his eyes fell
+upon her. He dropped out of sight as if he had been shot.</p>
+
+<p>She sat there, silent, trembling, her eyes fixed upon the spot where
+he had disappeared, her heart beating wildly. She heard the flow of
+the stream below, its volume and momentum continually increasing, and
+the foaming turmoil where the currents met the dash of the rain at the
+outlet of the mine; now and again she was conscious that lightning
+flashed through the gray and white descending torrents without, and lit
+up this dreary subterranean recess with its uncanny glare for a space,
+till distance annulled its power, and she heard the thunder roar. But
+she did not withdraw her eyes, and she wondered if he had known her in
+that short moment as she had recognized him. For it was Jack Espey.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed so long while she sat there, waiting for some sign, or token,
+or further intimation, that she might have thought the apparition
+a mere illusion, had she ever heard enough of the tricks of the
+imagination to learn to doubt her senses. She was trembling still,
+although her voice was calm enough as at last she called his name.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack Espey!" the echoes cried out, as promptly as if it were a
+familiar sound and long ago conned. They fell to silence gradually. She
+did not call again, but, with her slow and composed manner, she waited
+for him to answer.</p>
+
+<p>When he finally approached, apparently ascending an incline from depths
+below, he met her intent gaze fixed upon him; but she seemed to him as
+impassive and as unmoved of aspect as if this were a daily occurrence
+in her life.</p>
+
+<p>"I war in hopes ye didn't know me, Julia," he said, dully sad, as he
+came up near her.</p>
+
+<p>He stood leaning his elbow on one of the shelves of rock, looking up
+at her, mechanically shielding himself behind the jagged ledges from
+observation without, although it might seem naught could stand in the
+storm that raged beyond.</p>
+
+<p>His plight was forlorn. His clothes were worn and torn, and miry with
+clay; it adhered in flakes and smears to his long boots, incongruously
+spurred. His face was lined and white. His hat was pushed far back on
+his black hair, as of yore, and his long-lashed grayish-blue eyes had
+an appealing look which she had not seen before.</p>
+
+<p>"What fur ye wished I wouldn't know ye?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked hard at her. "'Kase it's dangersome. I'm a man hunted fur my
+life, I reckon. It's dangersome fur me, an' fur ye too, ter know I be
+hyar."</p>
+
+<p>"It's jes' ez well I ain't one of the skeery kind, then," said Julia
+hardily. "I be powerful glad I seen ye hyar."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed curiously unfamiliar to him in some sort. So alert had his
+faculties become in the suspense of jeopardy that this slight point
+perturbed him, until he bethought himself that he had hitherto heard
+her speak so seldom, and had observed her so little, that the very
+inflections of her voice were strange. It was of a different timbre
+from Adelicia's. It did not vibrate. It had a conclusive, flutelike
+quality, without a trailing sequence of resonance.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I 'lowed ez mos' ennybody mought be sorry ter see me in sech a
+fix as this," he said dolorously.</p>
+
+<p>The deliberate, impassive Julia was almost in haste to avert this
+apparent misconstruction. "Oh, I war glad ter view ye, 'kase a heap o'
+folks 'lowed ye couldn't hev got away 'thout yer horse, him bein' kilt,
+an' ez ye war a-lyin' in the laurel somewhar, dead, yit."</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head, and looked steadily at him. Her deep, dark,
+translucent eyes were full of shoaling lights of variant blue, like
+the heart of some great sapphire. The long, curling lashes flung a
+fibrous shadow on her cheek; its texture, as the light fell upon it,
+was so fine, so soft, its tints so fair, its curve so delicate. Her
+lips, chiseled like some triumph of ideal beauty, but that no sculpture
+could express their mobile sweetness, parted suddenly in her rare and
+brilliant smile.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man, under its glamours, might have taken heart of grace to be
+glad that he was alive; but Espey's face hardened.</p>
+
+<p>"'T would be jes' ez well, jes' ez well, lying dead in the laur'l,"
+he said bitterly. Then, with an afterthought, "Let them folks stay
+'feared. They won't spile thar health quakin' an' shudderin' 'bout
+me," he added cynically. As he marked her expression change, her smile
+vanish, he realized the necessity to please, to propitiate. He knew
+her so slightly; his temper must not be too savage and surly with so
+complete a stranger, and perhaps earn her antagonism, especially since
+he and his refuge were at her mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Course," he went on, with a clumsy effort at amends, "I don't mean
+Ad'licia. Ye knowed we-uns war keepin' comp'ny?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I know Ad'licia hev quaked an' shuddered 'bout me a heap mo' 'n I be
+wuth," he added.</p>
+
+<p>Was the day darker outside, or how was quenched that subtle brightness
+of aspect that had made the girl's face radiant? It was beautiful
+still, that statuesque contour, but as chill and unresponsive as if
+indeed its every line had been wrought with a chisel. The smooth
+hair, with its sheen of silken fineness, caught the light on its
+coiled and plaited chestnut-tinted strands. One hand rested on her
+brown sunbonnet, laid on the ledge of the gray rock, and she leaned
+her weight upon it. Her head and her fair complexion—so fair that it
+transmitted to the surface an outline of the blue veins in her temple
+and throat, and even her eyelids—and the roseate fluctuations in her
+cheek were very distinct against the yellow clay of the bank of earth
+behind her. Her little rough low-quarter shoes and the brown stockings
+showed a trifle beneath the skirt of the brick-dust-colored homespun
+dress she wore, as they were placed on a boulder that stood out of the
+tawny rushing stream below.</p>
+
+<p>He noted the change. He could not account for it other than as a
+vicarious resentment.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't faultin' Ad'licia," he said, more emphatically. "She war
+tormented powerful 'bout me, warn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"A-fust," said Julia veraciously. Her voice was as inexpressive as her
+eyes. "But Ad'licia is one ez always hopes fur the best."</p>
+
+<p>He drew back with a sudden recoil. "Waal, now, by the Lord!" he cried
+furiously, "she's welcome ter her hope! Settin' thar in the house,
+warm, an' dry, an' fed, an' clean,"—he looked down with a sort of
+repulsion upon his miry garments,—"a-hopin' fur the bes', an' makin'
+herself mighty comfort'ble an' contented, an' <i>me</i> hyar, freezin'
+in this cold hole, an' mighty nigh starvin', in rags an' mis'ry, an'
+sick, an' sorry, an' lonesome enough ter die, an' shet out o' the
+light! My God, ef I warn't 'feared o' my life, I'd let the off'cer take
+me! The State hain't got no sech term o' imprisonment ez this!"</p>
+
+<p>Julia was leaning forward, each line of her impassive face replete with
+meaning, reflecting his every sentiment, but with the complement of
+sympathy and acquiescence and responsive anger in his anger.</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly, lifting his arm with a scornful gesture toward
+the low vault with its dank, earthy odor, the ledges of barren,
+inhospitable rock, the cold stream rushing forth from the darkness
+within, seen in an appalling blackness adown the tunnel, against which
+his white-lined face looked whiter, his form taller in his closely
+belted garb and with his long boots drawn up to the knees. He waved his
+arm as if to include it all. "An' Ad'licia,—she hopes for the bes'."</p>
+
+<p>He broke out into a harsh laugh, which the echoes repeated so
+promptly, and with apparently so malignant an intent, that he checked
+it hastily, and the sound died on his colorless lips; but far down the
+black tunnel something uncanny seemed to fall to laughing suddenly, and
+as suddenly to break off; and again a further voice still was lifted in
+weird mirth, and the laughter failed midway.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for silence, and then he leaned against a higher ledge near
+which she was sitting, and, resting his elbow on it, looked at her once
+more, wondering how he might best revert to his object of propitiation.
+He was remembering that Adelicia had told him how prone was Julia to
+notice slights, and how quick to take offense. He felt hardly equal
+to the effort of repairing the damage of his outbreak against her
+relative, so spent was his scanty strength by the violence of his anger
+and his agitation. He could only look at her silently, more forlorn,
+more pallid, more appealing, than before.</p>
+
+<p>"I oughtn't ter think hard o' Ad'licia," he said at last. "Nobody else
+would, I know. Would they?" he added.</p>
+
+<p>For, with Julia's silent habit, conversation was somewhat difficult
+without a direct appeal. It was a direct appeal. She liked to remember
+that afterward.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal," she said, slowly and judicially, as if weighing matters
+submitted for arbitrament, "I 'low Ad'licia treated ye right mean, fust
+an' las'."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he rejoined, in genuine interest, his face resuming its normal
+expression before flight and hardship and darkness and loneliness and
+fear and privation had so marked it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Kase," she went on in that soft, unfamiliar voice that the echoes
+seemed hardly to follow, so complete, so indivisible, was every
+flutelike tone, "she oughter married ye whenst ye axed her—ef she
+liked ye."</p>
+
+<p>A faint surprise was dawning in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Lucy wouldn't gin his cornsent," he said succinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon he 'lowed 't war his jewty ter say no. But ef Ad'licia hed
+married ye ennyhows, do ye reckon dad would hev let that leetle fice
+o' the law, 'Dolphus Ross, jail <i>his</i> nephew-in-law 'kase a man
+he fought in Tanglefoot Cove <i>mought</i> die ef he didn't hev the
+industry ter git well? Naw, sir: ye'd hev hed dad an' Luther fur
+backers, an' they air toler'ble stiff backers, fur enny man. Dad would
+hev fixed a way out'n it fur ye, fur sure, count o' Ad'licia. She war a
+turr'ble fool not ter marry ye, an' I tole her so."</p>
+
+<p>The surprise, the doubt, and at last the conviction successively
+expressed in Espey's face might have been easily discriminated by one
+skilled in reading the human physiognomy. But Julia possessed no such
+craft, and when he spoke she appreciated no change in his manner,
+albeit it was not guarded; for he did not conceive it necessary to
+closely screen the discovery of a secret of which he perceived that
+Julia was herself unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>"Julia," he said appealingly, "ye see how I be hunted an' harried, an'
+nobody keers fur me. Jes' let the folks shudder an' quake fur a while
+longer 'thout knowin' what's kem o' me. Don't tell nobody ez ye hev
+seen me hyar."</p>
+
+<p>She was gazing out at the steely lines of the rain curtain, so dense as
+to be like a veritable fabric, as it swayed in the wind at the rugged
+mouth of the mine, and its foaming white fringes that seemed to trail
+upon the brown water where the continuous downfall splashed into its
+currents. The peculiarly clear, colorless light of a gray day, which,
+in its adequacy for all the purposes of mere vision, would seem to
+point the munificence and splendid lavishness of the sun's bestowals
+in the interests of beauty and growths and the gladdening of the heart
+of man, was upon her face, which responded with a sort of subdued
+glister like marble. Her eyes and the shadowy long black lashes were
+meditatively downcast. She was evidently reviewing the course of action
+which she had just sketched for him, for Adelicia, for Cap'n Lucy. He
+did not hold her undivided attention, and he realized that it was only
+a mechanical assent as she nodded, her face still reflective, absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even Cap'n Lucy," he urged eagerly. "Not Jasper Lar'bee"—He
+paused suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>The word seemed to arrest, to enchain, her elusive attention. The
+delicate roseate tints of her fair complexion deepened from throat
+to brow; her cheek was vividly red. She was remembering the Larrabee
+threshold, the greeting she had encountered there, the grotesque
+indignity of Henrietta Timson's affronts. But hers was a reticent
+habit, and she had a reserved nature. She only said, conclusively,
+slowly, "Ye may be sure I won't tell Jasper Lar'bee."</p>
+
+<p>Somehow Espey felt a sense of loss; and he had so little to lose,
+poor fellow, that albeit her affection was unsought, uncared for,
+unsuspected till a moment ago, the doubt of it afflicted him as if his
+heart were cruelly rifled. That flush at Larrabee's name! To him it
+was conclusive. He had no other indication by which to judge. He had
+mistaken her sympathy, her idle talk; she was wont to talk so seldom
+that it was not surprising that he hardly knew how to take her words;
+he knew so little of her and her mental processes. She cared for
+Larrabee, not for him. Nobody cared for him. And Adelicia was hoping
+for the best.</p>
+
+<p>"This be a mighty pore shelter an' home an' hope," he said, grimly
+looking about him. "I hed prayed I mought crope inter a hole ter hide
+or die, like a hunted fox or bar or painter be 'lowed ter do sometimes.
+That didn't 'pear ter me much fur a man ter ax of the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>He stood off from the rock for an instant, his big white wool hat in
+one hand, the other in his leather belt where that formidable array of
+weapons still gleamed. His head was thrown back from the loose collar
+of his blue-checked shirt; his straight hair was tossed from his brow;
+his gray eyes, scornfully bitter, surveyed the dripping walls,—so
+dark that in the recesses here and there clusters of bats hung head
+downward, dimly descried, awaiting the night,—the rugged obtrusion
+of rock through the clay, the chill, chill flowing of the brown
+water in the channel below, as ceaseless, as cold, as heedless, as
+relentless, as in the days of yore when it broke its allotted bounds,
+rose into alien hewn-out caverns, and flooded the mine, wrecking the
+humble industry of man, wresting away with its grasping currents two
+struggling human lives, and carrying not even a gruesome memory or
+token of its deeds upon its sleek waves out into the sunshine, and the
+free air, and the genial warmth of the upper world.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't much I hev axed,—this hole ter starve an' die in,—but mebbe
+it's too much!" Then, turning, with an eye alight, and a furious flush
+that made him look all at once well and strong and alert and reckless
+again, "But tell whar I be hid out—tell—tell who ye want! Tell
+ennybody—everybody! Cap'n Lucy! the sher'ff! Taft! Jasper Lar'bee!"</p>
+
+<p>And what miracle was this! The silent, impassive, reserved, reticent
+Julia fixed her eyes upon him for a moment, amazed, troubled, and then,
+as she suddenly comprehended, full of a keen but tender reproach. And
+until that moment he had not known how beautiful those much-vaunted
+eyes could be. The next they were full of tears, and Julia, leaning
+back against the wall behind her, had burst into sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell! Why, Jack Espey, how kin ye think I could be made to tell whar
+ye be hid out?" She turned her head to look at him again with hurt and
+indignant amazement. "I'd die first! Powder an' lead"—she hesitated
+for hyperbole that might express this impossibility—"all the powder
+and lead the men shot away in the war times couldn't git a word from me
+o' what I hev fund out this evenin'!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it!" he protested, coming up close to her, as she sat on the
+ledge. "I oughtn't ter hev said that, but ye see, Julia, I feel so
+s'picious, sometimes; I be so hunted an' harried, an' nobody keers fur
+me or whar I be—'ceptin' the sher'ff." He lifted his eyebrows, with a
+fleering laugh at his own forlorn estate.</p>
+
+<p>"I keer," said Julia stoutly. "I won't tell nobody whar ye be hid
+out,—not even dad, nor Luther, nor nobody, 'ceptin' Ad'licia."</p>
+
+<p>He gasped in haste for utterance. He caught at her hand as if he were
+drowning,—as if she might be gone before he could stay her for a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Ad'licia! Oh my Lord, no! Jes' leave her a-hopin' fur the bes'!"
+He had hardly realized how deeply he had resented Adelicia's optimistic
+resignation to his fate. His sarcastic laugh was broken off halfway in
+his eager resumption of his argument. "Ad'licia mought feel obligated
+ter tell Cap'n Lucy, an' 'bide by his word. With her a-hopin' fur
+the bes', an' Cap'n Lucy's foolin' long o' his jewty ter his orphin
+niece, I'll git the sher'ff's bracelets locked round my wrists; an'
+the jail ain't ez sightly a place ez this beautisome spot. I be a man
+fur myself, an' I can't ondertake ter cut out all my cloth with Cap'n
+Lucy's scissors. Ad'licia's contented. Leff her be! She'll hope fur the
+bes' with a twenty horse power."</p>
+
+<p>He did not remember Mrs. Larrabee's astute remark in the advice she
+had given him to the effect that "perlitin' round the t'other gal
+wouldn't go so hard with him," if she were really a "gyardin lily" for
+beauty. He only felt vaguely that he had not heretofore appreciated the
+radiance of the face that Julia bent upon him; he did not understand
+that it was the moment, the unrealized thought, which so embellished
+it, as she said cogitatingly, "Naw, 't won't do ter tell Ad'licia. I
+won't tell her."</p>
+
+<p>"See ter it that ye don't," he sternly urged her. And once more he
+was impressed with the idea that he really had not before known how
+singularly beautiful she was.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye see, Julia," he said, lowering his voice confidentially, "I can't
+git away, 'kase I got no horse; an' ef I hed one, I hev got no money,
+an' I'd jes' be tuk somewhar, now that the folks hev got sot onto
+the trail of me. So I 'lowed I'd hide hyarabout till I git news from
+Tanglefoot ez that man hev got better. Ye see I be hopin' fur the bes',
+too," he added, with a pathetic smile. "It's all I kin do."</p>
+
+<p>"How do ye git suthin' ter eat?" she asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Espey looked embarrassed. "Oh, I makes out," he said evasively. "I gits
+out at night sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>She assumed that he hunted or trapped at night for provisions. He noted
+that she did not argue nor contend, as Adelicia was wont to do. She
+accepted his arrangements as intrinsically the best.</p>
+
+<p>"I could fetch ye suthin' wunst in a while," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>He looked aghast at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ye do that, Julia," he said warningly. "It mought git ye or
+Cap'n Lucy liable ter the law. Don't ye do it. I'll make out somehows."
+Then seeing her reluctance, "Ef I need ennything, or want ter git
+communication with folks outside, I'll let ye know. I'll—I'll put this
+hyar pipe in a nick in them rocks, jes' west, clost inter the freestone
+spring nigh yer dad's house."</p>
+
+<p>She listened, breathless, and beamed with delight at the feasibility of
+this plan.</p>
+
+<p>"An' whenever I pass hyar," she said, with wide, illumined eyes and a
+flickering flush of excitement,—"an' I'll kem frequent,—I'll drap
+wild flowers in the road. An' ye will see 'em, an' know I hev been by
+an' been a-studyin' 'bout you-uns. An' that will be plumb comp'ny fur
+ye."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twill that!" he cried. His eyes were soft and bright and dewy.
+Somehow it seemed to bind him—that chain of flowers—to the fair world
+without, which had been slipping away, away forever.</p>
+
+<p>He turned, and looked out toward the rocky egress of the cave as if he
+almost expected to see already a cardinal flower flaming in the sun on
+the gray rock.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sun. The rain fell, dense still,—dense enough, doubtless,
+to preclude all observation from without; but from among the shadows
+within his practiced eyes descried through the shifting, shimmering
+veil, now white and gray in shoaling effects, all blown aslant by the
+wind, a canvas-covered wagon lumbering by, albeit for the rush of the
+stream and the fall of the torrent she could not hear the slow creak of
+its wheels. His heart was a-flutter, although he knew that the danger
+of observation was past, as the swaying white hood had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"That's 'Renzo Taft," he remarked. "He's gittin' back late from the
+cross-roads. I reckon the storm cotch him an' kep' him."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. Then, with a sort of falter of humiliation, "I reckon I'd
+better go back ter my hidin' place, Julia. The rain's slackening so
+somebody passin' mought view me. Ye jes' set hyar right quiet an' wait
+fur the rain ter hold up."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away; then looked back over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's luminous eyes dwelt smilingly upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," she answered softly.</p>
+
+<p>He took his way along the ledges above the treacherous stream to that
+blacker recess where the way deflected and the light failed; he turned
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be a-watchin' fur them flowers," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Her smile itself was like a bloom; he, unaware, treasured the
+recollection. He seemed to reflect it in some sort. He was smiling
+himself, as he went down into those sunless depths.</p>
+
+<p>He could not forbear partly retracing his way once, and looking at
+her as she sat, quite still, gazing out with her eyes of summer and
+sunshine upon the rain, and the dreary, sad, tear-stained aspect of the
+world without, whence sounded the sobbing of the troubled wind.</p>
+
+<p>When he came yet another time, the rain had ceased, and she was gone.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft's arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed
+to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is
+true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that
+emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant
+an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a
+countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance
+with certain predatory suggestions,—on the contrary, finding in them
+its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued
+ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the
+great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath
+the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he
+began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances
+he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation
+of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into
+the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles,
+cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats,—the integrity of
+all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from
+the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his
+way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half
+submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he
+entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds
+with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim
+interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual,
+save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain
+asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing
+from the eaves. The wind rushed furiously in recurrent blasts against
+the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it
+bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake
+beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of
+the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards of
+the roof. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional
+drops fell a-sputteriug into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft
+herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool
+on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a
+state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of
+a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions
+of its simple furniture distinguishable,—the table with its blue
+ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old
+warping-bars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from
+peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft's precocity did not extend to weaving.
+A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so
+conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted
+some conference,—of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces
+of recent tears on the little girl's face, and a most depressed
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's Copley? Whar's yer uncle Cop?" he demanded, looking hastily
+about the shadowy place.</p>
+
+<p>She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the
+knitting-needles through the ball of yarn.</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't hyar," she said, lifting reproachful eyes; "an' he ain't been
+hyar since ye been gone."</p>
+
+<p>He stared down at her in silent surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye jes' went off an' lef' me an' Joe hyar by ourse'fs, an' we been
+mos' skeered ter death," she added, with a sob.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden apprehension crossed Taft's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I lef Cop hyar. Ain't he been in ter git his vittles?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye call him in the store?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe he war in the barn."</p>
+
+<p>"I blowed the hawn fur him; he ain't eat a mite sence ye been gone."</p>
+
+<p>Taft turned hastily toward the door, his florid face paling. Then he
+turned back. "Whar's Joe?"</p>
+
+<p>"He hev runned away!" cried Sis, with a burst of sobs. "Las' night
+we-uns hearn sech a cur'ous hurrah—somewhar—I dunno—sech cur'ous
+talk an' hollerin' 'way down in the groun'—an'—an'—diggin'—an'"—</p>
+
+<p>He had paused, looking amazed at her. Then his face changed, with a
+sort of aghast certainty upon it. "Jes' some boys diggin' in the Lost
+Time mine," he urged, however, plausibly.</p>
+
+<p>"But—but"—she protested—"Joe, <i>he</i> say, they—they
+air—<i>dead</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, hoping for some sufficient adult denial of this
+terrible fantasy; but his face betokened only its confirmation, and she
+fell to shivering and sobbing afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"Whenst it got so turrible in the middle o' the night, Joe, he looked
+out'n the winder upsteers, an' the moon hed riz. An' he clomb down by
+the tree. He 'lowed he wouldn't bide no mo' an' listen. So he jes' skun
+the cat out'n the winder. He war 'feared."</p>
+
+<p>And once more she covered her face with her hands and wept.
+Nevertheless, between her fingers, as the tears trickled down them, she
+furtively surveyed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Wunst," she said tentatively, "I 'lowed 'twar revenuers. An' then I
+wisht 'twar. I hed ruther hev hearn <i>them</i> 'n—'n—dead ones."</p>
+
+<p>His countenance did not change a muscle.</p>
+
+<p>She was now alarmed by her own temerity. In the long ordeal of solitude
+and fright she had lost control of her small nerves, or she would not
+have overstepped her habitual caution so far. "Revenuers arter what?"
+he demanded. His incidental, unconcerned manner reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>"Arter the 'wild-cat,' I reckon," she hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>He affected to consider the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Some boys <i>mought</i> be talkin' 'bout startin' a still down thar
+in the Lost Time mine. I'll roust 'em out mighty quick, ef they do! Ef
+thar's enny whiskey sold round hyar, I'm countin' on doin' it out'n my
+store, sure. I got a license ter sell."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him narrowly, suspiciously, hardly more credulous than he
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't hev <i>my</i> profits sp'iled. Whiskey's the best trade I
+got," he added, as he turned about. "Waal, I 'lowed Copley would be in
+hyar ter holp me tote the truck in; but, howsever, set a rock afore the
+door ter hold it open, Sis, whilst I make a start, ennyhow."</p>
+
+<p>His show of industry as he toiled across the rainy yard, now with a
+keg, now with a box, on his shoulder, of anxiety for the safety of
+his goods, his sedulous care in displaying them to the best advantage
+on the shelves to lure customers, might have deceived a wiser head
+than Cornelia Taft's. Her long-cherished suspicions were gradually
+dispelled, as she ran hither and thither, carrying the lighter packages
+in her arms, eagerly helping to bestow them, making place for them when
+she could do no more. It was not until she had gone back briskly to her
+task of preparing an early supper that he ventured to descend from the
+store to the room below, and take his way along the dark tunnel to the
+still in the recess of the mine. He paused surprised at the disordered
+and careless disarray about the entrance to the tunnel: some of the
+boards of the partition were on the ground, others aslant, none as
+they were habitually adjusted. With a steady hand he rectified this,
+and went forward forthwith, his lantern swinging in his grasp. Once he
+paused to listen: no voice, no stir; only the heavy windless silence.
