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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls
+       1895
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Illustrator: A. B. Frost
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23631]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOONSHINERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MOONSHINERS AT HOHO-HEBEE FALLS
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1895
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+If the mission of the little school-house in Holly Cove was to impress
+upon the youthful mind a comprehension and appreciation of the eternal
+verities of nature, its site could hardly have been better chosen. All
+along the eastern horizon deployed the endless files of the Great Smoky
+Mountains--blue and sunlit, with now and again the apparition of an
+unfamiliar peak, hovering like a straggler in the far-distant rear,
+and made visible for the nonce by some exceptional clarification of the
+atmosphere; or lowering, gray, stern; or with ranks of clouds hanging on
+their flanks, while all the artillery of heaven whirled about them, and
+the whole world quaked beneath the flash and roar of its volleys. The
+seasons successively painted the great landscape--spring, with its
+timorous touch, its illumined haze, its tender, tentative green and gray
+and yellow; summer, with its flush of completion, its deep, luscious,
+definite verdure, and the golden richness of fruition; autumn, with
+a full brush and all chromatic splendors; winter, in melancholy sepia
+tones, black and brown and many sad variations of the pallors of white.
+So high was the little structure on the side of a transverse ridge that
+it commanded a vast field of sky above the wooded ranges; and in the
+immediate foreground, down between the slopes which were cleft to
+the heart, was the river, resplendent with the reflected moods of the
+heavens. In this deep gorge the winds and the pines chanted like a Greek
+chorus; the waves continuously murmured an intricate rune, as if conning
+it by frequent repetition; a bird would call out from the upper air some
+joyous apothegm in a language which no creature of the earth has learned
+enough of happiness to translate.
+
+But the precepts which prevailed in the little school-house were to the
+effect that rivers, except as they flowed as they listed to confusing
+points of the compass, rising among names difficult to remember, and
+emptying into the least anticipated body of water, were chiefly to be
+avoided for their proclivity to drown small boys intent on swimming or
+angling. Mountains, aside from the desirability of their recognition as
+forming one of the divisions of land somewhat easily distinguishable
+by the more erudite youth from plains, valleys, and capes, were full
+of crags and chasms, rattlesnakes and vegetable poisons, and a further
+familiarity with them was liable to result in the total loss of the
+adventurous--to see friends, family, and home no more.
+
+These dicta, promulgated from the professorial chair, served to keep
+the small body of callow humanity, with whose instruction Abner Sage was
+intrusted by the State, well within call and out of harm's way during
+the short recesses, while under his guidance they toddled along the
+rough road that leads up the steeps to knowledge. But one there was
+who either bore a charmed life or possessed an unequalled craft in
+successfully defying danger; who fished and swam with impunity; who was
+ragged and torn from much climbing of crags; whose freckled face bore
+frequent red tokens of an indiscriminate sampling of berries. It is too
+much to say that Abner Sage would have been glad to have his warnings
+made terrible by some bodily disaster to the juvenile dare-devil of the
+school, but Leander Yerby's disobedient incredulity as to the terrors
+that menaced him, and his triumphant immunity, fostered a certain grudge
+against him. Covert though it was, unrecognized even by Sage himself,
+it was very definitely apparent to Tyler Sudley when sometimes, often,
+indeed, on his way home from hunting, he would pause at the school-house
+window, pulling open the shutter from the outside, and gravely watch his
+protege, who stood spelling at the head of the class.