+As he progressed, the faint tinkling of the running water smote his
+ear, and presently he had crossed it. No sound came from about the
+still; there was no suffusion of red light on the terra-cotta walls
+that sometimes glowed at the terminus of the tunnel when the furnace
+door stood open. He could hardly be said to have had a premonition. He
+was prepared for disaster by the previous events; but he could scarcely
+realize its magnitude, its conclusiveness, when the timid flare of
+the lantern illumined the dreary walls of the moonshiners' haunt, the
+dead cold furnace, the tubs of mash,—on the margin of one of which a
+rat was boldly feeding, scarcely pausing to look around with furtive,
+sinister bright eyes,—and his two lieutenants, whom he had left to
+guard Larrabee, bound and gagged upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The craft which characterized Lorenzo Taft was hardly predicable of
+so massive an organization. It was an endowment of foxlike ingenuity,
+sinuous, lithe, suggestive of darting swiftness and of doubled tracks.
+The expression of blunt dismay on his big jowl dropping visibly beneath
+his broad yellow beard, the widening stare in his round blue eyes as
+he gazed about the dismal place, his heavy, lumbering motion as he
+carefully set the lantern down upon the cold masonry of the fireless
+furnace, gave no intimation of the speed with which his mind had
+canvassed the situation, accepted the inevitable, and fixed upon his
+future course. It was hardly a moment before he was on one knee beside
+the prostrate form of the elder moonshiner, and had drawn from over his
+head the grain sack that had served both to obscure his countenance
+and more completely secure his gag. The glimmer of the lantern, like
+a slow rill of light trickling feebly through the darkness, illumined
+the expression of eager appeal in the haggard, wild face and eyes of
+Copley. An instant longer was too long to wait, yet wait he must!
+Taft jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the other prostrate form,
+convulsed now in a frenzied effort to attract the attention of the
+new-comer, whose footsteps had brought the only hope of speedy
+deliverence.</p>
+
+<p>"Drunk agin?" he asked, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Copley made shift to nod his head affirmatively. Then again that
+frantic plea for release illumined his eyes and contorted his anxious
+features.</p>
+
+<p>Taft, regardless, rose, with the swinging motion which was
+characteristic of him, and, with the lantern swaying in his hand, made
+his way to the opposite side of the furnace, where the young drunkard
+lay—very sober now, in good truth—cramped in every hard-bound limb,
+racked with the tortures of thirst, and half famished. Taft had partly
+unbound the ropes from about the furnace and cut them in twain, thus
+dissevering the companions in misery; he swiftly knotted those that
+held the elder moonshiner, while the ends of Dan Sykes's bonds lay
+loose along the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Dan," he cried roughly, "what sort'n caper is this?"</p>
+
+<p>The prostrate young fellow made an effort to rise, so strong that the
+already loosened cords relaxed; and as Taft emphasized his demand by a
+sharp kick in the ribs, and an urgent exhortation to the young sot to
+"quit this damned fooling," the sack which Sykes had worn some twenty
+hours as hood and gag, and which, since his wakening from his long
+drunken sleep, he had strained in every fibre by his mad lurches of
+fright and efforts for freedom, rolled off, his pinioned arms were at
+liberty, and it seemed he had naught to do but to sit up and untie his
+craftily bound feet and legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye demented gopher!" cried Taft angrily, as Sykes sat up stupidly,
+blinking in the gleam of the lantern. "What ails ye? Drunk agin?"</p>
+
+<p>If his bursting skull were admissible testimony,—but he shook his head
+stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a
+scornful boot.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the worse fool you-uns! Look-a-hyar!" he cried furiously, as he
+caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering
+feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes
+about his legs. "Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer
+drunken tantrums! Murder! murder! or mighty nigh it!"</p>
+
+<p>He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest
+on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the
+plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended,
+as he groped bending toward it in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that? Lar'bee?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Lar'bee!" exclaimed Taft scornfully. "Lar'bee's been out'n the still
+ever since yestiddy evenin'."</p>
+
+<p>It was Sykes's drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft
+departed; but alack! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache
+of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on.
+Nevertheless he blurted out:—</p>
+
+<p>"Ye tole me ter watch him,"—he set his teeth in a sort of snarl,
+and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly
+spirituous,—"ter gyard him like, a dog. 'Hold fast!' ye said, 'hold
+fast!'"</p>
+
+<p>Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own
+serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Sykes," he said, "this is a bad business fur you, an' ye'll swing fur
+it, I'm a-thinkin'. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter
+watch nobody. I let Lar'bee out myse'f. Ye an' Copley war lef' hyar
+ter keep sober an' run the still; an' what do ye do? Ye murder him!"</p>
+
+<p>As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic voice, the young fellow's
+blood ran cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye murder him, an' tie him up like that, an' then do yerse'f up sorter
+fancy with bags an' a rope. Ye'll hev closer dealin's with a rope yit;
+I kin spy out that in the day that's kemin'." His eyes gleamed with a
+sinister smile.</p>
+
+<p>Sykes's knees shook.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed wildly. "Air—air he dead? 'Twarn't me! God
+A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar
+Lar'bee! 'Twar Lar'bee!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shucks!" Taft turned wearily away. "Ain't I tole ye I seen Lar'bee
+set out 'fore I did? Blackenin' Lar'bee won't save ye, Dan!
+<i>Drink—drink!</i> I tole ye drink would ruinate ye; always brings
+a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n't put some water in the jug
+beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o' yer spree." He
+shook his head. "So it is! So it is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is he dead,—air ye sure he is dead?" cried the young fellow in a
+heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside
+the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner.</p>
+
+<p>Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over
+the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>The boy drew back, with a shudder of repulsion. "Oh, I never went ter
+do it! I never went ter do it! I war drunk! crazy drunk! devil drunk!
+Oh"—</p>
+
+<p>"They say," Taft interrupted suddenly,—"leastwise the lawyers do,—ez
+a man bein' drunk in c'mittin' a crime ought n't ter influence a
+jury,—the law makes no allowance; but," with an encouraging nod, "they
+say, too, ez it <i>do</i> influence the jury <i>every time</i>. An' the
+court can't holp it. The jury <i>will</i> allow suthin' fur a man bein'
+drunk."</p>
+
+<p>The white face of the boy, imposed against the darkness with all the
+contour of youth, had hardly a characteristic that was not expressive
+of age, so pinched, so lined, so drawn, so bloodless, was every
+sharpened feature. The natural horror of his supposed deed, his
+simple, superficial repentance of the involuntary crime, were suddenly
+expunged; his whole being was controlled by a single impulse; a passion
+of fear possessed him. Jury, crime, lawyer,—these words looking to
+a legal arraignment first brought to his horror-stricken mind the
+idea of a responsibility other than moral for his deed. What slight
+independence of thought he had, what poor capacity for sifting and
+judging and weighing the probabilities his easily influenced mind might
+have exerted as he more and more recovered from his recent inebriation,
+became nullified upon the instant. He did not look once again back to
+the past, but to the future, wild, quaking, frenzied, as Taft elected
+to foretell the event.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why," Taft coolly said, nodding sagely, and inclining his head
+toward the breathless, frantic, almost petrified creature, "I'd leave
+it ter men."</p>
+
+<p>Sykes recoiled, with a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," reiterated Taft, weightily and slowly. "The jury would take yer
+drunk inter account; an' on the witness-stand I'd testify ez ye war gin
+over ter the failin'."</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow's gray, stony face did not change as Taft ceased to
+speak. Taft felt its fixed look upon him as he stood, his head bent,
+and his big hat thrust back on his yellow hair; one hand was laid
+meditatively on his long beard, as he gazed down on the prostrate
+figure of Copley; with the other hand he held the lantern, whose spare
+white glimmers of light thrown out into the surrounding obscurity
+seemed very meagre in the darksome place, which was never cheerful at
+best, but without the roar and heat of the furnace, the keen, brilliant
+glinting from the crevice of the door when closed or the red, suffusive
+flare when it was swung ajar, the still-room was the dreariest
+presentment of subterranean gloom.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Taft continued thoughtfully, "I'd ruther leave it ter men—ter
+the courts, ye know—'n ter hev the folks round hyar ez war frien'ly
+ter Copley ondertake ter settle ye fur it; they'd—Hey?" he interrupted
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>For the young fellow had reached out his arm and laid his hand with
+a vise-like grip upon Taft's wrist. His head was thrust forward;
+he seemed about to speak, but his parted lips, drawn tight across
+his large, prominent teeth, emitted not a sound, although his wild,
+dilated, bloodshot eyes looked an eager protest. His voice had failed
+in framing the obnoxious words, which, however, Taft spoke patly enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ye know, they would—they would. Jedge Lynch is the only court
+fur this kentry. What sati'faction is it ter the folks hyarabout, ter
+hev a man kerried ter jail, thirty mile away, ter stan' his trial in
+the courthouse year arter nex', mebbe, an' then arter all's come an'
+gone cheat hemp at las'? Yes, that's yer bes' chance; set out fur
+Colbury straight, an' s'render yerse'f thar."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, apparently thinking deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef ye hed enny kin, though, in enny out'n-the-way place, my advices
+ter ye would be ter cut an' run, an' bide along o' them; fur this hyar
+air a mighty bad job, an' it's goin' ter go hard with the man ez done
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the pallid, evasive light flickered in feeble vibrations
+across the long, motionless, rope-bound figure, and the stark face
+curiously distorted and painfully repulsive with the gag in its
+stretched jaws.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ain't got no kin in no'th Georgy?" Taft demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw," replied the boy huskily.</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion seemed to have restored his voice, albeit muffled and
+shaken; into his eyes, staring, wide and bloodshot, into the gloom,
+was creeping a definiteness of expression, as if he beheld, instead of
+the vacant black darkness, some scene projected there as a possibility
+and painted by his expectation. His grip on Taft's arm had relaxed. It
+had been close and hard, and Taft rubbed the wrist a trifle with the
+hand that still held the lantern, setting the feeble glimmer a-swinging
+swiftly about the dark walls.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pity,—that's a tur'ble pity," Taft averred gloomily; then,
+with an air of rousing himself, "Waal, ye'll jes' hev ter leave it ter
+men. That's the bes' ye kin do." He was turning briskly toward the
+tunnel. "I'll ondertake ter gin ye the matter of a two hours' start of
+the folks 'bout hyar by not tellin' 'bout old Copley till then. But ye
+hed bes' ride with speed, fur they'll be hot shod on yer tracks, sure."</p>
+
+<p>As he went forward with his swinging, elastic stride, swaying the
+lantern back and forth, according to his wont, to illumine the path,
+his manner, his words, his expression, so tallied with the situation he
+had invented and the role he had played that even the most discerning
+might have descried no discrepancy in point of fact. The young
+moonshiner, barely sobered and wholly frightened, was easily to be
+deluded by a verisimilitude far less complete. He followed, his clumsy
+feet stumbling and stepping awry, as if his gait were still subject
+to spirituous influences from which his brain was freed. His cramped
+limbs yet felt the numbness of their long constraint and the pain of
+his bonds, for Larrabee's ropes had not been adjusted with due regard
+to the free circulation of the blood. His progress was far slower than
+his host's, who paused from time to time and waited to be overtaken.
+On these occasions it soon became apparent that there was something
+in his mind on which he had begun to ponder deeply; for whereas at
+first he had visibly hastened to join Taft on seeing him whirl around,
+the lantern describing in the distance a wheel of pallid white light
+against the dense darkness of the tunnel, he now continued to plod
+heavily, slower and slower, even when the light settled to a shining
+focus, again motionless. Taft lifted it once as Sykes approached,
+throwing its force full upon the swollen, mottled, absorbed face,
+the fixed introspective eyes, the heavy slouching shoulders and bent
+head. At that moment of careful reconnoitre a genuine expression was
+on Taft's face, keen, furtive, triumphant; it passed unobserved. He
+whirled around again, leading the way with the lantern, and it was with
+a perfectly cloaked satisfaction that he began to observe the young
+fellow's convulsive haste to depart as they neared the exit from the
+tunnel, his flimsy pretense of heed to his elder's advice, and finally
+his heedlessness altogether, no longer able to maintain attention or
+its semblance.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone at last, and Taft, returning to his prostrate comrade in
+the still, dismissed him from his mind, and thenceforward from his
+life, with a single comment. "That drunken shoat hev got an uncle in
+north Texas," he said, as he placed the lantern on the cold brick-work
+of the dead and fireless furnace. "I knowed that, so I fixed it so ez
+he'd light out fur them furrin parts d'rec'ly. He ain't dawdlin', I'm
+thinkin'."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he addressed himself to removing the gag and cutting the bonds
+of the elder distiller, his brow darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"That cuss Lar'bee's work, hey?" he demanded gruffly; and as the
+liberated Copley gasped out an assent Taft growled a deep oath, his
+face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and
+his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.</p>
+
+<p>"That kems from sparin' powder an' lead," he declared vindictively.
+"Whyn't ye or Sykes shoot him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He war too suddint," gasped Copley. "Ye never see a painter so suddint
+an' sharp."</p>
+
+<p>"An' whyn't ye be suddint, too?" retorted Taft aggressively.</p>
+
+<p>Copley might have protested that in his own interest he had been as
+"suddint" as he could, and had done his best. He evidently felt,
+however, much in fault, and as, in silence, he ruefully rubbed his numb
+limbs, just free from their ligatures, tingling painfully with the
+renewal of the circulation of the blood, he gazed about, crestfallen
+and humbled, and even grief-stricken, at the scene of his wonted
+labors. It was but faintly revealed by the lantern on the masonry of
+the furnace,—the dimly white focus with divergent filaments of rays
+weaving only a tenuous web of light in the darkness which encompassed
+all. The great burly forms of tubs and barrels were but vaguely
+glimpsed as brownish suggestions in the blackness; a yellow gleam from
+the copper still gave the effect of an independent illumination rather
+than the resources of reflection, so dull and unresponsive was all else
+upon which the lantern cast its glimmer. Taft sat, according to his
+habit, upon the side of a barrel, his legs crossed, his elbow on one
+knee, his head bowed upon his hand, his big hat intercepting all view
+of his face. Copley gave a long sigh, as his spiritless glance noted
+the dejection of his friend; but his grooved and wrinkled face seemed
+as incapable of expressiveness as before, and, with its tanned tints
+and blunt, ill-cut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood
+or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of
+re-attaining his liberty, from the immediate disaster to the details of
+his drudgery which so habitually occupied his every waking faculty.</p>
+
+<p>"That thar mash must be plumb ripe by this time," he remarked, his eyes
+fixed upon a spot in the darkness where presumably the tub in question
+was situated. "'Twar nigh ripe whenst Lar'bee jumped up demented, it
+'peared like, an' tuk arter we-uns."</p>
+
+<p>Taft lifted a red face and a scowling brow. With an air of reckless
+desperation he strode to the tub, and the next moment Copley heard the
+splash as the contents were poured out down the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws-a-massy, 'Renzo!" with the decisive ring of anger in his voice
+and all the arrogations of the expert, "whyn't ye let me examinate it?
+Ye ain't got my 'speriunce; ye ain't ekal ter jedge like me. Whyn't
+ye"—</p>
+
+<p>"Ye miser'ble mole!" Taft retorted angrily. "Ye may be a jedge o'
+fermentin' an' stillin' an' sech like, but ye hev got powerful leetle
+gumption 'bout'n the signs o' the times. Thar ye sit, a-yawpin' away
+'bout yer mash, ripe or raw, an' I'm lookin' fur the shootin' irons o'
+the marshal's men under my nose every time I turn my head."</p>
+
+<p>He suited the action to the word at the moment, looking down with a
+sudden squint which gave a frightfully realistic suggestion of the
+muzzle of a weapon held at his very teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing's busted!" Taft cried desperately. "It's done! Kin ye
+onderstan' that? We-uns hev got ter the jumpin'-off place!"</p>
+
+<p>The bewildered Copley looked vaguely at the verge of the deep shaft,
+perilously near.</p>
+
+<p>"That Lar'bee's loose now, full o' gredges fur bein' helt hyar," Taft
+continued. "We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An'
+the dep'ty sher'ff's on his track, 'lowin' ez Espey be Lar'bee an'
+s'picionin' moonshinin'. The dep'ty sher'ff ain't got nuthin' ter do
+with sech ez moonshinin' hisse'f, but he air tryin' ter find Lar'bee,
+an' settle his gredges with him; so he'll gin the revenue dogs the
+word 'bout Lar'bee an' distillin', an' whenst Lar'bee's tuk he'll take
+a heap o' pleasure in guidin' 'em hyar, I'll be bound. He mought even
+turn informer hisse'f, ter git even."</p>
+
+<p>He sunk down suddenly on the barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"It's powerful hard on me!" he cried. "I hev treated them boys like
+they war my own sons." He had forgotten, in this arrogation of age and
+paternal feeling, his recent youthfulness of matrimonial pretensions.
+"I hev tuk 'em in,"—he did not say in what sense,—"an' divided fair
+with 'em; an' they hev gotten mo' money out'n me than they'd ever
+elsewise view in thar whole lifetime. An' I hev been keerful an' kep'
+the place secret an' quiet. I hev tuk good heed ter all p'ints. An'
+we-uns mought hev gone on peaceful an' convenient till the crack o'
+doom, ef it hedn't been fur them. Oh, thar never war sech a place!"
+He looked round with the eyes of gloating admiration on the gruesome,
+shadowy den about him, so singularly suited to his vocation. "An' even
+the danger 'bout'n the hotel is done with, an' the lan' percessioned by
+now, I reckon, an' thar won't be no mo' packs o' strangers in the Cove;
+an' yit—an' yit—all fur nuthin'!"</p>
+
+<p>He took off his hat, and rubbed his corrugated brow with his hand with
+a gesture of desperation.</p>
+
+<p>It is a singular trait of what might perhaps be called sentimental
+economy that every individual in this world should be the object of
+the hero worship of some other. It may be submitted that there are
+no conditions so sterile as to induce a dearth of this perfectly
+disinterested, unrewarded admiration and acceptation of some embodied
+ideal. It is familiar enough in the higher walks of life and with
+worthy objects. But there may be a champion among beggars. It is a
+potent agent. Its purblind flatteries have advanced many a dullard
+to a foremost place. The plainest face has some devotee of its
+beauty; and even the most unpromising infant is a miracle of grace
+and genius to a doting grandmother. Hardly a hero of the world's
+history is more dignified on his elevated plane than was Lorenzo Taft
+in the eyes of his humble coadjutor. His wiliness was wisdom; his
+dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy; his
+self-seeking a cogent prudence; and his natural courage—with which,
+indeed, be was well endowed—the finest flower of the extravaganza of
+valor.</p>
+
+<p>Copley looked at him now with the respectful sympathy which one
+might well feel in witnessing the fall of a very great man. He
+scarcely remembered his own interests, inextricably involved. Every
+inflection of the mellow, sonorous voice raised to a declamatory
+pitch found a vibrating acquiescence in chords of responsive emotion.
+Every unconscious gesture of the massive and imposing figure—as
+histrionically appropriate as if acquired by labor and tuition,
+since it was indeed the nature that art simulates—was marked with
+appreciative eyes. A rat in a trap is hardly esteemed a fit object
+for sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and
+magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, consider the
+emotional melodrama within the small circuit of the wires!</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take it so tur'ble hard, 'Renzo," expostulated Copley, still
+seated on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>For Taft was standing motionless, his eyes staring and fixed, his hat
+far back on his head, exposing his set, drawn face with its teeth hard
+clenched, one hand mechanically clutching his flowing yellow beard, the
+other continually closing and unclosing on the handle of a pistol which
+he had half drawn from his pocket,—a habit of his in moments of mental
+perplexity, as if he instinctively appealed to this summary arbiter to
+decide on questions far enough removed from its jurisdiction.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so tur'ble desolated; some way out'n it, sure ez ye air
+born," urged Copley in a consolatory wheeze.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Taft. He caught himself with
+a start and turned hastily away, looking about as if in search of
+something. He took the lantern presently to aid him in this, and when
+it came back, glimmering through the dusk, he carried a box of tools in
+the other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar's one way out'n it, sure," he said in a muffled, changed voice,
+"though it's gone powerful hard with me ter git my own cornsent ter
+take it."</p>
+
+<p>He placed the lantern upon the furnace, and, as he went vigorously to
+work, the astounded Copley, still upon the ground, began to perceive
+that he was taking the apparatus carefully apart; he was disconnecting
+the worm from the neck, when his amazed coadjutor found his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, 'Renzo," he remonstrated; "ye ain't a-goin' ter take the
+contraption down, surely"—</p>
+
+<p>"Ruther hev the revenuers do it?" said Taft, showing his teeth in a
+sarcastic smile as he looked up. "They'll make wuss slarter with the
+worm 'n I will." Then, pausing, with a frown of rancorous reminiscence,
+"I hed a still o' bigger capacity 'n this one over yander in Persimmon
+Cove, an' they cut it up in slivers, an' the worm war lef' in pieces
+no longer 'n that," measuring with both hands, "an' the furnace all
+tore up. I never seen sech a sight ez whenst I croped back ter view
+the wreck. I 'lowed I'd never git forehanded enough ter start ter
+manufacture sperits agin in this worl'."</p>
+
+<p>He stood idly gazing down these vistas of memory grimly enough for a
+moment; then, turning back to the still, "I'll make a try ter save the
+property this time, so when the storm blows over we kin git started
+agin another way an' another day. I'll fix it so ez when Lar'bee tells,
+his words will be cast back in his teeth fit ter knock 'em all down his
+own throat. He'll be sorry enough, sure's ye air born. They'll be hard
+swallowin'."</p>
+
+<p>The natural fortitude of Taft's character, the elastic quality of
+his strength, his big, bluff mental methods, combined to support him
+in this ordeal to a degree which contrasted advantageously with the
+weak, almost supine grief that Copley manifested. Perhaps, too, Taft's
+dinner was a material element which gave cohesion and decision to his
+mental resolves. Now, Copley, half starved, nervous, wild with anxiety,
+dread for the future, regret for the past, doubt of the present, would
+angrily protest, even while he aided in dismantling the apparatus;
+and then, after a word or two of argument, would admit its necessity,
+its urgency, and again lament it as futile. He almost wept when the
+object of his solicitude, which he had served as if it were a fetich,
+was finally dismembered, and he found only a partial consolation in
+being himself permitted to pack it, secure from injury, in boxes
+which Taft brought down from the store. This scanty satisfaction was
+short-lived, for, despite his objection, Taft poured out upon the
+ground the liquor which remained after the shipment of the two barrels
+to the cross-roads. The tubs were cut into pieces in true "revenuer"
+fashion, the mash was poured out, the furnace was demolished out of
+all semblance to its former proportions and uses, before Taft began to
+lay the train to blow the place up, and thus effectually silence its
+testimony forever.</p>
+
+<p>"S'pos'n'—s'pos'n'"—Copley shivered—"s'pos'n' somebody war in the
+Lost Time mine down thar"—</p>
+
+<p>Taft paused, with a lot of tow in his hands which he was arranging
+for a fuse; he glanced around, the lantern swinging on his arm, as if
+waiting for the sequel to the unfinished sentence; then, as Copley
+remained vaguely staring as if at a vision of possible laborers in the
+Lost Time mine, "Skeer 'em powerful, I reckon," he said casually, and
+bent once more to his work.</p>
+
+<p>"But—but"—Copley recommenced, in a tone so urgent that Taft once
+more desisted to listen, with an inquiring look on his half-turned
+face—"but—but—s'pos'n' the—a—'splosion o' the powder war—war ter
+bring down the rocks an' the timbers in some o' them tunnels an' open
+shafts, an' somebody war in thar, hey? hey?" with eager insistence.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut 'em in thar fur good an' all, I reckon,—git buried a leetle
+before thar time, that's all," said Taft coolly, and went on with his
+work as before.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some vague premonition, perhaps an intuition of subterranean
+proximity to an unsuspected wanderer in the Lost Time mine, perhaps
+only a morbid aversion to the whole project, induced by the lack of
+that conscience-fortifying force, dinner, actuated Copley, but for the
+third time he sought to disaffect Taft's mind toward it.</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe somebody mought be passin' an' hear the 'splosion; moughtn't
+they low 'twar cur'us? What would they make of it?"</p>
+
+<p>Taft did not now pause in his work; he answered still bending down to
+the ground laying the train.</p>
+
+<p>"Yearthquake," he said composedly, "or else jes' some o' the rottin'
+timbers o' the mine settlin' an' givin' way. Besides," he added,
+straightening himself up, "nobody's passin' at this time o' night,
+nohow."</p>
+
+<p>"Night!" exclaimed Copley. "Is it night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight," replied Taft laconically.</p>
+
+<p>He stood silent, thinking, a moment, and resting after the labor of
+cautiously adjusting the charges of powder; and then, so quiet it all
+was, not the stir of a breath, not the whisper of a word, not the
+silken rustle of a ribbon of flame in the demolished furnace, he heard,
+what he had never before heard so far as here in the still-room, the
+reiterated strokes of a pick echoing down the tunnel, and cleaving the
+ground with the regularity of a practiced workman. He said not a word
+to Copley; he walked along the tunnel toward the sound, a chill thrill
+stealing over him despite the fact that his temerity was a trifle more
+pronounced than usual because he was about to leave the place forever.
+The strokes continued, now growing louder, now more muffled, always
+accurately timed; and suddenly the faint clamors of that high, queer,
+false-ringing voice that seemed to seek out and shock every nerve
+within him. He recoiled with fright and an unreasoning anger. He turned
+himself about, and swiftly changed the position of a can filled with
+powder which was to aid in the demolition of the place, arranging it in
+a niche in the earth close to the wall whence the sound came.</p>
+
+<p>"I make ye my partin' compliments," he said, with a sarcastic smile and
+a mocking wave of the hand to the gruesome unknown. The next moment
+his expression changed to a frightened gravity, and he ran through the
+black tunnel as if he consciously had the devil at his heels, pausing
+not until he was safe in the cellar beneath the store.</p>
+
+<p>The paroxysm, if so it might be called, passed in a moment, and he
+was laughing as he stood at the aperture of the tunnel, holding the
+lantern, red-faced and a trifle shamefaced, when Copley, left far
+behind, came hobbling up slowly and painfully. Taft was quite restored;
+it was with his own assured, definite manner and elastic stride that
+he presently took his way along the tunnel again and applied the match
+to the fuse. He evidently accomplished his work thoroughly, for he had
+no doubts of its efficacy when he returned and stood leaning against
+a pile of boxes, waiting quite carelessly as here and there tiny
+stellular lights sprang up along that darksome way that was not wont to
+blossom out such constellations.</p>
+
+<p>Stars? No; lines of fire, vermicular, writhing, growing, serpentine,
+swiftly gliding, armed with venom, with destruction under their forked
+tongues; for suddenly a flare, a frightful clap as of thunder, a wrench
+as if the foundations of the earth were torn asunder, and the two men
+were thrown to the ground and the lantern extinguished in the jar.</p>
+
+<p>The reverberations were slow to die away; only gradually quiet came.
+A stillness ensued, stifling with dust, and with such strong sense of
+alternation with that moment of deafening detonation that the pulses
+quivered with expectancy, and the slightest movement set the nerves to
+jarring. Taft had groped for a light, and as the faint coruscation of
+a match, then the steadier gleam of the lantern, pierced the darkness,
+the nearest results of the explosion were open to view. The timbers
+roofing the tunnel had been shaken down, and close at hand masses of
+earth had fallen with them and lay banked at the very door. If Taft
+had been warned in a dream, he could hardly have made his defense more
+perfect. He and his one trusted adherent worked there the rest of
+the night. The old original timbers of the house, partly rotten and
+time-stained, were replaced as formerly, leaving no trace that there
+had ever been an entrance into the abandoned mine; and when at last
+Taft clambered through the aperture of the counter into the store, he
+left the door broadly flaring after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust Sis ter notice it," he remarked. "She'll git used ter it in ten
+minits, an' it'll 'pear like she always knowed 't war thar."</p>
+
+<p>The still was conveyed some miles away and buried in a marked spot,
+and thus the business of moonshining was abandoned at the moment when
+the project of the summer hotel, from which it had so much to fear,
+was pretermitted amidst its varied entanglements, and the Cove, which
+certainly could not have comfortably contained both, was left without
+either for the nonce.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As Julia entered her father's house, quite fresh and dry after the
+tumults of the storm, each of the group gathered about the fireside was
+too insistently preoccupied at the moment to notice the discrepancy
+between her spotless attire and the aspects of the weather, except
+indeed Luther. The details of their attire she marked at once, and
+dimpled at the sight. These rain-lashed victims of the processioning
+had hustled themselves into their cast-off gear; and albeit the
+fashions of the day were not exigent in the Cove, very forlorn appeared
+these ancient garments, having long ago seen the best of their never
+very good days. Cap'n Lucy's brown coat was like a russet old crinkled
+leaf, as it clung, out of shape and ruffled by unskillful folding,
+about him; Luther wore one of his own of former years, far too small
+now for his burly shoulders that threatened to burst out of it at every
+seam, and his long arms that protruded their blue shirt-sleeves only
+half covered from the elbow. He met her glance with a resentful glare,
+as if he could imagine now no cause for mirth, which was untimely in
+its best estate. His Sunday coat graced the form of Jasper Larrabee,
+who sat on the other side of the fire, and who albeit not of the
+processioning party, had been caught in the rain in coming hither.
+Although as tall as Luther, he was much more slender, and he seemed to
+have shrunk, somehow, in the amplitude of his host's big blue coat.
+He gave Julia a formal greeting, and was apparently much perturbed by
+the untoward state of mind in which he found Cap'n Lucy. And indeed
+Cap'n Lucy's face seemed to have adopted sundry wrinkles from his
+coat, so old, so awry, so crinkled, so suggestive of better days, had
+it suddenly become. Julia was reminded all at once of the business
+interests at stake.</p>
+
+<p>"How did the percessionin' turn out, dad?" she inquired, as she stood
+with her hand on the back of a chair, and looked across the fire at him.</p>
+
+<p>If any eyes might watch Fortune's wheel undismayed, whether it swing
+high or low, one might deem them these surely, with perpetual summer
+blooming there, as if there were no frosts, no winter's chill, no
+waning of time or love or life. What cared she for land or its lack?</p>
+
+<p>The fore-legs of Cap'n Lucy's chair came to the floor with an irascible
+thump. He turned and surveyed the room; then, looking at her, "Air yer
+eyesight good?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Toler'ble," she admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye see that thar contraption?" he continued, leaning forward, and
+pointing with great <i>empressement</i> at a spinning-wheel in the
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>"I see it," she said, meeting his keen return glance.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye know what it's made fur?" he inquired, dropping his voice, and
+with an air of being about to impart valuable information.</p>
+
+<p>"Fur spinning" she answered wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ye know, do ye? Then—mind it."</p>
+
+<p>And thus he settled the woman question, in his own house at least,
+and repudiated feminine interest and inquisitiveness in his business
+affairs, and spurned feminine consolation and rebuke as far as he
+could,—poor Cap'n Lucy!</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee had that sense of being ill at ease which always characterizes
+a stranger whose unhappy privilege it is to assist at a family quarrel.
+He was divided by the effort to look as if he understood nothing of ill
+temper in the colloquy, and the doubt as to whether he did not appear
+to side with one or the other,—to relish Julia's relegation to the
+spinning-wheel, or to resent Cap'n Lucy's strong measures; or perhaps
+he might seem lightly scornful of both.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed steadily out of the open door, where a great lustrous
+copper-tinted sky glassed itself in myriads of gleaming copper-tinted
+ponds made in every depression by the recent rains; between were
+the purplish-black mountains cut sharply on the horizon. He heard a
+mocking-bird singing, and what a medley the frogs did pipe! Then rushed
+out into the midst the whir of Julia's spinning-wheel, which made all
+other songs of the evening only its incidental burden. She sat near
+the door, her figure imposed upon those bright hues of sky and water
+as if she were painted on some lustrous metal. Their reflection was
+now and again on her hair; she might have seemed surrounded by some
+glorious aureola. Not that he definitely discerned this. He only felt
+that she was fairer than all women else, and that the evening gleamed.
+The bird's song struck some chord in his heart that silently vibrated,
+and the whir of her wheel was like a hymn of the fireside. He wished
+that he had never left it for Taft and his gang, and the hope of
+making money for a home of his own, since his mother's hospitality had
+well-nigh left him homeless. The thought roused him to a recollection
+of his errand.</p>
+
+<p>"I kem hyar ter git yer advices, Cap'n Lucy," he began.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy turned upon him a silent but snarling face. He needed all
+his "advices" for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got nuthin' ter hide from you-uns," Larrabee continued,
+after a pause for the expected reply. "Ye know all I do,"—a fleeting
+recollection of the still came over him,—"that I'm able ter tell," he
+added; for the idea of betraying the secrets involving Taft and the
+other moonshiners had never entered his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy's scornful chin was tossed upward.</p>
+
+<p>"We-uns feel toler'ble compliminted," he averred, "ter hev it 'lowed ez
+we-uns knows <i>all</i> you-uns do, fur that's a heap, ez ye air aimin'
+ter tell."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean—I went ter say, Cap'n Lucy"—Jasper Larrabee's words, in
+their haste, tripped one over the other, as they sought to set their
+meaning in better array.</p>
+
+<p>"He jes' means, uncle Lucy, ez it ain't no new thing," Adelicia
+interposed to expound, touched by the anxious contrition of the younger
+man, who was leaning eagerly forward, his elbow on his knee, toward the
+elder, and to allay the contrariety of spirit of "uncle Lucy."</p>
+
+<p>"An' meddlin' ain't no new thing, nuther, with you-uns, Ad'licia,"
+snarled Cap'n Lucy, much overwrought. "I wish ter Gawd, with all the
+raisin' an' trainin' I hev hed ter gin ye, I could hev larnt ye ter
+hold yer jaw wunst in a while whenst desir'ble, an' show sech manners
+ez—ez T'bithy thar kin." He pointed at the cat on the hearth, and gave
+a high, fleering laugh, in which the sarcastic vexation overmastered
+every suggestion of mirth.</p>
+
+<p>A slight movement of Tabitha's ears might have intimated that
+she marked the mention of her name. Otherwise she passed it with
+indifference. With her skimpy, shabby attire,—her fur seemed never to
+flourish,—her meek air of disaffection with the ways of this world,
+her look of adverse criticism as her yellow eyes followed the movements
+of the family, her thankless but resigned reception of all favors as
+being less than she had a right to expect, her ladylike but persistent
+exactions of her prerogatives, gave her, somehow, the style of a
+reduced gentlewoman, and the quietude and gentle indifference and air
+of superiority of the manners on which Cap'n Lucy had remarked were
+very genteel as far as they went.</p>
+
+<p>Adelicia seemed heedless of the mentor thus pointed out. She noisily
+gathered up her work, somewhat cumbrous of paraphernalia, since it
+consisted of a small cedar tub, a large wooden bowl, and a heavy sack
+of the reddest of apples which she was paring for drying, and carried
+it all around the fireplace to seat herself between the two parties to
+this controversy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, uncle Lucy, ye jes' got ter gin Jasper yer advices, an' holp him
+out'n whatever snap he hev got inter."</p>
+
+<p>Her deep gray eyes smiled upon the young man, as the firelight flashed
+upon her glittering knife and the red fruit in her hand, although her
+delicate oval face was grave enough. Ever and again she raised her
+head, as she worked, to toss back the tendrils of her auburn hair which
+were prone to fall forward as she bent over the task. There was a
+moment's silence as Jasper vainly sought to collect his ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell on, Jasper," she exhorted him. "I'm by ter pertect ye now. An'
+ennyhows, uncle Lucy's bark is a long shakes wuss'n his bite."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled encouragingly upon the suppliant for advice; her own face
+was all unmarred by the perception that matters had gone much amiss
+with the processioning of the land, for uncle Lucy was a man often
+difficult to please, and sometimes only a crumple in his rose leaf was
+enough to make him condemn the queen of flowers as a mere vegetable,
+much overrated. The girl's aspect was all the brighter as she wore
+a saffron-tinted calico blouse and apron with her brown homespun
+skirt, and she seemed, with her lighted gray eyes, her fair, colorless
+face, and her ruddy auburn hair, a property of the genial firelight,
+flickering and flaring on the bright spot of color which she made in
+the brown shadows where she sat and pared the red apples. She reverted
+in a moment to that proclivity to argue with Cap'n Lucy which was so
+marked in their conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"An' who is the young men ter depend on in thar troubles, uncle Lucy,
+ef not the old ones?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"On the young gals, 'pears like," promptly retorted "uncle Lucy,"
+pertinently and perversely.</p>
+
+<p>Then he caught himself suddenly. In the impossibility, under the
+circumstances, to concentrate his mind exclusively on his own affairs,
+his interest in correlated matters was reasserted. It occurred to him
+that it behooved him to foster any predilection that Adelicia might
+show for any personable man other than the fugitive Espey. He could
+see naught but perplexity and complication of many sorts to ensue for
+himself and his household should Espey return; and although Cap'n Lucy
+selfishly hoped and believed that this was, in the nature of things,
+impossible, still he had reluctantly learned by bitter experience
+the fallibility of his own judgment. It seemed to him a flagrant
+instance of inconstancy on Adelicia's part, but Cap'n Lucy gave that no
+heed. Few men truly resent a woman's cruelty to another man. Adelicia
+might have brought all the youth in the county to despair, for all
+hard-hearted Cap'n Lucy would have cared. And thus her appeal for
+Jasper Larrabee was not altogether disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' ter set thar an' chaw on it <i>all</i> day, Jasper?" he demanded
+acridly. "Whyn't ye spit it out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Larrabee, "it's 'bout this hyar Jack Espey."</p>
+
+<p>The apple dropped from Adelicia's hand, and rolled unheeded across
+the hearth; the spinning-wheel was suddenly silent, and Julia, all
+glorified in the deeply yellow glare about her, sat holding it still
+with one hand on its rim. Cap'n Lucy's head was canted to one side,
+as if he were prepared to deliberate impartially on some difficult
+proposition.</p>
+
+<p>"This Jack Espey,—I met up with him at the cross-roads store, an'
+struck up a likin' fur him, an' brung him home an' tuk him in, an' he
+hev been thar with me fur months an' months—an'—an' he never tole me
+ez he hed enny cause ter shirk the law."</p>
+
+<p>"He war 'feared ter, I reckon, Jasper," said Adelicia.</p>
+
+<p>"He never meant no harm, Jasper," the silent Julia broke in from where
+she sat in her dull red dress against the tawnily gilded glories of the
+western sky.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a mechanical "Hesh up, Ad'licia," Cap'n Lucy gave them no heed,
+but Luther glanced sharply from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Larrabee replied in some sort: "Then he never treated me with
+the same confidence I done him. An', Cap'n Lucy," he continued, "ye
+yerse'f seen the e-end o' it. He purtended ter the sher'ff ter be
+<i>me</i>, an' tuk advantage o' my mother's callin' him 'sonny,' an'
+wore my name, an' went with 'em a-sarchin' fur hisse'f; an' whenst he
+got skeered, thinkin' ez they knowed him, he resisted arrest, an' kem
+nigh ter takin' the off'cer's life, whilst purtendin' ter be <i>me</i>,
+in my name!"</p>
+
+<p>"He never meant no harm," faltered Adelicia, aghast at this showing
+against her absent lover.</p>
+
+<p>"None in the worl'; he never went ter harm nuthin'," protested Julia's
+flutelike tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye kem hyar ter git my advices fur Jack Espey?" demanded Cap'n
+Lucy sourly. "He needs 'em, I know, but"—</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, Cap'n Tems. I kem ter git 'em fur myse'f, fur I dunno which way
+ter turn. You-uns hyar saw the e-end o' it,—the night the dep'ty kem
+a-sarchin' fur Jasper Lar'bee, who he 'lowed he hed flung over the
+bluffs, an' I went along at his summons, knowin' 'twar Espey ez hed got
+away from him, purtendin' ter be <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I have hearn that dep'ty air in the Cove agin."</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy remembered the dark, facetious, malicious face that the
+officer had borne as a spectator of the processioning of the land. He
+nodded again. "I hev seen him hyar ter-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Ef I war knowed ter him ez Lar'bee, whenst he finds out 'twar
+Espey ez escaped that night, I mought be 'rested fur harborin' a
+fugitive, ez holpin' out the murder arter the fac'—an'—an' my
+mother—Espey gin me no chance, no ch'ice! Wouldn't ye 'low ez
+ennybody—<i>ennybody</i>—would hev tole me that, Cap'n Lucy, ter gin
+me the ch'ice o' dangerin' myse'f afore he tuk so much from me an'
+mine?"</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy changed countenance. This was a new view of the matter. He
+had not judged from Larrabee's standpoint; for he himself had had full
+knowledge of the circumstances and the fact that they were withheld
+from Espey's entertainer. This was made suddenly manifest.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Jasper," expostulated Adelicia, her eyes full of tears, her
+vibrant tones tremulous with emotion, "he 'lowed ter we-uns ez he war
+sure the man wouldn't die o' the gunshot wound, bein' powerful big an'
+hearty; but he tuk out an' run, bein' turr'ble 'feared o' the law,
+and arrest an' lyin' in jail fur a long time, waitin', an' uncle Lucy
+said"—</p>
+
+<p>She paused suddenly, for Jasper Larrabee had leaned forward in
+his chair, scanning the faces about him with a blank amazement so
+significant that it palsied the words on her tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Espey tole <i>you-uns</i>! An' Espey tole yer <i>uncle Lucy</i>! Why,
+then ye all knowed him ter be a runaway, an' ye knowed ez he war
+a-playin' his deceits on nobody but me an' my mother ez hed got him
+quartered on us, an' mebbe war liable ter the law fur it."</p>
+
+<p>Adelicia, trembling, leaned back in her chair. Cap'n Lucy cast an
+infuriated glance upon her, and then, with a hasty, nervous hand,
+rubbed his brow back and forth, as if to stimulate his brain that
+offered no solution of the difficulty. Jasper Larrabee still sat
+leaning forward, his clear-cut face full of keen thought, a flush on
+his pale cheek, a fire kindling in his brown eyes, and a sarcastic
+smile curving his angry lips.</p>
+
+<p>"My Gawd!" he exclaimed, "it is a cur'ous thing ez my mother ain't got
+a frien' in this worl'! She says she don't work fur thanks, an' I'll
+take my livin' oath she don't git 'em. That thar door o' the widder's
+cabin on the Notch hev stood open ter the frien'less day an' night
+since I kin remember. Her table's spread for the hongry. Her h'a'th's
+the home o' them ez hev no welcome elsewise an' elsewhere. An' her nigh
+neighbor an' old frien' sees a s'pected murderer quarter himself thar,
+an' bring s'picion an' trouble <i>ennyhow</i>, an' danger mebbe, on her
+an' hern. Ye mought hev advised Espey ter gin her her ch'ice, or leave.
+Ye mought hev done ez much ez that! My mother's a old 'oman; an' she's
+a proud 'oman, though ye moughtn't think it, an' the bare idee o' sech
+talk ez that,—of s'picion, an' arrest, an' jail,—it would kill her!
+it would kill her!"</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy sat almost stunned, as under an arraignment. He pulled
+mechanically at his pipe, but his head was sunk on his breast, and his
+face was gray and set. The circumstances so graphically placed before
+him seemed to have no relation to those of his recollection; they wore
+a new guise. He had known all his life instances of collision in which
+powder and lead had played more or less a tragic part; but the rôle of
+the law had always been subsidiary and inadequate in the background
+of the scene, sometimes represented only by an outwitted officer, and
+the jollity of details of hairbreadth escapes. This construction of
+crime was beyond his purview of facts. He did not know, or he did not
+remember, that aught that others than the principal could do subsequent
+to a crime might render them liable as accessory after the fact. Espey
+had, in a fight, shot his antagonist,—such things were of frequent
+occurrence in Cap'n Lucy's memory. He never expected to see or to hear
+of the beagles of the law on the trail of the fugitive; his care, and
+his only care, was to prevent his niece from marrying an expatriated
+man while expatriated.</p>
+
+<p>He thought now with a grievous sense of fault of old "Widder
+Lar'bee,"—her softness, her kindness, her life of care for others;
+and then he thought of Rodolphus Ross and his crude brutality, his
+imperviousness to any sanctions, his rough interpretation of fun, his
+eagerness to shield his own lapses of official vigilance, his grudges
+against the supposed Larrabee, and his threats. What mischief might a
+chance word work!</p>
+
+<p>The dusky red of the last of the evening glow was creeping across the
+floor. All the metallic yellow glare was tarnished in the sky. Instead
+were strata of vaporous gray and slate tints alternating with lines of
+many-hued crimson, graduated till the ethereal hue of faintest rose
+ended the ascending scale of color. Still the frogs chorused and still
+the bird sang, but shadows had fallen, and they were not all of the
+night. Something of melancholy intimations drew his eyes to the purple
+heights without as Jasper Larrabee spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I'm her friend, ef she ain't got nare nother." And then, as if
+he felt he were arrogating unduly to his purpose, "An' I s'pose I'm a
+friend o' my own, too, an' I know <i>I</i> ain't got nare nother. I
+kem hyar ter-night fur yer advices, Cap'n Tems; but ez ye don't 'pear
+ter have none ter gimme, I b'lieve I'll take my own. I'll settle this
+thing for myse'f. I'll find Jack Espey! I'll track him out. I'll run
+him down. I'll arrest him myse'f, an' I'll deliver him ter the law.
+An' let the door o' the jail that he opened fur me be shut an' barred
+on him!" There was a concentrated fury in his face as he said this. "I
+won't hide no mo' like a beast o' the yearth in a den in the ground,
+consortin' with wuss'n wolves an' bar an' painters. I won't skulk
+homeless like a harnt no mo' through the woods. I won't shirk the
+sher'ff no mo' fur Jack Espey's crimes, an' 'kase I done him nuthin'
+but good an' kindness! I'll find him,—the yearth can't kiver him so I
+can't find him,—an' I'll deliver him ter the law!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood for one moment more, and then he strode across the room to the
+door, his shadow blotting out the last red light of the day, leaving
+the circle about the fire gazing wistfully and aggrieved after him,
+except Luther, who was picking up the borrowed coat which Larrabee had
+tossed aside as he passed.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the night had fallen suddenly. The west was clouded, despite
+the lingering red strata, and the twilight curtailed. He looked through
+purple tissues of mists that appeared to have the consistency of a
+veil, to where yellow lights already gleamed through the shadows. They
+came from the shanties of the workmen beneath the cliffs, on which the
+ruins of the hotel had at last ceased to smoke. He hardly knew whither
+to turn. What pressure for explanations, what unbearable inquisitive
+insistence, would meet him at home, where Henrietta Timson reigned
+in the stead of his mother, he could well forecast; to venture near
+the Lost Time mine, within reach of Taft, was, he knew, as much as
+his life was worth. He hesitated now and again, as he went aimlessly
+up the road; regretting his outbreak at the Tems cabin; coveting its
+shelter, its fireside, the companionship of the home group; half
+minded to return thither; but resentment because of their half-hearted
+friendship, as he deemed it, pride and anger and shame, conspired
+to withhold him. Once again, as he ascended the mountain, he turned
+and looked down at the cluster of orange-tinted lights from the
+workmen's shanties that clung so close together in the depths of the
+purple valley, and he hesitated anew. White mists were abroad on their
+stealthy ways; a brooding stillness held the clouds; the mountains
+loomed sombre, melancholy, against them, indistinguishable and blent
+with them toward the west, save when the far-away lightnings of the
+past storm fluctuated through their dense gray folds, and showed the
+differing immovable outline of the purple heights. In the invisible
+pools below these transient flashes were glassed, shining through
+the gloom. The reflection of stars failed midway, because of the
+mist. There were few as yet in the sky, but as he lifted his eyes he
+beheld again, immeasurably splendid in the purple dusk, that sudden
+kindling of ethereal, palpitating, white fire which he had marked once
+before,—that new and supernal star, strange to all familiar ways
+of night hitherto, shining serene, aloof, infinitely fair above the
+melancholy piping mountain wilds and the troublous toils of the world.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Jasper Larrabee stood transfixed, gazing at that tremulous, luminous
+astral presence with a strange superstitious thrill at his heart.
+It hardly seemed merely a star, so alien to his mind was its aspect
+in the erst untenanted spaces whence it blazed, so freighted with
+occult significance. Had the moment been charged with some wonderful
+apotheosis, some amplification of its pure white lustre into the
+benignant splendors of a vision of angels, the transformation could
+scarcely have exceeded the capacities of that breathless, insistent
+expectation which the ignorant mountaineer lifted toward it. For his
+was a simple faith, and his untaught mind had learned no doubts. And
+had never these nights of ours communion with celestial pursuivants?
+Did never the flutter of an angel's wing illumine far perspectives that
+darkle heavily over the earth? Was this rare fluid, which we call the
+air, so dense; were its sensitive searching vibrations, known as waves
+of light and sound, so dull, that it should feel naught, reveal naught,
+when the angel of the Lord flashed through the stars and the wind,
+through blossoming woods or bleak snows of deserts, and into the haunts
+and the homes of men?</p>
+
+<p>So many had come! He did not know that they were alien to the
+nineteenth century, and that the most spiritual-minded of to-day would
+account for their sudden vision as from prosaic natural causes,—as
+mental aberration, or the distortions of a diseased fancy, or the
+meaningless phantasmagoria of somnolent cerebration. To him it seemed
+that they had been with man from the very beginning; and why should
+their presence here be stranger than his own? Their very numbers
+served to coerce credibility. So many had come! To kings, to wanderers
+in the wilderness, to prophets, to shepherds, in dreams and in the
+broad daylight, they came: to stand with a gleaming sword before the
+gates of Paradise, and to sing in the starry advent of a new day,—On
+earth peace, good will toward men; to bring the immortal lilies of the
+Annunciation, and to tread the ways of the fiery furnace; to touch the
+bursting bonds of saints in prison, and to roll away the stone from
+the sepulchre of all the world; to minister to the Christ alike in the
+shadows of Gethsemane and amongst the splendors of the Mount of the
+Transfiguration!</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee was trembling in every limb, as the scenes trooped out before
+him in the vivid actuality of his recollections of the pages of the
+much-thumbed volume which he had left behind him when he had fled from
+the still in the Lost Time mine. He sank down upon the rocky verge of
+the precipice, amongst the clinging verdure of its jagged crevices.
+Some sweet-scented herb sent out its delicate incense under the
+pressure of his hands. A drowsy twitter of half-awakened nestlings came
+from the feathery boughs of a cedar-tree that a niche in the cliff hard
+by half nourished, half starved. The melancholy antiphony of the voices
+of the wilderness rose and fell in alternating strains, and at long
+intervals in a vague undiscriminated susurrus the night seemed to sigh.</p>
+
+<p>He heard naught; he heeded naught. His unwinking gaze was fixed upon
+the wondrous star in the heavens, with that thronging association
+of angelic ministrants so definitely in his mind that he might have
+thought to see an amaranthine crown expanding from the rayonnant
+sidereal points, or the outline of a nearing pinion stretched strongly
+to cleave the ether. For so many had come!</p>
+
+<p>But no! His imagination could compass no such apotheosis. The star
+remained a star. The exaltation of that moment of wild, vague, and
+breathless expectation exhaled slowly. A poignant sense of loss
+succeeded it. The prosaic details of the actual outer life pressed once
+more on his realization. He looked about him on the sombre wilderness,
+the black surly mountains, the itinerant mists, heedless whither, the
+steely glimmer here and there of the ponds where the water made shift
+to catch the reflection of the sky amidst the dun shadows, and sighed
+drearily with the sighing night.</p>
+
+<p>He was penniless, shelterless, his life at the mercy of any chance
+that might favor his crafty enemy, his confidence betrayed by the
+fugitive whom he had succored, his liberty endangered, already a
+criminal in the eyes of the law,—an outcast, in truth, within a
+league of his home. From the nullity of the begloomed landscape the
+glance naturally rebounded, and the very obscuration of the earth lent
+glister and definiteness to the wonderful precision of the march of
+the constellations, as, phalanx after phalanx, they deployed, each in
+its allotted space and sequence, toward the west. And again his eyes
+dwelt upon that new splendor in the midst of them. How strange that it
+should suddenly blossom whitely forth among these old, old stars that
+had lighted the bosky ways of the garden of Eden! How strange that the
+sight of it should be vouchsafed to him—and why!</p>
+
+<p>His pulses were tumultuously astir. All at once the thought that had
+been slowly framing itself in his mind took definite form. He wondered
+if it could be a sign for him, and of what!</p>
+
+<p>In the arrogations of poor humanity of the higher things, in the
+infinite breadth of the claim of an immortal soul, vast incongruities
+meet. The extreme might seem reached in the ignorant mountaineer,
+the moonshiner obnoxious to the law, the poverty-stricken laborer,
+seeing with the wild preëmptions of fancy this star, all newly and
+miraculously alight in the sky, as charged with some mysterious
+relation to his infinitesimally petty and restricted life. But once
+admit the idea of an immortal spirit, heir of all knowledge, made a
+little lower than the angels, to be crowned with glory and honor, the
+climax of development, and even the splendors of the star are as naught.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee had no cultivated sense of comparison. His tenacious nature
+laid hold upon the idea of an intimate personal intention, a sign in
+the heavens, with a blunt and stalwart appropriation.</p>
+
+<p>He rose swiftly to his feet. So different a spirit animated him that it
+seemed a different path from that which he had trod as he had plodded
+slowly up the mountain, with hesitating steps and frequent uncertain
+pauses. Now he went deftly down the rugged and far darker way, brushing
+amongst bushes and vines, and be-showered with the perfumed drops that
+his hasty transit shook from their boughs; swiftly slipping through the
+shifting mists that now hid the sky, and again revealed the glister
+of that great star amidst a myriad others at the vanishing point of a
+perspective of seemingly precipitous white ascents, as the uncertain
+light cleft the glimmering vapors. He looked up to it, as it were,
+through a defile between these impalpable white cliffs, from the
+dark abysses of the night; and then the gauzy medium interposed, and
+without the faint light of the stars the night was black again. His
+pace did not slacken. He went forward as confidently in the darkness
+as if he were led by the definite capacity of sight, trusting to that
+instinct of woodcraft almost as keen as sense itself. Sometimes,
+indeed, his foot struck against a branch, torn by the wind from the
+trees and left to wither in the rugged path; or the splash of a pool
+beneath his inadvertent step broke the silence of his journey, as these
+unaccustomed incidents of the way asserted their presence as obstacles.
+He never hesitated, nor doubted, nor deviated. He seemed led through
+the darkness by his will. He was aware in some mysterious sort of the
+looming propinquity of great trees or the locality of jagged rocks;
+he avoided the verge of cliffs and abysses with that keen, accurate
+discernment of an unascertained faculty, as a somnambulist might have
+done. As far as his recognized intelligence was concerned, he was down
+in the Cove before he knew it, for the way was still sloping, the
+footing rocky and uneven. A long slanting burnished gleam of orange
+light appearing suddenly before him, revealing the white mists, and
+making the darkness a definite visible blackness rather than merely
+charged with a sense of sightlessness, he deemed only one of those
+transient lines of lightning reflected in the temporary ponds that
+he had marked earlier in the evening. It did not flicker, however,
+and die away. As he stared forward, he perceived, beyond a darkly
+lustrous interval, a parallel line of yellow brilliance,—another, and
+still another; and he became aware that he was amongst the workmen's
+shanties, the lights of which were mirrored in the water. Presently
+illusory shimmering squares were visible in the mists which marked the
+open doors. A croaking frog by the waterside ceased suddenly, as,
+with more decided step, Larrabee skirted the pool and approached. He
+felt rather than saw the shadowy creature's leap from before his foot,
+again an elastic spring along the margin, and a splash as the frog
+jumped into the water, and the long lines of gilded light were broken
+into a thousand concentric shoaling curves. Voices sounded close at
+hand, and then the whole little settlement became vaguely visible,—the
+cabins further apart than they had seemed at the distance; a banjo
+was strumming at the most remote, and as Larrabee walked up to the
+nearest, boldly, in the avenue of light that the open door blazed out
+in the darkness, he saw within the man whom he sought, bending his
+frowning brow over a paper in his hand. In the other hand Kenniston
+held a cigar, which at long intervals he put between his lips; then he
+pulled energetically at it as if merely to keep it alight, and with
+no definite experience or expectation of nicotian solace. The county
+surveyor, on the contrary, on the other side of the table, puffed
+his pipe systematically, his eyes half closed, his grizzled bearded
+face showing in repose amongst the wreaths of smoke, his conscience
+discharged of every detail of the great science of mensuration which he
+sought to apply to the various parcels of land owned or claimed by his
+fellow-man. He had answered so much at random the occasional remarks
+of his host on the subject of the processioning that it became very
+apparent to Kenniston that he did not propose to work at his vocation
+out of office hours, as it were. From the consideration of futility
+as well as decorum, Kenniston had relapsed into silently comparing the
+calls of the deed with the notes he had made of the day's work, and
+only unconsciously did an interjection of irritation and disgust escape
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't responsible for any disputed p'int, Mr. Kenniston," said the
+surveyor, sibilantly sucking his pipestem, his eyes quite closed, his
+feet upon the fender of the little stove. "Ye kin hev a jury o' good
+and lawful men ter examinate an' decide upon it; my business is ter run
+the line 'cordin' ter the calls an' the compass. That's all!"</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston looked up, a sarcastic comment in his eyes; the mere
+possibility of submitting the question of the boundary of his land to
+the wild will of a jury of mountaineers, qualified by the surveyor,
+according to the law of processioning land, and met in those tangled
+precipitous woods to discriminate in matters mathematical and to settle
+questions of topographical fact, seemed to him so happy a travesty of
+the theory of law and justice that he could not forbear a scornful
+smile at his own probable plight when he should come forth from such
+unique adjudication of his interests.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no disputed '<i>p'int</i>,'" he said, laughing satirically.
+"It's the whole confounded line from the Big Hollow Boulder to Wild
+Duck Falls!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Cordin' ter the calls an' the compass," muttered the surveyor, fast
+succumbing to the unholy fascinations of a dream in which he found
+that in seeking to ascertain the area of a triangular body of land he
+achieved the petrifying result of transforming it to a square. Reason
+revolted; he woke with a snort, filliped off the ash from his pipe,
+adjusted himself anew in his chair, looked very wide awake, to be
+overtaken again by the same irreconcilable process and result.</p>
+
+<p>In the diversion of Kenniston's attention he had lost the run of his
+ideas; he paused, puffed his cigar into a glow, pushed his chair
+slightly back from the table, glanced with lowering disaffection
+at the slumbering surveyor, and then mechanically about him at his
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The house was the roughest of shells, and hardly compact enough to
+withstand the floods of rain that had descended upon it to-day. In one
+corner the floor was still damp, the eaves outside dripped. Beyond a
+cot, a table, and a few chairs there was no furniture save Kenniston's
+valise, his gun in its case, which was never opened, and a monkey
+stove, an object of aversion to its æsthetic owner; for, despite its
+utility, its outline and atmosphere were a continual affront to him,
+and it suffered grossly from the comparison with the great open fires
+of the mountaineers' hearths, the incense of hickory and ash and pine,
+the flash and flame and sparkle of those humble illumined interiors.</p>
+
+<p>The shadowy figure of a man standing in the doorway Kenniston did not
+immediately notice. Beyond a slight start, a mere matter of nerve (for
+he could hardly be surprised by aught that the mountaineers could say
+or do), he did not betray the unexpectedness of the apparition. He
+smoked silently, eying the intruder without salutation, as if he sought
+to shift the discourtesy of the lack of formality upon one who merely
+paused at the door of his domicile and surveyed its occupant; it was
+his rule not to encourage the mountaineers to come about, and he felt
+at liberty, with so untutored a folk, to depart from the decrees of
+decorum in such small matters, which were, however, exigent even with
+them. In this instance no offense seemed to be taken, no intentional
+lack perceived. Larrabee stood, his smiling dark eyes scanning
+Kenniston with a steadiness which apparently had other actuation than
+mere curiosity, his pale clear-cut face, his auburn hair, his alert
+strong pose, distinct in the crude white light of the unshaded kerosene
+lamp. Whether it were the natural commendation of a face and figure
+regularly handsome by the line and rule by which Kenniston was wont to
+apportion beauty; whether the exaltation of the discovery of the star,
+the spiritual audacity of the arrogation of a personal intimation in
+its manifestation, had touched Larrabee's expression with something
+strange, something aloof from the day, the time, and the people,
+Kenniston's jaded interest was stirred.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want to see me?" he demanded, at length. "Then come in."</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee remained at the threshold, but he leaned against the wall, his
+big brown hat on the back of his head, as it rested against the rich
+veined amber and creamy tints of the yellow pine wood.</p>
+
+<p>"Air you-uns the stranger-man ez hev been hyarabouts, buildin' the
+hotel an' sech?" he asked slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's eye became intent, hardening as he nodded. His thoughts
+flew instantly to that fair edifice and the collapse of all his plans,
+with the quick inference that here was information to come touching the
+incendiary. He felt his blood leap; by his pulsing veins he knew how
+it was burning into his face. He had that desire toward justice which
+should animate every civilized man, but although he sought to hold
+himself impartial, calm, circumspect to receive what might be a false
+accusation, it would have fared ill with Larrabee's enemy had he an old
+score to settle thus.</p>
+
+<p>As he remained silent Kenniston spoke, with a view of urging forward
+the disclosure. "Have I ever seen you here before?"</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee shook his head. "I hev never viewed you-uns ez I knows on."
+Then, after a pause, "Air you-uns a book-l'arned man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Reasonably so," Kenniston said, with a slight laugh. He leaned his
+elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hand, which was half
+obscured by his full beard, and while he looked impatiently at his
+visitor his white teeth gnawed his underlip.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee hesitated. "Hev ye met up with the stars in yer readin'?" he
+finally blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden look of blank disappointment crossed Kenniston's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Stars!" he echoed in dismay. "Why, I thought you had come to give me
+some information about the cur that set fire to my house."</p>
+
+<p>(It was a different kind of brute, but the fact of Bruin's agency was
+relegated to the state of things not revealed, which we denominate
+mystery.)</p>
+
+<p>It was Larrabee's turn for impatience, and an affronted sense of
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno nuthin' 'bout who burnt yer hotel"—He paused suddenly, the
+conviction all at once fully fledged in his mind that it was the deed
+of the moonshiners, to rid the Cove of its prospect of troublesome
+invaders. The recollection of Espey's threat rang in his ears as if the
+very vibrations of the words were audible upon the air: "Burn him out!
+Burn his shanty every time he gits it started!"</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee suffered the sense of a nervous shock, so great was
+the revulsion from the subject that had engrossed him; for this
+reminiscence of all things he had least expected to meet here. He could
+hardly cope with it in the free outer air. It belonged so essentially
+to that other life of his, that underground world where he bore so
+different an identity, that it seemed to have thoughts and intentions
+and a conscience peculiar to itself. He had realized the dangers of
+the isolation in which he stood amongst those of his association, but
+he had thought himself safe here. Kenniston knew him neither by name
+nor face, and he was a stranger to all the workmen; since their advent
+into the Cove he had been held a prisoner in the Lost Time mine. Even a
+chance encounter with Rodolphus Ross he did not dread, for the officer
+had not been apprised of his identity on the night he had summoned him
+to search for the escaped Espey masquerading under the name of Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>The abrupt pause, the introverted look, the sudden recollection
+advertised in unmistakable characters upon his unguarded face, did
+not escape Kenniston's observation, now keen and all on the alert.
+For his heart was in this reprisal. If he had had naught to gain and
+much to risk, indeed much of certain loss, he would have pursued this
+injury to its ultimate and bitterest requital. All that was manly in
+him—his courage, his pugnacity, his tenaciousness, his self-respect,
+his vehement, insistent, vigorous personality, that could neither
+make nor keep covenant with concession, compromise, or defeat—rose
+to the occasion. He had cursed in his heart the lukewarmness of the
+authorities, who had opined that the mountaineers were mighty rough
+folks, mighty hard to catch, lived in a mighty difficult country, and
+who had offered him the half-veiled advice that they were mighty bad to
+run against, in lieu of the formulated and disciplined suspicions which
+he had expected, the canvassing of possible "fire-bugs," involving
+as sequence warrants for arrest, indictments, and other fierce and
+formidable engines of the law, set to work with full intent and
+expectation.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a clue,—the first; and fortunately it had fallen into his
+own hands. However, it behooved him to be cautious, or the suggestion
+might be of as little ultimate value as if it were already given to
+the turbulent, ill-advised, precipitate deputy, or to his unsanguine,
+dubious, dilatory principal, with his wise saws about the lack of
+prudence involved in running against mountain folks, who were mighty
+hard to catch in the wilds of their difficult country.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again the family of Cap'n Lucy had had an intimation of how
+pleasant Mr. Kenniston could be when he chose. It was reserved for
+Jasper Larrabee to experience the fascination of the full and ripened
+flavor, the bouquet, so to speak, of his geniality and good will. A
+second rapid covert survey from that altered point of view which one is
+apt to adopt when a personal interest looms in the background convinced
+Kenniston that his visitor was no fool. Although he intended to drop
+the subject for the present, he did not quit it abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was in hopes you could name some suspicious characters, or had heard
+some threatening talk, or"—</p>
+
+<p>Once more he saw from his visitor's face that, inadvertently, he had
+again struck the nail on the head. His secret self-applause aided his
+self-denial in relinquishing so promising a line of investigation. The
+man must be made to talk freely, to disclose; his confidence must be
+secured.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had heavy losses in this matter, and the officers seem of
+mighty little account. Every now and then I hope I'll hear of something
+some other way. I'm afraid to build again unless I know the fire-bug
+is somewhere else, or discover what I've done to set people against
+<i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee's face was at once softened and troubled. "Burn his shanty
+every time he gits it started," quoth Espey. And he that would work
+ill to one man would work ill to another: witness his own plight. His
+conscience began to stir. If, he thought, the whiskey tax were not in
+itself so tyrannical, so impracticable and obnoxious a thing, he might
+have admitted for the nonce that moonshining was in itself wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's eyes were studying his unconscious countenance. "Well," he
+said suddenly, "since it's nothing about my affairs, what can I do for
+you? Won't you have a chair?"</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee shook his head silently. He stood for a few moments undecided.
+It might seem that his enthusiasm, so ruthlessly dragged down to earth,
+might hardly make shift to rise again; but it was strong of wing, as
+behooves that ethereal essence, and in his ignorant assumptions he
+thought that he had seen a sign in the heavens, a sign for him. The
+fervor of all that he had half doubting believed, and half believing
+doubted, fired his pulses once more. He cared naught for Espey and
+his troublous usurpations, the officer of the law, the moonshiner
+and his deadly feud, the incendiary, the necessity of heed to his
+words. He cared for naught under the moon. Once more his face had that
+illumined, exalted expression. As he leaned suddenly forward, with a
+keen anxiety, and said, "Air ye 'quainted with the stars by name, bein'
+a book-l'arned man?" Kenniston had a swift doubt of his sanity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied. And after a pause he asked the counter-question,
+"Are you interested in the stars?"</p>
+
+<p>But Larrabee, still under the influence of the strong excitement that
+possessed him, did not answer directly.</p>
+
+<p>"I kin read, but I hain't got but one book. The teacher what l'arned me
+ter read 'lowed ez the stars air named; they air numbered in a book.
+Hev ye l'arned sech?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; I have studied astronomy," replied Kenniston capably. "I know
+their names."</p>
+
+<p>"I know <i>them</i>; I dunno thar names," said Larrabee, making a
+definite distinction. "That's the reason I kem ter you-uns, hearin' ez
+ye air a book-l'arned man."</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and looked out into the night as he stood on the
+threshold. The mists had gone their ways. The clouds were far in
+the west. Above all, the clear, sombre field of the sky was thickly
+bespangled with stars, chill, keenly glittering, for below the night
+was very dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar's a new one," he declared excitedly, "a new one never viewed
+afore! I seen it kindle up a matter of three week ago, three week an'
+better, an' it's thar now!"</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston sat in silent amazement, looking steadily at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Kem out!" Larrabee insisted, in tones strangely urgent. "Kem out an'
+see!"</p>
+
+<p>Some subtle monition apprised Kenniston that there was something in
+the man's disclosure withheld; that it was not merely to bring his
+book-learning to bear upon the array of the stars that he was asked to
+step out of his door at this hour of the night. How often he had heard,
+as the climax of a feud, of a man in these mountains being summoned
+on some pretext out of his door to meet a murderous bullet fired
+by an enemy hidden in the dark! He was momentarily ashamed of this
+recollection as he glanced at the surveyor asleep close at hand; as he
+heard the rhythmic beat of feet on the shaking, ill-laid floor, and the
+patting of hands as some jovial young blade danced a "break-down" in
+one of the workmen's shanties to the strumming of the banjo, finding
+this far more congenial an occupation than shoving the jack plane.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he had enemies, virulent, unscrupulous, powerful, as
+his short stay here might seem to attest, and what strange, fantastic
+vagary was this touching a new star! He would not refuse; that would
+impugn his courage even to himself, and he held it dear; and as
+he looked at Larrabee's face with its ever-smiling eyes, despite
+the intimation of something withheld, of trafficking with a mere
+subterfuge, he doubted as causeless his prudence. Moreover, this was
+a man of whom he must keep track, of whom he must know more. He was
+looking about the room as he rose. "Wait a minute," he said. "I have a
+strong glass here that may be of use."</p>
+
+<p>The door of the maligned monkey stove standing ajar emitted a ruddy
+glow of embers upon the yellow pine walls of the room, and toned down
+the white glare of the kerosene lamp. A deep, restful red hue might
+have attracted the eye from the farther side amongst the shadows, as
+Kenniston tossed a rug aside upon a chair to obscure a quick search
+through his valise. A pernicious habit, that of carrying his pistols at
+the bottom of his luggage, amongst his clean shirts, and he promised
+himself this should be the end of it. At the moment that he thrust the
+revolver into his pistol-pocket he picked up the field-glass from the
+cot. "Here it is," he said, and he followed his guest out of the door
+and into the dusky night.</p>
+
+<p>It was still all vibrant with the twanging drone of the cicada and
+the windy note of the booming frogs. The air, damp and of clarified
+freshness, was pervaded with indeterminate fragrance, the blent perfume
+of some flower and the pungent aroma of weed and shrub and the balsamic
+fir. A cluster of great trees rose just outside of the little shell,
+and though many a star shone down in the interstices of the black
+fibrous foliage, Larrabee led the way out beyond them and into an
+open space. It was nearer the other cottages instead of farther away,
+as Kenniston had half expected. The suspicion, the half-dormant fear,
+the doubt in his mind, were giving place anew to his determination to
+keep his hand on this man, to win his confidence or to surprise his
+secret. All those genial arts of ingratiation at his command were once
+more brought into play. It was he who introduced the subject of their
+mission, as they paused on a slight eminence, with a clear view of the
+great fields of heaven before them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now which is the star that you want to know more about?" he demanded,
+lifting the glass with a free gesture, and adjusting it to his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ye see nuthin' oncommon?" the mountaineer asked, in a tense
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The strained tone struck Kenniston's attention, and he lowered the
+glass and looked through the baffling darkness at his companion,
+whose form could only be discriminated by some fine sense from the
+surrounding darkness by an effect of solidity, given one could hardly
+say how.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston, the glass swaying useless in his hand, gazed upward once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't say I do," he replied wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee suddenly came up close to him, taking him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, hyar, todes the east, an' yit a leetle todes the north, sorter
+slanchwise todes Big Injun Mounting, setting a mite ter the west from
+that, an' plumb west from Chilhowee, a bright, bright star,—with," he
+added, in a surprised tone, as if he had not before discerned this, "a
+sorter silver shine onto it."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston laughed slyly in his sleeve. One can hardly better appreciate
+the immense distance that mechanical appliance has brought man from
+his normal state of natural, unassisted faculties than in the effort
+to point out, with such accuracy as to enable another to distinguish,
+an object in those fair and foreign fields of heaven, by the unaided
+means of the index finger. A suffusion of self-gratulatory pride is
+apt to overspread the consciousness, the unit assuming the credit of
+all that the genius of invention has achieved in the generic name of
+mankind. Kenniston had not even a slight expectation of being able to
+distinguish the particular star, but the affectation of effort, in his
+own interests, in some sort constrained his will. He looked about the
+skies with that vague sense of recollection which animates one who
+turns the leaves of a volume written in a half-forgotten language. He
+had not been the familiar of the stars. His choicest ambitions had
+lifted him no further than a reasonably safe height for an attic, or
+those fantastic simulations of turrets, with which the new architecture
+apes <i>haud passibus æquis</i> the old. He had naught in common with
+the full-pulsed aspiring audacity of those architects of eld who
+builded in the plain of Shinar; his was but a low-studded Babel. He
+had not cared for a higher outlook, and his building had no definite
+designs touching heaven. It had been so long since he had regarded
+the upper atmosphere other than barometrically that he hardly made
+shift to see the Swan arch her snowy neck from those great lakes of
+ether, whose indented shores seemed marked and foliage-fringed by the
+wooded summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. The assertive brilliance
+of Lyra he noted near the meridian, with the harp-strings all vibrant,
+doubtless, with that music of the spheres which we are told by the
+scientist is no longer a mere figment of poesy. The Cor Caroli gleamed
+pure and splendid amongst the mists of a struggling recollection. And
+where was Scorpio?—how low in the sky, how far to the southwest, how
+near to its setting! Through a water-gap of Chilhowee, cloven to the
+very heart of the range, he marked the gleaming coils. Of strangely
+melancholy intimations were the stars, seen so far through the steep
+wooded defile, dark and rugged on either hand; but he only remembered
+the relation of its early setting and the season, for it was near the
+end of September. How little building weather the year might spare
+him yet! How heavy the rains of to-day, and the west still harbored
+portents! Unless he relinquished all and left the field, baffled and
+beaten, he must have the incendiary behind the bars. To jail a suspect,
+at all events, would intimidate the lawless population, and point the
+moral of "Hands off!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see it," he said, reverting to the prosecution of his
+intention to win the mountaineer's secret information as to the origin
+of the fire. "I'm sorry I can't see it, Mr.—Excuse me, what did you
+say your name is?"</p>
+
+<p>His visitor had not said, but all thrown off his guard the young man
+replied promptly, "Lar'bee,—Jasper Lar'bee. Ef ye look jes' a leetle
+ter the right of that thar batch o' stars ez 'pears some similar ter a
+kyart-wheel"—He raised once more the futile inefficiency of his index
+finger.</p>
+
+<p>But Kenniston was not looking. This name,—he placed it at once. In
+the short interview which he had had with the deputy sheriff touching
+the incendiary, without whose apprehension he feared to recommence the
+building, it had recurred repeatedly to Rodolphus Ross's lips coupled
+with many an imprecation. Kenniston had paid scant heed at the time
+to the story of the search for Espey, of the pretended arrest, of
+the escape of the supposed Larrabee and the inference of some crime
+which his flight fostered. It had all happened during his absence from
+the Cove, and shortly before the beginning of the building of the
+hotel. He could not conceive of any reasons for connecting one with
+the other; but this man indubitably knew something of the crime; his
+long and mysterious disappearance had baffled all the devices of the
+officers, and surely it was a strange subterfuge which had brought him
+hither. Strange to the minds of others as well, for sundry figures
+were detached now and again from the illumined thresholds near at
+hand; presently the foreman had joined the two, and several of the
+workmen approached, all pausing at intervals and craning their necks
+up toward the sky, having noticed the intent scrutiny of it, and
+expectant of some <i>lusus naturæ</i>,—comet, or aurora borealis, or
+other phenomenon,—the observation of which might serve to break the
+monotony. The resonant tone of the banjo now and again sounded loud
+in the damp air, as the musician who carried it under his arm jostled
+against one of the other men. Their attitudes and faces expressed an
+alert curiosity, for they were not altogether indistinguishable, the
+two star-gazers having insensibly changed their positions, and come
+within the line of light falling from one of the open doors.</p>
+
+<p>"Some ter the right o' that batch o' stars ez be some similar ter a
+kyart-wheel," repeated Larrabee urgently.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know which you mean," replied Kenniston, drawing himself back
+to the subject with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ye view one ez ye never viewed afore?" demanded Jasper
+breathlessly. "Ef ye know 'em, ye air 'bleeged ter see that thar one
+air strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jackson,"—Kenniston turned to the foreman,—"do you see anything
+unusual in that sky?"</p>
+
+<p>The foreman answered with a prompt and businesslike negative, and then
+appealed in turn to one of the workmen. None of them could perceive
+aught amiss, although they all turned about and critically surveyed
+the majesty of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a new star," protested Larrabee, unconsciously adopting the
+scientific term of description. "I seen it kindle up myself 'bout three
+weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>There was an astounded silence; then a resonance broke out abruptly as
+the young musician smote his bullet head with the banjo, apparently
+inadvertently, but with the view of intimating to his fellows that all
+was not accurately adjusted in the cranium of their queer visitor.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston hesitated for a moment. There lay in his mind the residuum,
+so to speak, of an impression that new stars or temporary stars are not
+of infrequent occurrence in the economy of worlds, rating time by the
+long astral lengths. He could not say at once,—such scant commerce
+he had had with the stars of late years, to be sure! His mind had
+reverted instantly to the question upon what pretext he should seek
+to detain the man. He only saw rather than noted the workmen slowly
+turning aside, the long lane of yellow light streaming through the
+door, the lustrous mirror-like suggestions in the darkness hard by
+where the pools lurked and the frogs were still croaking, the outlines
+of the clustering roofs of the other little buildings, shadowy in the
+deeper shadow, the dense woods surrounding all, and above the great
+amphitheatre of the mountains on every side. The voice of the foreman
+recalled him:—</p>
+
+<p>"That's a queer customer. First crank I've seen here."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" cried Kenniston, with a start, the freedom of the
+criticism notifying him of the absence of its subject. "Stop him! Call
+him! Hold on to him!"</p>
+
+<p>But the effort was vain. Larrabee had departed as suddenly, as
+tracklessly, as if the night had swallowed him up.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII">XVII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was a buoyant, elated spirit that Jasper Larrabee bore as he slipped
+swiftly away through the darkness and the woods, unaware of the sudden
+vehement search for him, unhearing the hue and cry. He had put his
+discovery to the test,—the most searching that he could devise. And
+not the man learned in letters, who even knew the stars by name, not
+the clear-headed, prosperous, efficient foreman, not the humbler
+handicraftsmen, could see that gracious, splendid stellular presence
+still shining,—shining down into the wilderness, doubtless with some
+message, some token, some personal relation, that would be in due
+season made known. He had no uncertainties; he had said to himself that
+if it were invisible to others he would accept it as a revelation to
+himself. For had he not seen it even as it first kindled in the blank
+spaces of the midnight sky?</p>
+
+<p>He felt with a sort of surprise that his limbs were trembling as
+he went, his breath was short; more than once he paused, with a
+reeling sense as if he should fall, and he beheld the summit line of
+demarkation where the dark woods touched the clear sky describe a
+long curve upward, and once more sink to its place. He had not known
+the physical exhaustion that ensues upon strong and long-continued
+mental excitement. Beyond the moment's impatient realization he gave
+it no heed. He was glad, glad beyond all power of analysis, expectant,
+breathless, his eyes continually fixed upon the star, unmindful whither
+his failing feet carried him. He passed without a thought the door of
+the store of the Lost Time mine, from which so lately he had escaped
+as it were with his life in his hand. He might have seen, if he had
+chosen, the twinkle of Cornelia Taft's fire through the chinking, as
+she nodded on the hearth and vainly waited for her father's return to
+supper. He heard naught,—no voice from the woods, no stir of leaf, no
+sigh of wind, no lapsing of the alien sheets of water, not even the
+full rush of the stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine, loud,
+sinister, seemingly charged with cavernous echoes from those hidden
+haunted recesses whence it came, wild, turbulent, with thrice its
+normal volume hurling out into the black night. Only once he paused.
+The unseen air and the invisible moisture were at their jugglery again,
+weaving from nothingness wondrous symmetries of scrolls tenuous to the
+eye, marvelous winged suggestions endowed with the faculty of flight
+and airy poise, graces of fabric, tissues, fold on fold of impalpable
+pearl-tinted consistencies; and now a floating film passed before
+the star, and again it shone out more splendid still, and anon dimly
+through the gathering haze, and so was lost to sight.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee stood for a time spellbound, still gazing up into heaven. But
+winds were astir in the region of the clouds. Heavy purple masses, with
+here and there flocculent white drifts in their midst, and showing
+lines of white at their verges, were spreading over the sky; the
+temperature had fallen suddenly; he was shivering. Vagrant gusts seemed
+to issue from defiles of the mountain, and he heard the awakening of
+the pines. Out of sight of the star his flagging energies failed. The
+definite realization of his fatigue, his hunger, his faintness, pressed
+upon his aroused senses. He could hardly support his tottering limbs to
+the door of the Lost Time mine, and drag himself up on the rocks, out
+of the reach of the water, to rest, as he waited till the clouds should
+pass, till the sight of the star should be renewed to his longing gaze.
+Even in its eclipse, in a certain yearning sense of bereavement, in his
+disappointment, he had a patience and calm acquiescence begotten of
+confidence. For he should see it again. Was it not his own, his very
+own, charged with some unimagined significance to him? He shifted his
+posture once, reckoning upon its position in the sky, that it might
+not fail his sight the moment the baffling clouds should withdraw.
+He was conscious of a high degree of happiness despite his tremulous
+thrills of suspense. He gazed upward, as he reclined on the ledge of
+rock, with smiling eyes and a heart full of deep content. He had gone
+far enough within to have an upward view through the jagged portal
+of rough-hewn rocks. Beyond their edges the sky seemed of lighter
+tint, so black it was within. He could mark here how the clouds made
+sail, how swiftly the wind sped them. He watched a section of a branch
+close at hand sway in sight, and swing back on the wind, and once more
+wave, nodding, plumelike, into view. He heard the sharp bark of a fox
+outside in the woods; it roused far-away baying of drowsy hounds,
+and again all was still, but for the reverberation of the water loud
+against the echoing walls of the darksome place. The sound affected
+his nerves; he was dizzy for a moment. Then something cold, clammy,
+suddenly struck him in the face. His heart seemed to stand still with
+the recollection of the spectral terrors of the place. The soft chill
+buffet came again and again, and the air was vaguely fanned about his
+brow before he recognized the noiseless flight of bats on their way to
+the outer darkness. He lay back upon the ledge, finding a solace in the
+mere posture of rest in his extreme fatigue, and once more watched the
+jagged black portal and the purple clouds with their hoary drifts, as
+in endless unbroken folds they rolled before the serene white splendors
+of that wondrous star. Again and again he would lift himself upon his
+elbow, fancying that the cloud textures waxed thin, and that presently,
+when they should fall away from before it, he would behold anew the
+sidereal incandescent glory that meant so much, that should mean
+more to him. Not once did his faith fail him. Not once did he doubt
+that the white fires of this star, which none else could see, were
+miraculously kindled and charged with some deep significance for him,
+with the vouchsafed will of God. For were not stars messengers in the
+olden time? Had he not read of one, supremely blessed and brilliant,
+which had led men, the wisest men, to the cradled Christ? As he lay
+back in the dense darkness, with the gathering clouds outside, and
+the air freighted with the sense of black noiseless invisible wings
+of creatures of ill favor and ill omen, he seemed to have a vision
+of that guiding star,—not a chill splendid crystalline glitter like
+his own, high, high in the sky, but low down in the dark east, and
+of a soft supernal silver sheen in the purple shadowy mist above the
+shadowy purple hills of Judea, that stretched out in ever-lengthening
+perspectives, as it fared on and slowly on its mystic way, for
+Bethlehem might still be far to seek.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly, with a start, Larrabee became aware that it was a real
+light at which he was gazing far down in the Lost Time mine. He had
+slept he knew not how long, nor in what danger, for the lantern whose
+starry lustre shone so far in the dark cavernous depths was swinging in
+the hands of one of two men who must have passed him as he lay dreaming
+and unconscious. He hardly dared move at first, so far those slanting,
+divergent rays extended from the white focus into the darkness. He
+lay still, struggling for a moment with the idea of the traditional
+spectres of the place, whose grisly renown had served to make it so
+solitary. It was the lantern which proved so redoubtable an exorcist.
+The sight of the little mundane contrivance appealed to his logical
+faculty as no mere theory of the impossibility of spectres could have
+done. He lifted himself cautiously on his elbow, and gazed down the
+vistas of the gloomy place with a suspicious, inquisitive worldly pulse
+beating in every vein. These were men in truth; and what was their
+mission here? One of them was singularly gesticulatory of manner.
+The other slouched heavily. It was the latter who had just lighted
+the lantern, for he was evidently throwing away a match, an article
+which the Lost Time store had made common in the Cove. Suddenly they
+were joined by a third figure, somehow detached from the darkness,
+for Larrabee could hardly have said whence he had approached, and
+who turned with a light, lithe motion, swinging to his shoulder an
+implement which the thickset man had handed him. It was a pick. How
+often Larrabee had heard its vibrations ring through these storied
+depths while he threaded the dark tunnel to the still, and shivered at
+the thought of the two dead miners digging and digging the graves these
+thirty years for their bones which only the waters had buried!</p>
+
+<p>The lantern swayed, the shadows all flickered, the group was on the
+move. Larrabee sprang hastily to his feet to follow.</p>
+
+<p>He could not easily judge how far the feeble glimmer led them, so
+rugged and winding was the way. Once, as the mouth of a submerged
+shaft yawned suddenly before his unprescient feet, he hesitated,
+half deterred; he was fain to skulk with the skulking shadows, lest
+the light should reveal his presence, and thus the dangers which his
+precursors braved menaced him doubly. He marveled that they dared the
+possibilities of the place, as he noted that the half-fallen timbers
+in a cross-cut through which they passed barely supported the masses
+of earth which any jar might dislodge. Everywhere was the sound of
+water working its secret will still on the ruins that it had made, and
+its tone added to the awe of the place, and the desolation, and the
+darkness, and the eerie effect of the bats that flew after the lantern
+and smote blindly against it.</p>
+
+<p>The light was set down presently, and as the men seemed stirring about
+their work Larrabee ventured to approach nearer behind a pile of
+broken rock in the darkness, and mopped the cold perspiration from his
+brow. He caught his breath at the sight of the faces which the lantern
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>For they were all recruited from his mother's hearth. Some crazy folly,
+doubtless, of old man Haight had drawn him here. He had been one of
+the miners before that catastrophe which had closed the work forever;
+Larrabee remembered in what deep, blood-curdling tones he was wont
+to curse the Lost Time mine. And his daughter Jerusha's husband,—it
+had always been a marvel where and how he obtained the whiskey he
+so indubitably consumed; perhaps, in consideration of his age and
+infirmities, Mrs. Larrabee furnished a too ample allowance of liquor
+to old man Haight, who, for services rendered in this wild enterprise,
+furnished his son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"We-uns hev been toler'ble good customers o' the Lost Time still,"
+Larrabee muttered sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>And there was Jack Espey! The sanity of <i>his</i> presence here was
+easily demonstrable; nowhere else could he so safely be. How he had
+chanced to coöperate in this strange work with the dotard and the sot
+was soon explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Gimme a holt o' that thar grub," he said gruffly, with a look of
+poignant hunger on his thin face.</p>
+
+<p>Old Haight, with a deprecatory expression and shaking hand, made haste
+to give him a small basket, of the queer shape and aspect which bespoke
+the work of the Indians of Quallatown. The young man voraciously
+thrust his hand into its narrow mouth, and as he drew forth its meagre
+contents gave vent to his disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"My Lord!" he exclaimed, "is that all? An' ye expec' me ter kem hyar
+night arter night—from—from"—the effort of his heavy flight of
+imagination showed in his face—"from 'way over yander whar I live now,
+an' holp ye dig an' sech, an' gin me sech forage ter work on ez that!"
+He pointed contemptuously at the food, albeit his mouth was full.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now, Jack, now, bubby, lemme tell you," expostulated the old man,
+his jaw quivering painfully as he spoke, and his wrinkled face showing,
+in the glimmer of the lantern, at once grotesque and piteous, encircled
+as it was by the brilliant hues of a little shawl of Mrs. Larrabee's,
+in which his head was tied up for protection against the weather, and
+which was surmounted by his hat. "Ye dunno how durned hard it war ter
+git that much. This hyar Henrietty Timson hev got us down on half
+rations, mighty short commons. 'Tain't like 'twar whenst you-uns lived
+with us, Jack. Oh my! Oh my, no!" and he shook his queerly upholstered
+head as he sat quaking and shivering on a ledge of the rock. He
+impressed Larrabee as much out of place,—so habituated was he to the
+sight of the old man in the chimney corner,—as the oven, or pot, or
+crane, or any other naturalized appurtenance of the fireside might have
+been. He let his veinous old shaking hands fall on his knees with a
+gesture deeply significant of grief. "I wisht ter Gawd," he cried, "ez
+S'briny war hyar!"</p>
+
+<p>He pronounced her name as if she were a sort of minor providence, as
+indeed she had been to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Leetle as ye hed, ye mought hev brung it sooner," grumbled Jack,
+stuffing the half of a very fat, very heavy biscuit into his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Law, Jack," cried the old man, "we-uns air plumb 'feared ter leave the
+house sooner,—even arter all war bedded up for the night. That thar
+'oman hev got her pryin' nose in every mortal thing; 'pears ter me the
+longest, sharpest nose I even seen," he added injuriously, and with
+sudden sprightly interest, "ain't it, Tawm?"</p>
+
+<p>His fellow-sufferer from its pointed inquisitiveness had seemed about
+to fall asleep in a heavy, shapeless lump, but he roused himself at
+this to add his testimony with some sincere acridity.</p>
+
+<p>"Longes' an' sharpes' <i>I</i> ever seen," he protested thickly, "an' I
+hev known 'em p'inted an' drawn out to <i>de</i>-straction." His snore
+followed so promptly that one might have doubted whether he had spoken
+at all; his remark presented the phenomenon of a waking parenthesis, as
+it were, in the midst of the somnolent text.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell ye, it's good fur S'briny ter go, ter let we-uns savor how we
+miss her," said the old man. "Sech a house, Jack, sech quar'lin' an'
+scufflin' an' tormentin', f'om mornin' till night,—crowdin' <i>Me</i>
+up on the h'a'thstone, an' shovin' <i>my</i> cheer, an' talkin' 'bout
+useless cumberers, whenst I hev been treated with sech <i>re</i>-spec'
+by S'briny Lar'bee ez ef I hed been her own dad, stiddier jes' her
+husband's step-dad,—sech <i>re</i>-spec' an' hot vittles, an' the fus'
+sarved, an' the bes' o' everything!" His old face flushed with the
+recollection of the recent indignities offered him. "The pa'son tells
+ye ter lean on the Lord. Ef ye ain't got the grace ter do that, S'briny
+Lar'bee's a mighty good help!"</p>
+
+<p>For the life of him, Jasper Larrabee could not harden his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Her pet tur-rkey air dead," old man Haight presently observed
+disconnectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad of it," said Jack callously. "I never seen a beast so pompered,
+an' fairly hanker ter git stepped on, forever flusterin' 'roun' the
+floor underfoot."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i>'ll be powerful sorry. She sot a heap o' store by it, an'
+doctored it cornsider'ble. She 'lowed it hed the quinsy." Then after a
+pause, "Whenst I gits my money back," said the old man meditatively, "I
+be goin' ter buy S'briny Lar'bee suthin' ez will s'prise her,—I dunno
+what. I studies on it some mighty nigh every day. A spry young filly,
+mebbe, or a good cow an' calf,—I dunno. I'd gin her the money, ef she
+wouldn't be sure ter fool it away on them wuthless triflin' cattle of
+chil'n an' folks she contrives fur all the time. I'd gin S'briny half
+o' the cold cash, an' ennyhow I lay off ter spend half fur a presint
+fur her."</p>
+
+<p>Espey, his energies recruited by food, and perhaps willing to postpone
+the evil hour of shoveling and digging, looked up with a satiric eye
+and a rallying laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Whar's my sheer, ef ye be goin' ter gin Mis' Lar'bee haffen the money?
+Ye 'lowed Tawm hed hed his pay in whiskey,"—he cast a side glance at
+the bloated slumbering face and collapsed figure in the shadow,—"an'
+he's hed a plenty, too, fur he's nuthin' but a cag o' liquor set
+a-goin' on two legs; but I'm durned ef I'll take my pay out in Mis'
+Timson's sour yeast an' raw dough." He twirled the empty basket
+over contemptuously. "Ye 'lowed that night, three weeks ago, whenst
+I—ye—whenst we run on one another, an' s'prised one another, ez ye'd
+pay me solid silver ef I wouldn't tell nobody, but holp ye; now didn't
+ye?"</p>
+
+<p>Espey's tone was so obviously that of one who speaks in flagrant jest
+that Larrabee perceived he gave the unknown enterprise no serious
+support or credence, and that he was only utilizing some preposterous
+delusion of the old man touching his work in the Lost Time mine to
+secure food to sustain him while he evaded the pursuit of the law.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye 'low ez 'tain't enough money!" screamed the old man shrilly, and
+Larrabee recognized the clamors of the queer cracked voice which he
+had been wont to shudderingly mark in the tunnel that led to the
+still. "Ain't I done tole ye what I ain't never tole no other livin'
+man—I don't count Tawm—it air eighty-seben dollars! Yes, sir, nigh
+on ter a hundred, what I hed done sold my cabin an' lan' fur on Big
+Injun Mounting whenst I kem over hyar ter settle,—eighty-seben
+dollars in hard silver"—He broke off abruptly. Then, in the deep,
+hollow, blood-curdling tone which Larrabee had so often heard about
+the fireside, he cursed the Lost Time mine. His excitement was painful
+to witness, as Larrabee, still looking round the pile of broken
+rock, noted his feverish illumined eyes, the flush on his withered
+parchment-like cheek, the aimlessness and the quaking of his fluttering
+nerveless hand. Espey was gazing at him calmly, his face lighted by
+the lantern placed on the ground between them, and evidently believing
+that not a syllable he uttered had any foundation in fact.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twar the day o' the floodin' o' the mine," old Haight mouthed and
+gesticulated vehemently. "Every durned thing went wrong that day! I war
+hyar a-workin'. I hed worked in mines over in Car'liny, an' war ekal
+ter all. I war toler'ble young an' nimble,—knowed ter be ez nimble
+ez a painter! An' one o' them durned buzzards workin' of the windlass
+drapped the whole contrivance, winch, rope, bucket, man, an' all, down
+inter the bottom o' the shaft; an' they couldn't make the man answer,
+an' 'lowed he war kilt. An' I—the devil's own fool—mus' ups an'
+volunteer ter go down an' git the windlass an' let 'em hoist it out,
+an' then let down the bucket agin an' fetch up the man—(I furgits his
+name, dad-burn him!—Tom, Jim, Pete, cuss him, whatever he be!) An' ez
+they war a sort o' harnessin' me up with ropes under my arms an' around
+my middle, I felt my leetle bag o' money a-poppin' 'bout in my pocket,
+an' 'peared ter me it mought pop out down in that deep onhandy shaft.
+An' I handed it ter the foreman ter keep fur me in his pocket,—he
+war a clever trusted man; I never tole the t'others, kase they war
+toler'ble hard cases, an' some men would kill a man fur a dollar an'
+a half; an' bless Gawd—eighty-seben dollars! An' down I goes! I hed
+about teched bottom when—hell broke loose! I 'lowed I hearn thunder:
+'twar the water on a plumb tear, breakin' down the walls an' cavortin'
+like a herd o' wild cattle through the mine. Sech screechin's! The men
+ez helt the rope drapped it on my head an' run fur thar lives!"</p>
+
+<p>With open mouth and shaking jaw, he rose up, and gazed eagerly about,
+while Espey wearily yawned and passed his hands across his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It bust through about thar." He pointed about in real or fancied
+recognition of the course of the flood. "But over yander—the whole
+thing hev fell down an' caved in sence then, mighty nigh—'twar higher
+'n the level o' the overflow, an' I stayed down thar in the shaft dry
+ez a bone. I stayed two days along o' that dead man. I furgits his
+name," he broke off in peevish irritation.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, readjusted his plaid shawl about his head, surmounted it
+again with his big broad hat, and recommenced:—</p>
+
+<p>"Wall, they 'lowed at fust they'd work the mine agin,—didn't know
+what the damage war; an' ez they war pokin' 'bout, somebody 'membered
+me, an' when they fished me out'n the shaft I hed these hyar jiggets."
+He held up his shaking hands, and looked in exasperation from one
+to the other. "Some calls it the palsy, but the doctor, he 'lowed
+it kem from the narvous shock. An' the foreman, he hed done hed ter
+git drowned with my leetle bag o' money in his pocket." He rose to
+his feet, with a sudden steady blazing fire in his eyes. "But it's
+silver,—eighty—seben—dollars!" He pronounced the words as if
+they expressed the wealth of the Indies. "They air silver,—silver
+metal. Water can't hurt 'em, an' the leetle leather bag kep' 'em from
+scatterin'. The foreman's got 'em in his pocket. Mebbe he hain't got
+no pocket by this time, but he hain't got rid o' all his bones. The
+money'll be nigh his bones, an' I be goin' ter foller the wash o' that
+flood, afore the walls fell in on it, till I find 'em."</p>
+
+<p>There was something pathetic to Jasper Larrabee's sympathetic gaze
+in the record of the gradual failure of the old man's mental powers
+registered on the walls. He could easily distinguish, of course, the
+difference in the work wrought by numbers and with the expectation
+of valuable ore and this unique subterranean burrowing with only the
+object of old Haight's search in prospect. But at first accepted
+methods of mining had been held in regard with a due consideration of
+safety. The excavations had been carefully timbered, the débris of the
+ancient lumber serving for the purpose; the nature of the earth and
+rock all capably recognized either in the avoidance of obstacles or the
+seizure of advantage; the exact location of an old cross-cut definitely
+ascertained and intersected by the new tunnel, and utilized to further
+him on the way to some objective point, doubtless once definite in his
+mind, but now hazy and intermittent, or possibly lost altogether, for
+here and there, evidently at random, great vaults had been hollowed
+out and abandoned, and for a long time every precaution or thought of
+safety had been discarded. His plan and its feasibility were gone, and
+only his inadequate intention remained.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee started violently as the walls rang suddenly with the weird
+old voice, which, with its keen, false intonation, had so often struck
+terror to the stout hearts of the moonshiners of the Lost Time still.
+It was a voice of insistent command. He was urging his comrades to the
+work, and presently the regular strokes of the pick wielded by the
+stalwart "Tawm" set the echoes of the place to a hollow, melancholy
+iteration dreary to hear, and dismally blent with the rush of the
+cruel torrent. Espey's stroke seemed, in comparison, incidental and
+ineffective; but albeit both men worked apparently with a will, it was
+evidently quite at random, obeying implicitly now and again a gesture
+or command given in pursuance of some weak, wavering intention, and
+changed in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>The accident which had put the secret into Larrabee's hands seemed
+to him now so natural that he marveled that it had not been earlier
+revealed. But doubtless the vocation of the lost miners had served
+to connect the stroke of the pick with their gruesome fate, and thus
+the very fact of the sound, which must otherwise have betrayed the
+enterprise, aided the spectral traditions and the consequent avoidance
+of the place to preserve it. Would Espey have dared, he asked himself,
+to venture within, had he not feared the living more than the dead? And
+but for his own recognition of the humble lantern and its necessarily
+human uses he would, for fear of the spectral miners, hardly have
+tracked the old miner to his new lead.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly, with the very thought, notwithstanding the perfectly
+natural solution of the mystery, he was solicitous as to the means of
+departure. He could not wait to follow that feeble lantern far enough
+in the background to insure his invisibility. He would not issue upon
+them now and advertise his discovery, and dismay the old dotard with
+his hopeless scheme. "I don't want to torment the pore old man," he
+said. He felt a keen thrill of savage joy to have discovered Espey's
+lair, but he would need some thought to secretly entrap him. "Fur ye
+air a mighty slick shirk, brother Jack," he said, with scorn. He was
+feeling some matches in his pockets, and judging of their number.
+Should they fail him before he reached the outer air, he could step
+aside and wait till the men should pass with the lantern. Its glimmer
+served now as long as the passage was comparatively straight; when it
+turned, himself out of the possibility of view, he struck the first
+match. The way was shorter than he had fancied. His store was not yet
+exhausted when he felt the warmer temperature from without, and saw the
+jagged outline of the portal and heard the melancholy dash of the rain;
+for it was once more "falling weather," and the sky was cloaked and
+gray.</p>
+
+<p>As he hesitated outside, his mind intent upon Espey and the incidents
+of his career since he had been among them, there came to him the
+thought of the barn in which his whilom friend had been wont to
+spend so many idle and meditative hours. A good refuge, to be sure,
+for a fugitive from the law. The idea of comforts allured him as he
+recollected the great fragrant elastic masses of hay. A hiding-place
+as well. Here even Henrietta Timson would hardly find him, for the
+rotting ladder, from which many a rung was missing, afforded scant
+footing for a barn swallow, or a flying squirrel, or an athlete like
+himself or his friend. Sleep would recruit his energies, quiet solace
+his mind, a vacant interval of time clarify his intentions and fortify
+his resolves. He started up the mountain briskly; the thought of home,
+even in this humble, secret, half-outcast guise, warmed his heart.
+He did not feel the rain dash in his face. A prescience of October
+was unheeded in the melancholy cadences of the midnight wind. He
+hardly noted the deep gloom of the Cove, where an owl was wailing at
+intervals, and whence all the orange-tinted lights had vanished. As the
+chill of the failing season struck him, he shivered, but unconsciously.
+He had forged on past the Lost Time store almost to the crest of
+the ridge, where the homeward way diverged, when suddenly a dull
+subterranean thunder shook the air, and the earth seemed to tremble. He
+paused in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they air a-blastin' down thar in the Lost Time mine. Espey
+oughtn't ter let two bereft folks tech sech ez that; 'tain't safe."</p>
+
+<p>Then he reflected that Espey himself had doubtless superintended the
+charges with due regard to their safety and his own. Nevertheless, he
+shook his head as he stood looking over his shoulder into the blank,
+unresponsive darkness. He heard no more, and presently he turned again
+and went his homeward way in the dark persistent dripping of the early
+autumn rain.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIII">XVIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The anomaly of administering upon one's own estate Lorenzo Taft was
+permitted in some sort to experience. A definite realization of
+finality attended his meditations, at he sat bending over the embers in
+the great fireplace of the store, in the rain-clouded morning that rose
+upon the conclusion of his labors of removing the still and destroying
+all its approaches. His vocation was gone, and naught remained. He had
+no more affinity than a fox or a wolf for a law-abiding occupation.
+The possible profits that might stick to his hands in the process of
+the conversion of the goods upon the shelves from the wholesale ratio
+to the retail failed to allure him, for the store had never been aught
+but a "blind." The furrow was no thoroughfare. That wild gambling with
+the chances of the sun and wind and the rain in its season, and often
+out of its season, known as farming, and doubtless permitted by the law
+only because it insures its own punishment, was risky enough to jump
+with his humor, but the stakes were hopelessly inadequate. He could not
+look forward, and the glance backward over the shoulder needs a good
+conscience to commend the prospect.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again he lifted his heavy boot and kicked the embers together
+fiercely, as if at great odds with his thoughts and his own counsels.
+Like many another, he undervalued his success, its hairbreadth
+jeopardies and its difficulty of attainment, now that it was fairly
+secured. It seemed to him a slight thing, the device of his quick
+wits to insure his safety, and his satisfaction in its triumphant
+exploitation had already evanesced. Had it been possible to reëstablish
+the status of yesterday, doubtless he would have hardily risked the
+discovery of the still, the disclosure of Larrabee, the capture of
+Espey, Dan Sykes's drunken tongue, and, as a result of these, the
+"shootin'-irons" of the "revenuers" and the sentence of the federal
+court. But gunpowder as a factor in a scheme admits of no second
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>He even upbraided his own acumen that, in the emergency, he had sought
+with an eye single the safety of himself, his one remaining comrade,
+and the apparatus, regardless of all considerations of enmity. But now
+that judgment was satisfied and escape certain, vengeance clamored.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever he thought of Larrabee outside, triumphant, free, enjoying
+an absolute immunity from the law by reason of the destruction of the
+moonshiners' lair, which rendered the discovery of his complicity
+impossible, Taft frowned heavily and swore beneath his breath, and
+kicked the unoffending embers into a new adjustment, so bitter was the
+fact that his own safety made Larrabee's protection complete. Even poor
+Dan Sykes's exile—and doubtless the young sot was well on the way to
+Texas by this time—was as necessarily a measure taken in Larrabee's
+behalf as if it were the dearest desire of Taft's heart to shield and
+screen him. The realization that, despite himself, Larrabee shared his
+security cheapened it. Less and less he realized its value. A turbulent
+pulse began to stir within his veins. His heavy cheek was red and
+pendulous beneath his yellow beard. Occasionally he dropped his lower
+jaw with an expression of angry dismay, so ill had the event fallen out
+with his liking. The sight of Copley wandering about the half-darkened
+house, lighted only by the fire and the pallid grayness from the door
+ajar opening upon the rainy outside world, as uneasy as a homeless cat,
+able to settle to nothing, his face a palimpsest of care and trouble
+and failure, overwritten again and again above the half-obliterated
+script of years agone, irritated him vaguely. Taft eyed him loweringly,
+as the two children in the opposite room besieged him for the detail of
+the adventures and dramatic "taking off" of a certain "black b'ar," a
+vanquished enemy of his earlier days, which he recounted as aimlessly
+as if the story were elicited by a wooden crank; but responding to a
+spirited encore, he plucked up heart of grace to add new and fresh
+particulars. His worn and not unkindly face did not ill become the
+armchair and the propinquity of the juvenile heads. His serenity, as
+the two resorted from contradiction to blows, smartly administered
+across him to his own great jeopardy, bespoke a grandfatherly
+tolerance, nearly related to affection, for the combatants. Without
+more masterful leading than his own mind could originate or his own
+propensities could furnish, he might spend the rest of his life at the
+plough-handles, and ask no better society, and hope for naught beyond
+his coarse garb and his coarser fare. He was growing old, and this
+might be a better prospect than the still could promise, with always
+the possibility of a federal prisoner's cell at the vanishing point of
+the long perspective.</p>
+
+<p>Taft could preëmpt no such demesne of mild content. His rankling regret
+for all that he had done, and done so well, in that it served his enemy
+perforce as one with himself, deepened as he began to realize that in
+escaping so great and imminent a danger none sustained appreciable
+injury but himself. He alone seemed at the end. He could not for years,
+perhaps, safely rehabilitate the still. A new place must be sought, a
+new trade established, new dangers guarded against; and complicated
+by his relations with Larrabee, at large and at enmity, a removal
+unobserved and a reëstablishment without pursuit seemed impossible.
+He dwelt with futile persistence on the peculiar adaptability of his
+hiding-place, now demolished forever. Nowhere else could he have
+commanded such advantages of seclusion. Surely nowhere else could his
+dangerous vocation have been so safely plied. He enumerated the varied
+precautions that he had observed, the dangers that he had successfully
+balked. All the chances of the world outside had run in his favor; even
+the mysterious burning of the hotel was strangely calculated to aid his
+design in preventing the advent into the Cove of summer sojourners,
+that might lead to the discovery of his lair. Doubtless, too, by this
+time, in addition, Kenniston's plans were definitely and forever
+baffled by the untoward result of processioning the land. And as the
+thought of it recurred to him he started suddenly, the color deepened
+in his face, and he beheld the events of which he had elected to play
+the motive power in a new and baleful light.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there was no flaw in his reasoning that stormy night when
+he had betaken himself in company with the wind and the rain, high up
+into the solitudes of the "bald" of the mountain. A wild night, with
+none else abroad save perchance a stray marauder of the furry gentry.
+Only the mists dogged his steps, and only the lightnings searched out
+his path. The gigantic boulder that seemed immovable, grim, gaunt,
+forbidding, the agency of giant powder set astir easily enough; and
+although the charge, accurately calculated for the purpose, was not
+sufficient to fracture the great mass, its equilibrium on the steep
+slope was destroyed. A wild turbulent dance it had as it hurled down
+the slope from the spot where the ebbing seas of centuries agone had
+left it stranded. A thunderous crashing voice it lifted as it went, and
+the thunder of the clouds seemed to reply. In the pallid dawn of the
+rainy day, Taft had crept back through the wet clouds of the summits
+and the spent winds lingering in the dank woods, to behold it lying
+there in this alien stop, as immovable of aspect as of yore, with great
+trees uprooted by the tempest athwart the rocky ledges about its path,
+and every trace of the action of powder effaced by the persistent rain.
+It marked a new corner for the beginning of Kenniston's survey; on a
+line with the old, it is true, but full five furlongs distant. It was
+a north-westerly line to be run out thence; the greater divergence
+would occur in the Cove, which fact Taft had learned as Kenniston made
+a swift plat of his irregularly shaped land with his cane on the floor
+of Cap'n Lucy's cabin porch. A simple scheme enough, this,—that the
+one available site for the hotel should be thrown within the lines
+of Cap'n Lucy, who would not bargain, sell, or convey, and thus the
+ill-omened caravansary crowded out of the space it was expected to
+occupy; for as yet Bruin's intervention as incendiary was among the
+uncovenanted things, and since the unlucky threat to burn the building
+had originated among the moonshiners Taft feared discovery should he
+apply the torch himself. A simple scheme, well planned and carried out
+with full effect,—and how should its completion so ill please its
+projector?</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Cap'n Lucy should profit by it Taft had heretofore hardly
+heeded, since this was the necessary incident of his own greater
+profit. Now, however, that treachery, as he esteemed it, had riddled
+the whole finespun web and brought it to naught, a turmoil of rage
+possessed him. It seemed some curious chicanery of fate that he alone
+should sustain loss, and that to others should accrue all the advantage
+of his subtle weavings of chance and fact, as if the threads still
+held fast. Cap'n Lucy was in possession, doubtless, of many hundred
+acres of Kenniston's land. He suddenly grudged them to Cap'n Lucy as
+he had never bethought himself to grudge them to Kenniston. Jealousy
+is an intimate passion, and insistently of the soil. The neighbor, the
+associate, the friend's friend,—it makes no far casts. Kenniston was
+beyond its restricted bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Cap'n Lucy's causticity, his arrogance, his insulting courage which
+belittled the possibilities of another man's wrath, his intrenchment in
+the subservience of his household, and his preëminence in the esteem
+of his small world did not serve to commend him to his unwilling
+benefactor, who stood in immediate contemplation of his own loss.
+And as the radiant face of Julia appeared in the dim midst of Taft's
+recollection, he rose to his feet, his resolution taken in the instant.
+He had not forgotten the look in Larrabee's eyes when Espey had
+demanded of him whom he had been "a-courtin' at Tems's." Now, with
+Espey gone, and Larrabee foot-loose and free, it might chance that
+these hundreds of acres of which he had bereft Kenniston would one day
+fall into Larrabee's possession as his wife's inheritance, when Cap'n
+Lucy should go to his account,—which Taft doubted not would be a long
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be dad-burned," he cried, "ef I'll stand by an' see Kenniston
+choused fur old Lucy or Lar'bee, air one!"</p>
+
+<p>Few human motives are simple. The travesty of restitution served to
+cloak even to himself jealousy and grudging and revenge, and that
+mad impulse to hurl down and wreak woe upon those who had chanced
+to prosper in the dispensations which he had ordered himself, and
+which had wrought perversely to his injury. He had, however, nothing
+of the appearance or the manner of a subtle villain when he was on
+horseback in the slanting lines of rain, that multiplied till they
+hid the mountains near at hand, and erased the Cove, and nullified
+all the conditions of the familiar world. On the contrary, his bluff,
+bold, open aspect was of a reassuring geniality, notwithstanding its
+overbearing intimations, and served to identify him to Kenniston, as
+he lounged in his unsubstantial domicile, and looked out ruefully at
+the dull day with the gray rain and the grayer mist and the ochreous
+pools of water, seeing naught else till this massive equestrian figure
+materialized in its vaporous midst and seemed to ride straight out of
+it. Taft flung himself from his saddle with a decision which implied a
+mission; and despite Kenniston's intention to discourage the visits of
+the mountaineers, he could not, with so assured a guest, have withheld
+the customary greeting of hospitality without more definite rudeness
+than he had expected to adventure.</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer was the more welcome since Kenniston's companion in
+keeping the monkey stove warm was Rodolphus Ross, who had come to the
+Cove for the purpose of examining the scene of the fire, and ferreting
+out the incendiary. He had, under the guise of questioning Kenniston
+on the subject, inflicted his society upon his restive host for the
+better part of an hour, now and then desisting from the discussion to
+work away at the damper of the monkey stove, which he patronizingly
+denominated a "smart little trick," albeit by reason of the heavy
+air and ill adjustment and the lack of adequate draught it was doing
+itself no credit. Ross experimented with an ardor and uninformed energy
+which threatened the total wreck of its constitution. The clatter of
+the metal was hardly more grating upon Kenniston's educated nerves
+than were his guest's speech and bearing. There was something in the
+exaggeration of the deputy's urban boorishness, the plaid of his
+ill-fitting garments, the hilarity of his vulgar townish impudence,
+that daunted a charitable acceptation of his foibles. So distasteful to
+Kenniston's cultured taste was the degree of sophistication acquired
+by the deputy sheriff, and with many a misconception adapted to his
+personality, that the absence of it seemed dignity in the mountaineer,
+and Taft's unvarnished address the unpolished substratum of good
+manners.</p>
+
+<p>"How's ducks in the hills?" Ross greeted him, dropping the small
+poker, and looking up with bright dark eyes, the two prominent front
+teeth visible beneath the short upper lip. There was a moment of
+rabbit-like expectancy of expression; then his lips widened to a laugh
+as the burly stranger turned his serious, impressive face toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Air you-uns speakin' ter me, sir?" demanded Taft, in a grave, direct
+manner, his steady eye full upon him.</p>
+
+<p>The airy deputy shifted ground for once. "Good day fur ducks," he
+modified his speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Cornsider'ble fallin' weather," admitted Taft incidentally, and,
+seating himself in the chair indicated by Kenniston, he proceeded
+to take part in the conversation, his big booming voice rendering
+interruption impossible save as he listed.</p>
+
+<p>"I hev viewed you-uns afore at old Cap'n Lucy Tems's house," he said to
+Kenniston, crossing his legs, and eying the steam casually as it rose
+from the damp boots under the persuasive heat of the stove. "Yes, sir,
+Taft is my name."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember you very well," said Kenniston affably. "Won't you light
+your pipe?" He pushed a match holder and tobacco pouch across the table
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>Taft, without comment, filled his pipe from an inexhaustible supply of
+tobacco that seemed always loose in his pocket; it was far stronger
+than that of his host, as the rank odor which rose on the air presently
+demonstrated. Rodolphus Ross had looked at him with a grin of hopeful
+anticipation, which shrunk at once when he recognized and adapted to
+his own needs the uses of the lucifer match.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," Taft resumed, "I war toler'ble sorry ter hear 'bout'n yer
+hotel bein' burnt. I didn't view it at the time." He puffed the coals
+into a glow, and pulled away comfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanes' people on yearth, these hyar mountaineers!" cried Ross. "They
+jes' so durned ignorant they don't know sin from salvation, nor law
+from lying."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they ain't 'sponsible," remarked Taft coolly. He pressed down the
+burning tobacco in the bowl with a callous forefinger indurated by long
+practice to crowding his pipe, and resumed: "I 'lowed it mought gin ye
+a start ef I war ter tell ye I hearn sev'ral men talkin' 'bout burnin'
+it,—long time ago, 'fore it war begun."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was leaning back in his chair, much at his ease, noting with
+a sort of languid interest the intimations of force and ferocity in
+his visitor's face: the keen sagacity, rather as of the instinctive
+endowment of one of the lower orders of creation than an enlightened
+intelligence; the beaklike nose; the contradictory geniality of the
+full blue eye and broad floridity. He brought his tilted chair suddenly
+to the floor, leaned forward on the table, with a slight exclusive
+gesture toward Rodolphus Ross, which, although it escaped that worthy,
+caused Taft a sharp regret for his precipitancy.</p>
+
+<p>The deputy sheriff was all a-clamor.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, now, my big bull o' Bashan, ye hev got ter make that statement
+under oath with full partic'lars,—names, dates, and place!" He rose up
+on the opposite side of the monkey stove, with the lifter in his hand,
+with which he gesticulated imperatively.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston could hardly repress his impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Mr. Ross, of course,—all in due season," he said irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"But abuse the authorities, in season an' out, an' 'low the devil will
+ketch the officer, in due course o' jestice, 'fore the officer'll ketch
+the malefactor. I ain't a-goin' ter lose you, Mr. Durham, ye bet high
+on that!" he added, turning to Taft.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Taft expects to swear to the facts, of course," said Kenniston. He
+paused abruptly, meditating a remonstrance with the tumultuous brute;
+but Ross's very vulgarity, his clamorous brutality, the impossibility
+of reaching through his hardened exterior any sensitiveness, or pride,
+or sense of decorum, or whatever sanction may control the heart of a
+man who is a gentleman in jeans, gave him an advantage over a man of
+breeding which no culture could compass. Kenniston could not cope with
+him; his training had prepared him for no such encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Only Taft's great sonorous voice could overbear the deputy's words,
+which sounded in his first utterance with the disjointed effect of
+Christmas firecrackers enlivening the booming of Christmas guns.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make oath ter statements ez ter date an' person, but not
+place,—I hev no call ter drag other folks inter sech. I dunno ez they
+fired the hotel; I only heard 'em threat it."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" demanded Kenniston eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Deviltry,—deviltry, o' course," protested Ross. He had contrived to
+smirch his face in the careless handling of the poker of the monkey
+stove, which added a certain grotesque effect to his appearance, if one
+were in the mood to be amused by it.</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston's mood was far from such influences.</p>
+
+<p>"I must ask you to be quiet, sir," he said, with acridity.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye must?" sneered Rodolphus Ross. "An' who war that ez 'lowed ef the
+local force war so 'torpid,'—<i>torpid</i>, ye hed it,—ye'd hev up
+private detectives from Bretonville ter settle the hash o' these kentry
+varmints?"</p>
+
+<p>He threw up his eyebrows almost to the smirches obliquely laid across
+his forehead, laughed with a gleam of white teeth and an intent
+widening of the dark eyes, the whole facial expression gone in an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, we ain't 'torpid' no longer. 'Wake up, snakes!' Now, old buck,
+answer my questions, an' tell me why they warn't willin' ter let Mr.
+Kenniston build his hotel in the Cove."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston folded his arms as he tilted himself back in his chair, and
+resigned the conversation to its unique leadership. The ceaseless
+motion of the falling lines of rain gave a spurious effect of motion
+to the great monastic forms of the mountains cowled with mists and
+robed in dreary hue, seeming continually in sad processional along the
+horizon. The ochreous pools near at hand had lost all capacity for
+reflection, although the dark green branches of the firs here and there
+bent above them, and the gray rain dripping from the fibrous fringes
+upon the unquiet tremulous surface took its color, and was seen no
+more. His returning glance met Taft's eye as he was about to speak, and
+somehow in that momentary contact a quiet understanding was established
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"The reason, I reckon, they didn't want Mr. Kenniston ter build his
+hotel hyar war 'kase 'twould bring too many strangers round."</p>
+
+<p>"An' what's the objection to strangers?" asked Kenniston anxiously. It
+was not merely a retrospective interest that the question served. He
+asked for the future.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I reckon they hed some moonshinin' or sech on hand," returned
+Taft coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar, now! what did I tell ye?" vociferated Rodolphus Ross, appealing
+to Kenniston. "An' I'll bet this hyar Larrabee war one of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Taft nodded, and Kenniston meditatively eyed the dull flashes from the
+stove, recollecting the strange conversation of Larrabee here, and his
+sudden significant betrayal of secret knowledge of the origin of the
+fire when it was mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"Strangers air powerful onhealthy fur the moonshinin' business," said
+Taft, as a sort of corollary of his former statement.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak from experience?" sneered Rodolphus Ross.</p>
+
+<p>"I do so," declared Taft unequivocally. Then turning to Kenniston, "I
+sarved a prison term fur illicit distillin' whenst I war a young man.
+I 'lowed, like all these other young muskrats, ez I could do what I
+pleased with my own corn an' apples. But whenst I traveled all through
+six or seben States goin' to the North, an' seen this big kentry an'
+sech, I knowed I warn't ekal ter runnin' agin its laws; an' whether
+thar's reason in 'em or no, I ondertook ter keep 'em arterward."</p>
+
+<p>This unexpected confession disconcerted Ross in some sort. He silently
+eyed Taft, whose criminal experience seemed rather an error of an
+unripe judgment than the turpitude of law-breaking, and his candor in
+admitting it bluntly did not detract from the serious impression he
+had evidently made upon Kenniston. With Ross nothing was serious long.
+There was a sudden breaking up of the gloss of intentness in his round
+dark eyes, and as they shifted they fell upon the poker of the stove,
+and he once more thrust it through the bars and rattled it smartly.</p>
+
+<p>"I oughter say," said Taft, meditatively sucking his pipestem, "that
+'twar Espey ez fust 'lowed ter burn ye out. 'Burn his shanty!' he say."</p>
+
+<p>A picture as definite as if it were the reality of pigments and canvas
+glowed suddenly before his contemplation,—the red walls of his den
+a-flicker in the flare of the furnace fire, the burnished gleam of the
+copper, the burly forms of the tubs of mash, familiars of the brown
+gloom, and the circle of faces, definite with those sharply marked
+shadows and striking high lights that a strong artificial glow elicits
+from the darkness. For his life he could not repress a long-drawn sigh,
+and then he shifted his position and cleared his throat raucously. But
+the picture, like many another masterpiece of the painter Memory, was
+not on general exhibition. For all its close detail and strong salience
+and brilliant reality of hue, it was invisible to Kenniston. As to the
+regretful sigh, fat men are often wont to sigh for very fatness, and it
+passed without significance.</p>
+
+<p>After a meditative pause, "Did it ever occur to you that this Larrabee
+is a crank," asked Kenniston, "what you call, and very aptly,
+touched-in-the-head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Larrabee?" exclaimed Taft vehemently, all alert once more, his
+eyes on fire, his angry breath quick. "He's smart ez the very devil!
+Don't you let him pull the wool over yer eyes with the lunacy purtense."</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphus Ross gave a final rasping clatter of the poker between the
+bars; then flung it, resounding, down upon the floor. He rose to his
+feet, stamping with first one and then the other to shake out his
+trousers from their persistent kneed effect, and, turning to Taft, he
+said, with an off-hand manner, "Now, look-a-hyar, Prize Beef, when did
+ye an' this sca'ce buzzard Lar'bee meet the last time?"</p>
+
+<p>The "Prize Beef" apparently perceived no sort of offense in this form
+of address.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't viewed him in—I dunno when. I 'lowed he hed lef' the kentry
+till he war up at my store, a few nights ago. I warn't thar, but my
+leetle gal, she seen him."</p>
+
+<p>The sly, predatory look was in Rodolphus Ross's eyes. He lifted his
+knee and smote it as if he had discovered a very apt coincidence.</p>
+
+<p>Taft hesitated; then he said, "Ye'd better go up yander an' talk ter
+my leetle darter 'bout'n it." He hesitated once more. He feared that
+Copley might be inadequate to the situation, but, with his ever alert
+suspicions, he would doubtless fly at the very sight of a stranger; and
+as to Sis, he could rely upon Rodolphus Ross's address and manner to
+arouse the enmity of old Mrs. Jiniway's disciple in etiquette, and he
+knew of old that Sis was wont to give her adversary no quarter. A dozen
+of such as Rodolphus Ross would hardly be a handful for Sis. He would
+learn naught from her which he wanted to know. "Take my mare out thar,
+bein' ready saddled," he said hospitably. "I'll wait hyar till ye kem
+back."</p>
+
+<p>Contrariety was the breath of the deputy's life. The congeniality of
+his vocation lay much in the opposition of his duties to the desires of
+those of his fellow-men with whom he was brought into official contact.
+He earnestly wished to negative Taft's suggestion, but the possibility
+of getting at closer quarters with Larrabee, of once more finding his
+trail, which had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, was
+stronger for the moment. His enmity had not grown cold; it was the more
+vehement the more it was baffled. He lingered a moment; then, turning
+up his collar, and pulling down the broad rim of his hat all around to
+afford eaves to conduct the rain from his head, he plunged out into the
+steady torrents with a discordant yawp that made the little shanty ring.</p>
+
+<p>Taft gazed thoughtfully after him as he vaulted into the saddle and
+rode off with a good deal of unnecessary heel-and-toe exercise in the
+region of the animal's ribs. The restive mare apparently resented the
+ungentle treatment, for the last that was seen of mount and rider was
+a profile rampant against the blank white expanse of the closing mists
+ere they were enveloped in the opaque multitudinous folds.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me that Gawd made man," said Taft at last. "'Pears ter me ez
+the Almighty slighted <i>that</i> job, sure."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was a man of painfully orderly instincts. He could not
+satisfactorily resume the conversation without gathering up the poker,
+the lifter, and other appurtenances of the stove which Ross had
+scattered about the little zinc square on which it sat, replacing them,
+rearranging the writing materials, newspapers, tobacco, and cigars
+on the table, and stirring the fire to brightness and a possibility
+of burning. As he threw himself into his chair he marked how the
+encroaching mists had invested the house. Not half a dozen paces
+of the path remained visible from the door; even upon the threshold
+the vapor hung in vague white wreaths, to vanish in the heat, and be
+replaced by white clouds floating in with a rolling motion,—never
+disappearing utterly, but venturing no further. On the roof and in the
+invisibilities of the white mists outside they could hear the chilly
+rain still steadily falling. The seeming isolation gave a certain
+confidential character to the conversation even before its developments
+warranted this.</p>
+
+<p>"How did the percessionin' turn out?" Taft demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The rain stopped it," returned Kenniston, gloomily eying the
+thickening mists, while Taft critically but covertly observed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Satisfied ez fur ez it went, I s'pose?" Taft flicked off the ashes
+from his pipe, and pressed down the remainder of its contents with that
+salamander of a forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Kenniston irritably. "It is a great surprise to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kenniston," said Taft, with that blunt directness which so
+commended him to the experienced man and so warped his judgment,
+"that thar Big Hollow Boulder, the beginning o' yer survey, hev been
+bodaciously moved."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston lifted his head suddenly, the excitement of the moment
+showing red in his face. A half-scornful incredulity was in his eyes,
+almost on his lips. He was about to speak; then paused doubtfully. The
+testimony of his recollections of Cap'n Lucy's significant insistence
+on the phrase "Big Hollow Boulder" and a thousand satiric allusions to
+the stationary functions of a monument of boundary overwhelmed him for
+the moment; for their incongruity with a culpable knowledge or agency
+in the fact was more than inexplicable; it was mysterious. There needed
+no dexterous jugglery with phrase and fact, however, to account for
+Luther's furtive, hang-dog manner and averted eye.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems impossible! But I will not believe that old man Lucy had
+anything to do with moving it," Kenniston began. He suddenly caught his
+lip and bit it hard. It was evident from his flaunting remarks that the
+old mountaineer had not been similarly generous to his neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>"A heap o' land," suggested the politic Taft. "But then I s'pose ter
+run yer eastern line out would show whar yer corner is?" He asked the
+question eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. Calls for permanent natural objects usually control calls
+for distance. I suppose that rule would hold fast in this instance.
+My eastern line can only run to the boulder, which is presumably
+immovable."</p>
+
+<p>Taft's countenance fell. He had thought that the further survey of
+the eastern boundary would serve to reëstablish the corner where the
+boulder should be; on the contrary, Cap'n Lucy was invested with many
+hundred acres for which he had given no equivalent in goods, or money,
+or even occupancy.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw that something was mighty wrong with the line that the surveyor
+was running; and so did Cap'n Lucy, for that matter," said Kenniston,
+revolving the events of the processioning. "He looked dumfounded when
+he saw Wild Duck Falls in his boundary, and the hotel,—or rather the
+place where the hotel ought to be."</p>
+
+<p>Taft caught a quick inspiration. "That's it,—them boys is
+a-moonshinin' fur true. They must hev moved the boulder ter crowd ye
+out of a buildin' site. An' then they burnt the hotel."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they've got me pretty badly crowded,—I'll say that for them."</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston was looking out of the door, with that sullen sense of
+injury and hopelessness which oppresses a city man in the country
+in bad weather. The world had slipped away, somehow; he was left to
+the vague unresponsiveness of the inexpressive white mists; the rain
+would probably continue forever; the day was of a longevity known to
+no other that had ever dawned; without the prompting of his watch he
+could not have said if it were morning or afternoon. The roof leaked;
+the boots of his uncouth visitors tracked up the floor with red clay
+mud. A saddle in one corner gave out an obtrusive odor of leather,
+and the monkey stove, despite all this dankness, filled the room with
+that baking, dry, afflicting aroma common to all its kindred. His
+pugnacity was abated under these untoward conditions; his enthusiasms
+were overwhelmed beneath the depression of the rain. He thought
+wistfully of Bretonville, and of a cosy corner in the reading-room of
+a certain club, and of his office, and sighed as his mind reverted to
+the jeopardy of the present, the futility of the money and thought he
+had spent here, and the froward tangle which must needs be untwisted if
+these unpromising assets were to be utilized at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Mus' hev been Lar'bee an' Espey a-moonshinin'." Taft once more sought
+to prompt that inimical sense of injury. "An' moved the boulder
+bodaciously,—the corner landmark."</p>
+
+<p>"A felony," said Kenniston thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>The patter of the rain came heavily through the silence, and in that
+bleak whiteness without they heard far away the wind rousing from its
+lair in furthest denies. The terrors of its voice did not shake the
+mists; only the sound touched a responsive chord of feeling, and the
+day was the drearier for the broken stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"A felony," he said, and fell a-musing. He vaguely repudiated the
+idea, and then bethought himself, contradictorily, of the strange
+subterfuge with which he had been summoned to the door. For no harm,
+surely, he argued. There was a certain fascination in the thought of
+the new star that the mountaineer had brought to his contemplation. Not
+a bad face, this star-gazer's, and with a coloring which had always
+commended itself to his artistic sense. A good face and finely cut, he
+would have said but for that association of ideas, "a felony," that
+sudden conscious expression as of some guilty knowledge of the burning
+of the hotel. He could not believe it of his star-gazer, with his
+elated upward look! He remembered afterward that he thought then that
+the dankness of the weather, in relaxing all manner of tension, had
+slackened his rigid standards and his taut personal exactions. He was
+morally limp, doubtless, as well as physically; but he shrunk from the
+phrase in this application, and he considered that the most definite
+sensation of that most indefinite day was the relief he experienced
+when Rodolphus Ross came plunging out of the mists.</p>
+
+<p>In high dudgeon the deputy was with the events and results of his
+mission, and he had wreaked his resentment on the unoffending animal
+which he rode. The mare's sides showed the marks of his stinging lash,
+and she had retaliated as well as she could by perversely refusing to
+pause where he wished to dismount to avoid the pools. A false start
+or two dragged him through water knee-deep, and as he came into the
+house his eyes were flashing with his various anger, and his lip curled
+scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell ye," he said to Taft, with his fractious mirthfulness, "thar's
+money in that brat o' yourn, that Cornelia Taft! Buy her a muzzle an' a
+chain an' jine a show, an' she'll draw a crowd ez the Leetle She-B'ar
+o' Persimmon Cove! Bless my boots! I'm glad I'm all hyar. The leetle
+b'ar like ter tore me ter fringes!" he exclaimed metaphorically. He
+canted his head mockingly to one side as he threw himself into a chair
+beside the stove, seized the poker, and administered a rousing shake.
+"I tell you what," he said, eying Taft gloweringly, "I'd keep her nails
+an' teeth well pruned, my friend."</p>
+
+<p>For Miss Cornelia Taft and Rodolphus Ross had failed signally to hit it
+off amicably. Copley had watched the interview through the open door
+of the store with varying emotions of anxiety: first, lest Ross was a
+"revenuer" or a spy; then, lest, as an officer of the state law, he had
+some charge against them; again, lest he cause Sis some apprehension;
+and lastly, lest the temerity of the doughty Sis bring woe and wreck
+upon the devoted household. Joe cowered in a corner of the fireplace,
+leaning against the great jamb, essaying only a few of the writhings
+and twistings of his anatomy which he affected, and sometimes sitting
+still altogether, so did the interest of the colloquy over-master the
+tendency of his muscles.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, youngsters!" was Ross's affable greeting as he tramped in when
+Joe opened the door. He flung himself into a chair before the fire,
+then turned and surveyed Cornelia, whose prim, pale, precise face
+looked more unfriendly and forbidding and negative than usual, as she
+sat, her hands demurely crossed on her lap, on the opposite side of the
+fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"My Lord! is this all? I 'lowed yer dad hed a heap bigger gal 'n you.
+Some similar ter a shrunk-up gran'mammy; ye look like ye mought hev
+lasted sence the flood. How's yer fambly, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>The juvenile heart resents a scoff. Cornelia Taft's faculties were
+limited, but she gathered herself for revenge.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, then," he demanded, as she sat stiffly silent and insulted,
+"how's rats?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't jedge," she piped up suddenly. "We-uns hain't hed a terrier
+happen in hyar afore now fur a consider'ble time."</p>
+
+<p>He was fairly silenced for the nonce. Elated by the execution of her
+sally, and not propitiated by his subsequent effort to ignore this
+passage at arms, she took full advantage of the opportunity to harass
+him which was presented when he announced himself an officer of the
+law, and demanded to know when and where she had seen Larrabee the last
+time. No perverse adult witness could have more dexterously baffled him
+with indefinite statements; and when he appealed from her to Joe, whose
+clumsy efforts to remember were hopelessly inadequate, her open glee
+was peculiarly tantalizing to Ross; for none can so resent a jest as a
+confirmed joker. Then it was that he made his fatal false step.</p>
+
+<p>"Look-a-hyar, Small Female, leetle ez ye be, I'll arrest you-uns an'
+kerry ye off ter jail, ef ye don't spry up an' answer my question."</p>
+
+<p>And then it was that Sis, bracing her small back, defied the majesty
+of the State of Tennessee as exemplified in Rodolphus Ross. So it came
+to open war. She was animated, too, by a partisan spirit for Larrabee.
+She remembered, with her infrequent approval, how he had conducted
+himself on the occasion in question; how quiet, how gentle, he was,
+how observant of the graces of her housekeeping, how commendatory of
+her dominion over Joe. Their conversation had since been often in her
+mind; she had rehearsed it, as she sat in the gloaming on her stool
+before the flickering fire, with the history of the Biblical worthies
+of which it was redundant. With no one else could she talk of these
+things. With quick adulation she had transformed Larrabee into a hero,
+and she longed to see him again. Her tongue, being feminine, could not
+be held altogether, but she told Ross naught which he desired to hear.
+She sounded the praises of Larrabee on many a key, and "disremembered"
+persistently whether it was Friday or Monday, or last week or week
+before, when she had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, what war he a-doin' of hyar, ennyhows?" queried Ross.</p>
+
+<p>"Talkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout what, gal?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout no gal," Miss Taft responded, with a flash of the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, then,"—even he was fain to concede, in the hope of finding some
+thoroughfare in thus beating about the bush,—"'bout what boy?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. She had not intended to cheapen the subject of her
+interest and enthusiasm by mention in this queer symposium. The talk
+with Larrabee had been in the nature of a confidence, as in the
+admiring canvass of mutual friends; she had a sense as if it were not
+the thing for general public and unworthy conversation. Nevertheless,
+her affinity for the subject constrained her. There was a light in her
+face, a placid softening of feature. Her flabby little colorless cheek
+mustered up a dimple.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout Sam'l," she said, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam'l who?" he demanded keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Sis hesitated, suddenly posed. "I—I disremember his—his—surname,"
+she admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye see him with Lar'bee?" he asked, his big pertinacious eyes on
+her face, expectant of immediate developments.</p>
+
+<p>"I—I ain't never seen <i>him</i>. I—I reckon"—it seemed too terrible
+to contemplate—"I reckon he mus' be—daid." She had never before
+looked upon it in this light, and her heart sank.</p>
+
+<p>"Friend o' Lar'bee's?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon so; he hed read 'bout him."</p>
+
+<p>"Read 'bout him? Whar? In the 'Colb'ry Gazette'?" He lowered his voice
+respectfully, for to him personal mention in the 'Colbury Gazette'
+meant fame.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw. In the Bible, o' course," said Sis, stiffly reproving.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in blank amaze for a moment; then he smote his leg a
+sounding thwack, and burst into a howl of derisive laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye an' Lar'bee hed a pray'r-meetin', did ye? An', my son," he
+continued through his nose with a sanctimonious whine, turning to Joe,
+"did ye lead the saints in supplication, or raise the hyme-chune?"</p>
+
+<p>Joe responded with a fat chuckle of delighted laughter, rejoiced to
+see his Mentor, the professor of many novel and distasteful arts of
+household economy, put to ridicule and out of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>It was only for a moment. She turned acridly against the domestic
+insurgent.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> tuned up arterward. Joe done <i>his</i> quirin' arter
+Lar'bee war gone, an' the wind riz, an' the rain kem down. He wisht an'
+wisht Lar'bee hed bided. He fairly blated fur skeer!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never!" protested Joe in pouting indignation. "<i>I</i> warn't
+'feared o' the wind an' rain, nare one! 'T war the racket them dead
+ones kep' up in the Los' Time mine diggin' thar graves. This hyar house
+air right over the mine."</p>
+
+<p>Ross's great shifting wild eyes widened as he looked from one to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar <i>ain't</i> no dead ones diggin' thar graves!" cried Sis
+didactically. She must needs spend too many lonely hours here for that
+suggestion to be a welcome one. "Them ez dig ain't dead. Dad say jes'
+some boys, he reckon, a-moonshinin' or sech of a night in the Lost Time
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphus Ross rose to his feet. He was elated, confident. He snapped
+his fingers noisily in the air as he took two or three of the sideway
+paces usually preliminary to a clog dance, which accomplishment he
+had acquired by viewing what he termed a "minstrel show." He had
+long suspected Larrabee of moonshining, and here was the <i>locus in
+quo</i>. He had said that Larrabee's trail had seemed to disappear from
+the face of the earth; with what literal reason he had not dreamed.
+Notwithstanding his haste, however, he must needs tarry for a fleer.</p>
+
+<p>"Gran'mammy Taft," he said, leering at the little girl, with her prim,
+antique aspect, "I never thunk ter find ye hobnobbin' with moonshiners."</p>
+
+<p>"Lar'bee ain't no moonshiner," she protested, with swift alarm.</p>
+
+<p>He joyed in her evident flutter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, gran'mammy Taft, ye kin consider yerse'f under arrest fur aidin'
+an' abettin' in moonshinin', ye an' all yer fambly."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ain't no revenuer!" cried Sis, moving back a step, however. "Ye
+ain't 'lowed ter <i>purtend</i> ter be one, nuther. I hearn o' a man in
+Persimmon Cove ez <i>purtended</i> ter be a off'cer o' the law, an' got
+'rested hisse'f. An' I would hev thunk enny-ways ez ye hed hed enough
+o' arrestin' folks fur fun, sence that time ye flung Lar'bee over the
+bluffs, an' nigh kilt him. Ef ye be so sharp set ter 'rest ennybody, go
+find Jack Espey an' 'rest him."</p>
+
+<p>Ross was out of countenance. Nevertheless—"How many j'ints hev her
+tongue got?" he demanded of Joe, with a feint of serious interest.</p>
+
+<p>But Joe had deserted to the enemy. He thought that Sis was in the
+ascendant, and Ross's threat at once angered and terrified him. He
+received with pouting silence the officer's aside, while Sis went on
+triumphantly:—</p>
+
+<p>"Dad say my granny Jiniway air kin somehows ter the high sher'ff's
+wife; an' whenst I go ter Colb'ry nex' week with dad, I be goin' ter
+go ter her house an' ax the high sher'ff ef he 'lows his dep'ties ter
+arrest people fur joke, an' <i>purtend</i> ter be revenue off'cers, an'
+skeer leetle gals by arrestin' 'em, an' 'lowin' he'll take the whole
+fambly fur moonshinin'. My granny Jiniway's third cousin air the high
+sher'ff's wife!"</p>
+
+<p>In the face of this genealogical detail, it was with a somewhat subdued
+spirit that Ross mounted the mare and set forth on his return; for the
+high sheriff was a man with a most attenuated sense of humor, a literal
+interpretation of the duties of his office, and notwithstanding the
+fact that Ross's willingness to ride long distances, in all manner of
+weather, relieved him of this the most irksome of duties to an inert
+temperament, he had begun to look doubtfully upon him, particularly
+since the untoward result of the facetious arrest of the supposed
+Larrabee, and Ross felt that his tenure was not altogether secure. As
+he passed the portal of the Lost Time mine, the thought of his quest
+recurred to his mind, and the important clue which he deemed he had
+obtained from the little girl's conversation. He no longer considered
+it important, for from the rough-hewn portal of the cavern poured forth
+the compressed stream of the divers subterranean currents, gathered
+together and hurled forth in a great spout, and with a plunging force
+that astonished him, remembering as he did the far tamer flow of the
+earlier season. He ascribed the change to the persistent autumn rains
+flooding some watercourse that doubtless pierced the hidden chambers.
+It filled the outlet within a few feet of the summit of the arch. Any
+entrance here was impossible; as for another opening to the mine, he
+looked about him upon the limitless tangled wilderness of wood and
+rock, the shifting beclouding mists, the endless skeins of the rain,
+and he swore between his big front teeth an oath which, despite the
+grotesque humor of its phraseology, had within it all the bitter
+profanity of his baffling disappointment. And in default of aught else
+on which to wreak his anger, he cruelly lashed Taft's mare; and so
+he went down to join the others at Kenniston's quarters amongst the
+shanties of the workmen in the Cove.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIX">XIX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>That night, the rain, beating out its strong staccato rhythm on the old
+clapboards roofing the barn, made scant impression on Jasper Larrabee's
+senses; he slept soundly amongst the great elastic billows of the hay.
+As by degrees the downpour slackened, the comparative silence affected
+his half-dormant consciousness as sound had failed to do. He roused
+slightly from time to time, and presently was broad awake, to hear only
+the melancholy drip from the eaves and the chorus of far-away frogs
+beginning to pipe anew along the pools. He did not welcome his other
+self, that mysterious essence of thought and will that was torn with
+hopes and fed on regrets, and was prone to hold troublous disputations
+with yet another inner self, which on its part was always keen to find
+out every fault, to upbraid each cherished sin, and had an ugly trick
+of unmasking and setting in a strong unflattering light motives which
+might otherwise seem to be above suspicion. The humbler obvious entity
+known as Jasper Larrabee would, he often thought, be happier without so
+definite a development of either of these endowments, his mind or his
+conscience; for thus he learned from their functions to differentiate
+them. When this Jasper Larrabee was well fed, he was hearty and happy.
+The sun shone on him, and he sang till the woods rang. When he went
+down into the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, every strong muscle
+rejoiced in the work, and his steady nerve, which is called courage,
+gave a zest to danger, whether the menace were of the law, or of the
+wild beast in the wilderness, or of the civilized savage amongst his
+own associates. If it had not been for his mind forever asking "Why?"
+and his conscience grimly protesting "Because," what a thriving,
+well-balanced physical organization Jasper Larrabee might have been! He
+knew others who were little more than body, who asked no questions and
+heard no answers; he held them far the happier for it, and he did not
+realize how much the duller. And so he hated the "Why?" and flinched
+from the "Because." And here they were in company, these choice
+spirits, in the suddenly silent midnight, with only the melancholy drip
+at long intervals from the eaves, the vague piping of frogs sounding
+afar off and failing again, and that strange preponderating sense of
+the proximity of the mountains although enshrouded and invisible in
+the mist. The sibilant rustle of the hay was loud in the stillness
+as he shifted his posture. He shifted it often, being anxious and
+restless, for his brace of companions were more censorious even than
+their wont as to that limited cheerful physique which he accounted
+Jasper Larrabee. He had had naught to eat but a few handfuls of
+grapes from the vines that clambered over the gable of the barn, and
+some unpalatable raw eggs found among the hay; and this fact of hunger
+gave a mighty grip to the poignancy of "Because." He had had naught to
+do all the long rainy day but to lie in the hay and look out through
+the crevices of the logs at the queer acorn-like roof of his mother's
+house, that had welcomed so many, and had no place now for him or for
+her. He watched with all the grief of an exile the children coming
+and going, and the gaunt Mrs. Timson wielding an unbridled authority,
+making the most of her usurpations; he heard, with the indignant
+objection that naturally appertains to the heir to the throne, her
+raucous raised voice in objurgation or command. Again and again these
+sounds came from the opaque blankness of the mist; for often the
+clouds obscured the little house altogether, and crowded through the
+crevices of the barn, and shifted back and forth. For the reason of
+the continuous fog he had delayed to inform the officer of the law and
+deliver Espey to him. Doubtless, in the idleness of his solitary day in
+the mine, Espey would be alert and hear an approach, and might escape
+through some aperture of the cavern other than the main entrance; the
+thick mists would then conceal him indubitably, and further his flight
+without the slightest scruple as to responsibility as accessory after
+the fact. Larrabee was waiting for the darkness that he might take
+Espey the more certainly, while his vigilance was relaxed in working at
+the forlorn enterprise of old Haight and his lieutenant "Tawm" in the
+mine. But in waiting Larrabee had fallen asleep, and the iteration of
+the steady rainfall was somnolent in its effects, and the hours drowsed
+by. He knew that it was past midnight before he noted the slant of a
+late-risen moon, golden, lustrous, dreamlike, softly shining through
+the crevices of the logs in one corner of the ramshackle old place.
+The sky was clearing, then. He rose hastily to his feet, and leaned
+out of the window. Clear! It was of a deeply limpid and definite blue,
+with white and gray clouds, moon-illumined, drawing back swiftly from
+vast expanses of this lucid ether all a-sparkle with the whiteness of
+the stars. With the dank earth so dark below, and the dully glamourous
+light of the moon in her last quarter, it seemed to him that he had
+never seen the stars so splendidly white. The next moment a sudden pang
+of suspense, of fear, that was like a bodily throe had wrested away his
+breath. He hardly realized that he had moved; he only knew that he had
+sprung down the rotting rungs of the old ladder and through the barn
+below, because he was standing outside the door upon the ground, gazing
+up, bareheaded, wild-eyed, in a frenzy of doubt, of anxiety, of a sort
+of unreasoning terror, at the skies. For the star—his star—was gone!
+It had vanished! Again and again, with the strong pulse of hope, he
+swept the heavens with eager search. Afterward he thought he remembered
+a dull leaden-hued minute object in the place of that splendid silver
+shining that had made his heart so glad. It had vanished,—its message
+withheld, its mystery unrevealed, like an illusion, like a fagged-out
+enthusiasm, like the futile words of a prayer without the fervor
+of faith. He could not believe it. Again and again he sought a new
+posture, a new hope. He followed its closer neighbors along the steeps
+of the mountain as they journeyed toward the west in the sky above.
+The tint of the heavens was changing presently,—a lighter blue. The
+golden moon grew of a pearl-like lustre. The stars waxed faint. The
+clouds were red. And here was the gray day hard upon him, and in the
+earth naught of value, for in the sky he had lost a star. How strong,
+how resistless of advance, was the riding up of the great sun! Get ye
+away, illusions, and glamours, and dreamers of dreams! Such a definite
+visible world! How full of fixed facts! He saw, as he stood, the
+shanties of the workmen in the Cove, where the mists were hustling off
+in great haste, as if too tenuous, too unsubstantial, too inutile, to
+hold ground in the face of the strong practicalities dawning over the
+horizon. The smoke was curling up from the chimney of Cap'n Lucy's
+cabin, where breakfast was cooking. The cows were at the bars. All the
+woods were lustrous with moisture, and splendidly a-glint with the
+yellow sunbeams striking aslant through them. The distant mountains
+were blue and amethyst and violet and purple,—a rhapsody of color.
+Here and there, as if the rain had painted them, boughs of sumach and
+sourwood were scarlet in the woods; the sweet-gum showed flecks of
+purple leaves, and the hickory had occasional flares of yellow. The
+goldenrod had burst into bloom, and with this seal of the autumnal
+season stamped upon the land came Julia along the road, her bonnet
+hanging on her shoulders, her head bare, her face like spring itself,
+her hands full of flowers that she scattered as she sang. How her fresh
+young voice rang against the turmoil of the current from the Lost Time
+mine, like some sudden burst of joy from out the fretted tides of a
+troubled life! As she tossed the flowers, and glanced over her shoulder
+to see where they fell, Larrabee crossed the log laid from one deeply
+gullied bank to the other side of the road, to serve foot passengers
+when the water was high in wet weather. She paused, and looked at him
+with a frown. The unwonted corrugations in her fair young brow changed
+her inexpressive face almost out of recognition. He stood in silent
+deprecation for a moment. His heart was sore. His life was full of
+trouble of many sorts and degrees. That æsthetic loss, that sense of
+bereavement because of his vanished star, outrankled them all.</p>
+
+<p>Courage is of the nature of an essence; one may not judge how it will
+pull the beam, nor is it dispensed by dry measure. Something seemingly
+inadequate, a breath of wind, a change of mind, or the chilling of the
+fervors of some futile and foolish enthusiasm, and behold the volatile
+element is dispersed through the air. The strain on Larrabee's nerves
+had been great. His sensibilities had waxed tender. He faltered before
+the definite bending of those delicately marked brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye air out betimes, Julia?" he ventured propitiatingly, as she stoutly
+maintained silence. "What be ye a-doin' of with them flowers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sowin' 'em," said Julia instantly. "I expec' 'em ter bloom thar in the
+road ter mo' purpose 'n they ever did afore."</p>
+
+<p>He cast a glance of wonderment at her. But her unfriendly manner, her
+cold eye, disconcerted him afresh, and nullified his surprise at her
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"Air you-uns mad at me down at yer house?" he demanded eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"What fur?" she asked, with a keen, belligerent look that was mightily
+like Cap'n Lucy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout my speakin' so free 'bout Espey, an' Cap'n Lucy not warnin' me
+an' my mother, knowin' him ter be sought fur murder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she cried, with airy causticity. "I hed furgot it."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the covert fleer of this speedy dismissal. But with him pride
+was at a low ebb. He silently looked at her as she held a cardinal
+flower to her red lips, while her long-lashed blue eyes scanned the
+dewy bunch of jewel-weed and mountain snow and wild asters that filled
+her hands. The wind swayed her dark blue skirt as she stood on a great
+fragment of rock beside the running stream. It gave a certain volant
+effect to her pose, her flower-laden hands, her singular beauty;
+she seemed the very genius of the flowering season, its perfect
+personification.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, I'm glad o' that," he said humbly. "I need all my friends, an'
+all the comfort I kin git."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, daunted in a measure by her unresponsiveness. But she was
+always silent, always undemonstrative, and perhaps her manner in this
+instance went for less than its worth.</p>
+
+<p>"Julia," he said, "I hev hed a powerful strange 'sperience lately. An'
+it hev cast me down mightily. Not religious,—though I expected suthin'
+leadin' an' speritual out'n it. I viewed a new star in the sky."</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at the flowers on the soggy road as if she cared for
+no other radiance than their gleam of earthy hue, albeit an evanescent
+glow.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but me viewed it," he went on after a moment of unfruitful
+expectation. "I tried other folks, an' they seen nuthin'. An' by that
+I 'lowed it hed some charge fur me, some leadin'. Stars hev been
+messengers afore this." He interposed this affirmation of precedent
+for proof. His senses were keen. He had not failed to note the ring
+of incredulity in Kenniston's voice. He paused, thinking again of the
+wise men of the East, and the blessed path to the cradled Christ as the
+Star guided them. He sighed deeply as he plucked off the yellow plumes
+of a wayside spray of goldenrod. The fragments floated away on the
+stream, and he drearily lifted his haggard eyes to the broad whiteness
+of the day brightening over all the purple mountains and bronze-green
+valleys; here all miracles exhaled with the mists of the night and the
+evanescence of the stars. The atmosphere of the practical, the prosaic,
+the recognized and thrice-tried forces of nature was paramount.
+Naught seemed to exist that man in his ignorant cognoscence had not
+explored. But he had expected no miracle; he had sought no wonderful
+worldly gifts or graces. True, the will of God is much to know, but
+he had thought that with so signal an intimation a leading might be
+vouchsafed. Had not other men followed a star to Christ? And was there
+naught for him, no little thing for him to do? Did that gracious
+supernal stellular presence shine on him, and him alone, only to amaze,
+to baffle, to dismay him,—to find his life but poorly furnished, and
+to leave it empty?</p>
+
+<p>"I got no leadin' out'n it," he said drearily. "It jes' disappeared
+somehows. I dunno ef ez suddint ez it kem or no, bein' ez several
+nights war rainy and clouded over. It's gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Something in his dreary tone smote upon Julia's preoccupied faculties.
+Whether she harbored rancor against him for Jack Espey's sake, whether
+she resented his criticism of her father, whether she repelled the
+intrusion of the consciousness of any other emotion than the paramount
+emotion which possessed her, and love crowded out and trampled on pity,
+she spoke with a keen fling of satire.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, ef yer star hev petered out, ye hed better go an' get Ad'licia
+ter hearten ye up by tellin' ye ter take notice how many stars thar be
+lef'. Ye'll be lighted full well on occasion."</p>
+
+<p>He flushed at the taunt, but love is of long patience.</p>
+
+<p>"Air ye mad at Ad'licia?" he queried, interested in aught that touched
+Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw—yes"—She hesitated, interested herself. "That is, I can't holp
+bein' mad with the idjit fur bein' <i>sech</i> a idjit."</p>
+
+<p>"How is she a idjit?" demanded Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>"Fur not marryin' Jack Espey whenst she hed the chance. Dad an' Luther
+would hev stood off Ross an' sech cattle, or gin bond fur him an'
+patched up things somehow. Ye know they would. Ef I hed been in her
+place, now, an' ef he hed axed <i>me</i>"—</p>
+
+<p>She paused abruptly, with a sort of appalled recognition of the
+sentiment that animated her. A sudden illumination had broken in upon
+her; her heart throbbed tumultuously with pleasure, or was it pain? For
+she loved Jack Espey; and he—oh, was it true that he loved Adelicia
+still? She hardly heeded or realized her self-betrayal. She did not
+see—so little did she care—the pallid dismay, the heartbreak, on
+Jasper Larrabee's face. He could not deceive himself,—it was too
+patent. He turned away with a bitter sense of resentment, another
+grudge toward Jack Espey for thus slyly and completely supplanting him.
+At that moment his eye fell upon the jagged rock about the entrance of
+the Lost Time mine, and he drew back in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where does all this water come from?" he exclaimed sharply. He
+wondered that he had not marked it before, despite his preoccupation.
+For the flow of the stream was quadrupled, its momentum every instant
+greater. Naught could enter now. The interior must be flooded anew. As
+he gazed at it, wide-eyed and dumfounded, a sudden enlightenment as to
+the phenomenon broke upon him. The blasting which he had heard,—he
+remembered it now; doubtless the concussion had brought down some mass
+of rock or earth, damming an underground current, and forcing its
+waters into the channel of the stream which partially emptied here,
+while the residue backed up and filled the spaces. He thought that
+Espey and the old man and "Tawm" had possibly made good their escape
+before it happened; but if not—and Taft—He remembered how close were
+the ghostly voices when he had last heard the false, cracked tones of
+command ring through the tunnel. Those ill-timbered galleries would
+fall to a certainty. He turned pale at the very thought of a living
+burial in the den of the still-room.</p>
+
+<p>He did not hesitate. Without a word he sprang upon the log, crossed
+the water, and sped away like the wind, leaving Julia gazing in
+astonishment after him. He thought his worst fears were realized, when
+he reached the store of the Lost Time mine. His hasty question elicited
+from the children only the fact of the absence of Taft and Copley. He
+ran down into the cellar, to find the obliteration of the traces of the
+old door, which he recognized only as an added precaution since his
+departure. Doubtless some other method of entering the tunnel had been
+devised. An axe hacking through the chinking served to reveal the ruin
+of the tunnel, and to admit a strong and pervasive odor of gunpowder.</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo Taft's plans were very perfectly calculated and adjusted to
+the probabilities. There had been no rift in his judgment. Nowhere
+could he find fault or flaw in his reasoning. A lucky chance had fired
+the hotel, and freed his hands from the smirch of the firebrand and
+the possible penalties of arson. The moving of the great monument
+of boundary had thrown the only available site for the hotel on the
+Kenniston tract well within Cap'n Lucy's lines when the land was
+processioned, and thus the summer swallow must needs alight elsewhere,
+and the commercial interests of moonshining would thereby be promoted.
+Each detail had fallen out exactly as he had planned. Success seemed
+the essential sequence. Only Espey's frantic fear of arrest had
+precipitated all the untoward events which had advanced parallel after
+parallel, and forced him to his last defenses. And these one might
+think were most sagacious and adequate. The foolish drunken boy,
+whose tongue might work mischief, was within the hour hustled out of
+the country. Every trace of the forbidden vocation was demolished
+beyond the possibility of detection. If Larrabee should seek revenge
+by informing, he could prove naught, not even his own complicity. It
+would seem but the groundless accusation of malice. And Taft had even
+taken time by the forelock by avowing his former illegal practices,
+his prison record, his familiarity with the motives and manœuvres of
+moonshiners, and insidiously casting suspicion on Larrabee, ascribing
+to him an adequate motive for moving the Big Hollow Boulder, in the
+eyes of the law a felony.</p>
+
+<p>No possible flaw in his reasoning from the premises from which
+he argued. He had guarded himself logically, boldly, with great
+perspicacity, from enmity, from revenge. It never for one moment
+occurred to him to devise protection from good will!</p>
+
+<p>Kenniston and Ross, even in the excitement of the emergency, and the
+tumultuous tide of Larrabee's eager explanations when he suddenly burst
+in upon them as they sat smoking together after breakfast, could but
+take heed of the subtler sub-current of significance in his disclosure.
+More than once they exchanged glances charged with a meaning deeper
+than he wot of.</p>
+
+<p>"Thar's a shaft," he cried, "an old air-shaft, a-nigh that thar tunnel!
+Ef ye'll rig up a windlass, or let yer men put me down with a rope,
+I'll find Taft, an' the t'others too, ef they be thar yit."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll drown yourself, or fall, or suffocate with gas," Kenniston said
+tentatively, looking about for his hat, and pausing to cast a keen
+glance at Larrabee.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll resk it—I'll resk it—fur him and Espey too—an' I dunno what
+my mother would do ef old grand-daddy Haight war ter kem ter sech an
+e-end! Oh, I'll resk it! An' Taft, he ain't a bad man when all's said.
+Taft's mighty clever sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he's the worst man I ever saw," said Kenniston, as he flung
+away his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>A call for volunteers and the offer of a reward by Kenniston secured
+no companion to Larrabee in his venture when the workmen looked down
+into the dark shaft, with its crumbling sides, and sound of tumbling
+waters, and chill dank foul breath. They only manifested their good
+will in their alacrity in adjusting and adapting such appliances as
+they could to insure Larrabee's safety as far as possible. Kenniston
+doubted at the time whether he ought to permit the jeopardy; being
+assured, however, that the effort would be made at all events, but
+without the advantage of the heavy cables and pulleys which had been
+used in building the hotel, and which his compliance offered, he
+yielded. Afterward he was disposed to take great credit to himself
+for several devices which facilitated the enterprise, and from his
+knowledge of mechanical resources he doubtless insured its success;
+he bore the honors of the rescue,—which Larrabee at the peril of his
+life achieved,—with all the unblushing effrontery of an officer whose
+command has won a battle.</p>
+
+<p>He was in a glow of enthusiasm for the nonce, and he continued the rôle
+of benefactor with more genuine pleasure than had lately fallen to his
+jaded susceptibility. He placed eighty-seven silver dollars in a worn
+leather bag, a tobacco pouch of one of the workmen, to be given to old
+Haight when he should be sufficiently recovered, with the pious fiction
+that his own money had been found in the shaft. "This will keep the old
+mole from burrowing again," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His abounding good nature was very thorough when once aroused. His
+heart was touched by Espey's forlorn plight, as he lay panting on the
+grass, and the pallor of his young face marked by the dread of life
+that had just succeeded the dread of death.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you make out to let up on Espey, somehow?" he said aside to
+Rodolphus Ross, whose clumsy pranks of delight at the successful
+outcome of this most exciting episode were like the extravagant
+joviality of a gamboling Newfoundland dog, and not unpleasing to his
+interlocutor from their common bond of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Espey?" He paused, turning his lighted dark eyes on Kenniston,
+his peaked hat shading his elevated eyebrows and surprised face. "I
+ain't hyar arter Espey no more. I'm arter the fire-bug, ye know. That
+thar man ez Espey shot in Tanglefoot Cove hev got well o' the pip, or
+the gapes, or whatever the weak-kneed chicken took from the bullet; an'
+this hyar warrant fur arrest hev been kerried round in my pocket till
+it's mighty nigh wore out." He took the ragged paper from his pocket
+and shook out its tatters, and laughed and grimaced in the very face of
+its august authority. "Go on, boy, go on! I wouldn't put the county
+ter charges ter board ye!" he said to Espey.</p>
+
+<p>A supply of whiskey was on hand, for the ostensible purpose of reviving
+the victims of the Lost Time mine, as they were drawn up one by one
+from those treacherous depths, limp and pallid and fainting. But the
+quantity was sufficient to enable the company of rescuers subsequently
+to refresh themselves, and Kenniston genially treated the crowd. Some
+of the men now and then began to coil up the ropes, and again fell to
+discussing the jeopardy and the disastrous possibilities; and much
+hilarity and gratulation prevailed amongst the group in the dewy woods,
+still filled with the slant of the early morning sunshine, when Espey
+slipped away from it. His heart was still sore, as if it had forgotten
+to beat except with a dull throb of pain, unrealizing his change of
+fortune except to sullenly rebel against all the unnecessary woe that
+had fallen to his lot. As he went along the road, he scarcely noted a
+flower here and there on the soggy ground. The dash and fret of the
+stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine caught his attention. He
+marked its added volume, and, with his familiarity with the terrible
+subterranean chambers, he could picture to himself the obstacles
+which lay in its course, and which the blasting from the tunnel or
+the still-room had brought down. He trembled and grew cold with the
+thought of his jeopardy. He mechanically cursed anew Taft's name, as he
+had done again and again since his voice, his "partin' compliments,"
+had been audible before the charge in the tunnel had been fired. He
+shuddered again as he recalled the sound of the water backing up ever
+higher and higher through those black dungeons, lisping and hissing
+its insidious threat through all the long night. How woeful it had
+been—with the wild terror of his companions to contemplate, till
+he was as wild with the terror of them as of his own fate—to look
+momently to meet death here, without a soul on earth to truly care,
+to anguish for him as he was anguished—He paused, the tenor of his
+thought breaking abruptly. Had he seen it before, or had he only
+fancied that cardinal flower lying in the sun on the gray rock by the
+water? Was it not thus that he should know that Julia had passed and
+had thought of him,—was not this their covenant? He doubtfully picked
+up the delicate spray—another; still, it might be an accident, a
+coincidence. A cluster of jewel-weeds lay caught in the bark of the log
+that served as footbridge, and swayed and glowed in the sun; it was in
+his hand when he reached the further bank. As far as one might hope to
+command a glimpse from the mine, the fragile tokens were scattered.
+They were full of dew; their breath allured him. They trembled as with
+some shy, timorous thought in his trembling hand. The color had come
+into his face; a light was in his eyes; his tired, troubled pulses were
+beating fast, strong, with a new rhythm. And as Julia, still loitering
+homeward, her head bare, her hands empty, heard a footstep behind her
+and turned, she saw him, all her garnered blossoms in his grasp, and
+all his heart in his eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Kenniston, still elated, but somewhat tired out with the morning's
+excitements, upon reaching his quarters among the workmen's shanties,
+found Cap'n Lucy there awaiting an audience, and all unaware of the
+progress of events of so much moment elsewhere to-day. A rousing
+"cock-a-doodle-doo" might be a fair summary of Cap'n Lucy's discourse.
+His perplexities had vanished with the tangled twists of the rain, and
+he set forth boldly and with much detail his discovery of the moving of
+the boulder, the corner monument of boundary, his anxiety and doubt as
+to his proper course, and his realization that the surveyor's line had
+thrown much land which he knew was Kenniston's within his own domain.</p>
+
+<p>A man of tact was Cap'n Lucy in his own way. He so glossed over his
+suspicions of Kenniston that albeit the latter detected them rather
+through the correlated circumstances than through the veneer of that
+section of his mind which it pleased Cap'n Lucy to present, he did not
+look upon them seriously. He was a stranger; the old man was densely
+ignorant, and his experience of life and comparative knowledge of men
+were limited indeed; and in truth it was apparently impossible to
+deduce from the facts any other interest than Kenniston's to be served
+by the moving of the boulder. Thus he silently forgave Cap'n Lucy for
+his suspected suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>And Cap'n Lucy was heartily ashamed of them now.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it air moved bodaciously—Big Hollow Boulder—corner
+mark—monimint o' boundary; an' now what air ye an' me goin' ter do
+'bout that thar dad-burned line what's gone an' coiled itself like the
+plumb old Scorpion o' the Pit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Procession the land again, and prosecute the man who moved the
+boulder," said Kenniston coolly.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed justice had hardily overtaken Lorenzo Taft, for Kenniston's
+unwonted leniency did not hold out to include his offending. It seemed
+to him a very pretty play of cause and effect that so close upon the
+heels of Taft's accusations of Larrabee, and his subtle and successful
+hoodwinking of the practiced man of business, who made a point of
+knowing men, Taft should be hurrying to Colbury and the county jail,
+under the escort of the jubilant Rodolphus Ross and a posse of two
+or three stout fellows, to answer these very charges of arson and of
+feloniously moving a corner monument of boundary,—all because of
+Larrabee's voluntarily putting his life in jeopardy for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Kenniston listened mildly enough to Adelicia's earnest
+intercessions for Taft that evening, when he sat as of yore with the
+family circle around Cap'n Lucy's fireside; he seemed to find a
+certain fascination in the incongruities of her ingenious palliations
+and extenuations of his crime.</p>
+
+<p>"He moughtn't hev been acquainted with the boulder ez a monimint o'
+boundary," she urged; and when the fallacy of this was demonstrated,
+"He mought hev been sorry an' wanted to put it back, but it war too
+heavy an' the hill war too high."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Kenniston burst into satiric laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"He's sorry enough now, I'll warrant you; and he'll be sorrier still
+before I'm through with him."</p>
+
+<p>But although Adelicia's expertness in excuses for other people failed
+in this instance, Kenniston's purposes were frustrated by a wholesale
+jail delivery which occurred at Colbury shortly after, and Taft was
+among the jail-birds who took flight thence. He was never heard of
+again in the Cove. The thought of him at large and at enmity served to
+postpone the building of the hotel for a time. The plans for a great
+public edifice in Bretonville absorbed Kenniston in the immediate
+future, and finally he grew indifferent to the project of the mountain
+resort, and it was definitely abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Larrabee profited by Kenniston's advice, and availed himself of the
+"amnesty" proffered by the government to moonshiners about that time,
+and thenceforward the still knew him no more. The manufacture of
+"brush whiskey" was never resumed at the Lost Time mine. The store
+there became truly a centre of barter under the ministrations of old
+Copley and the power behind the throne, his niece, Cornelia Taft, who
+developed much of her father's decision and definiteness and shrewdness
+of character as she grew older, always tempered by Mrs. Jiniway's
+precepts, to which she rigidly adhered. She received much countenance,
+and guidance too, in these early years, from Adelicia, who persisted
+in following the bent of her own lenient inclination toward others,
+making the most of their good qualities and light of their foibles. It
+was a certain solace in the bitter loss of other illusions for which
+she was less charitable. She never could be brought to believe that
+Julia had not intentionally wiled her lover's heart away from her. It
+was a relief when these strained relations were at an end, when Julia
+and Espey were married, in defiance of Cap'n Lucy's opposition, and had
+gone to Tanglefoot Cove. Cap'n Lucy argued their much-mooted points of
+difference with Adelicia less than before, and deferred in silence to
+her. It was only when, in the winter evenings, Jasper Larrabee was wont
+to come and read aloud, as in the old days, that Cap'n Lucy rose to
+his normal temperature of contradiction, and controverted sundry hard
+sayings difficult to be incorporated in the life of a willful man, and
+contemned Jasper Larrabee's learning, and accused him of ignorantly
+perverting the Scriptures. Then it was that Adelicia's talents of
+optimism became transcendently apparent. She developed a wonderful
+craft of interpretation. Leaning over one arm of Cap'n Lucy's chair,
+while Jasper Larrabee leaned over the other with his book and page to
+show,—Cap'n Lucy, flustered and red-faced, acrid and belligerent,
+vociferating between them,—Adelicia would demonstrate that this
+doubtless meant the other, or it was plain to see that the reference
+was not general, thus including Cap'n Lucy, but was made directly to
+the character under discussion; whereby Cap'n Lucy, perceiving that no
+added burden of meekness or other Christian grace was to be laid upon
+him as essential to salvation, would permit himself to be pacified. And
+Adelicia's gifts grew by much exercise. Even Cap'n Lucy, always acute,
+became reluctantly aware of this, in some sort. "Ad'licia hav got so
+durned smart she kin mighty nigh explain away the devil," he fretted,
+unaware that this feat had already been accomplished by other and more
+pretentious theologians than Adelicia. The gossips said, in the Cove,
+that it was in the process of trying to "'square' Cap'n Lucy to the
+Scriptur's, or ter square the Scriptur's ter Cap'n Lucy," that Adelicia
+and Jasper fell in love with each other. Certain it is the days came
+in which neither had aught to regret, and Adelicia's optimism was
+triumphantly justified.</p>
+
+<p>Even his vanished star came to be a tender memory to Larrabee rather
+than a poignant bereavement. Sometimes thinking of that dread descent
+into the crumbling old shaft of the Lost Time mine, with the chill
+sound of the tumbling waters below, the thick foul air in his every
+breath, the desperate straining of the ropes that so shook his nerves,
+the fragments of rock falling about his head, and his heart fairly
+failing him for fear, he deemed he had found the "leading" he had asked
+and had followed it. For since he could do naught for Christ, whose
+humble humanity is merged in the majesty of the great King of heaven,
+he might do somewhat for man whom He died to save.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know that his star remained for a time a faint telescopic
+object and interested the speculation of astronomers, whose outlook
+from their wisdom was also limited as his from his ignorance. They
+merely accounted it one of those mysterious, unwonted apparitions, a
+stranger to all the astral hierarchy, prettily called "guest-stars"
+in the ancient Chinese records, and they knew after a time that the
+"Ke-sing dissolved." They did not dream that this celestial visitant
+could be charged with a moral mission; for in all the discoveries
+and advances of science, what mystic lens might serve to reveal the
+amaranthine wreath and the nearing pinion?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="ph2">BOOKS BY</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">"Charles Egbert Craddock."</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">(MARY N. MURFREE.)</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph2">IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS.<br>
+Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">DOWN THE RAVINE.<br>
+For Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.<br>
+A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel.<br>
+16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS.<br>
+For Young People. 16mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE.<br>
+A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT.<br>
+A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">HIS VANISHED STAR.<br>
+A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,<br>
+<span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span>.</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75678 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #75678 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75678)