+
+For Leander Yerby's exploits were not altogether those of a physical
+prowess. He was a mighty wrestler with the multiplication table. He
+had met and overthrown the nine line in single-handed combat. He had
+attained unto some interesting knowledge of the earth on which he lived,
+and could fluently bound countries with neatness and precision, and was
+on terms of intimacy with sundry seas, volcanoes, islands, and other
+sizable objects. The glib certainty of his contemptuous familiarity with
+the alphabet and its untoward combinations, as he flung off words
+in four syllables in his impudent chirping treble, seemed something
+uncanny, almost appalling, to Tyler Sudley, who could not have done the
+like to save his stalwart life. He would stare dumfounded at the erudite
+personage at the head of the class; Leander's bare feet were always
+carefully adjusted to a crack between the puncheons of the floor,
+literally "toeing the mark "; his broad trousers, frayed out liberally
+at the hem, revealed his skinny and scarred little ankles, for
+his out-door adventures were not without a record upon the more
+impressionable portions of his anatomy; his waistband was drawn high up
+under his shoulder-blades and his ribs, and girt over the shoulders of
+his unbleached cotton shirt by braces, which all his learning did not
+prevent him from calling "galluses"; his cut, scratched, calloused
+hands were held stiffly down at the side seams in his nether garments in
+strict accordance with the regulations. But rules could not control the
+twinkle in his big blue eyes, the mingled effrontery and affection on
+his freckled face as he perceived the on-looking visitor, nor hinder the
+wink, the swiftly thrust-out tongue, as swiftly withdrawn, the egregious
+display of two rows of dishevelled jagged squirrel teeth, when once
+more, with an offhand toss of his tangled brown hair, he nimbly spelled
+a long twisted-tailed word, and leered capably at the grave intent
+face framed in the window. "Why, Abner!" Tyler Sudley would break out,
+addressing the teacher, all unmindful of scholastic etiquette, a flush
+of pleasure rising to his swarthy cheek as he thrust back his wide black
+hat on his long dark hair and turned his candid gray eyes, all aglow,
+upon the cadaverous, ascetic preceptor, "ain't Lee-yander a-gittin' on
+powerful, _powerful_ fas' with his book?"
+
+"Not in enny ways so special," Sage would reply in cavalier
+discouragement, his disaffected gaze resting upon the champion scholar,
+who stood elated, confident, needing no commendation to assure him of
+his pre-eminence; "but he air disobejient, an' turr'ble, turr'ble bad."
+
+The nonchalance with which Leander Yerby hearkened to this criticism
+intimated a persuasion that there were many obedient people in this
+world, but few who could so disport themselves in the intricacies of the
+English language; and Sudley, as he plodded homeward with his rifle on
+his shoulder, his dog running on in advance, and Leander pattering
+along behind, was often moved to add the weight of his admonition to the
+teacher's reproof.
+
+"Lee-yander," he would gently drawl, "ye mustn't be so bad, honey; ye
+_mustn't_ be so turr'ble bad."
+
+"Naw, ma'am, I won't," Leander would cheerily pipe out, and so the
+procession would wend its way along.
+
+For he still confused the gender in titles of respect, and from force of
+habit he continued to do so in addressing Tyler Sudley for many a year
+after he had learned better.
+
+These lapses were pathetic rather than ridiculous in the hunter's ears.
+It was he who had taught Leander every observance of verbal humility
+toward his wife, in the forlorn hope of propitiating her in the interest
+of the child, who, however, with his quick understanding that the
+words sought to do honor and express respect, had of his own accord
+transferred them to his one true friend in the household. The only
+friend he had in the world, Sudley often felt, with a sigh over the
+happy child's forlorn estate. And, with the morbid sensitiveness
+peculiar to a tender conscience, he winced under the knowledge that it
+was he who, through wrong-headedness or wrongheartedness, had contrived
+to make all the world besides the boy's enemy. Both wrongheaded and
+wronghearted he was, he sometimes told himself. For even now it still
+seemed to him that he had not judged amiss, that only the perversity of
+fate had thwarted him. Was it so fantastically improbable, so hopeless
+a solace that he had planned, that he should have thought his wife might
+take comfort for the death of their own child in making for its sake a
+home for another, orphaned, forlorn, a burden, and a glad riddance to
+those into whose grudging charge it had been thrown? This bounty of hope
+and affection and comfort had seemed to him a free gift from the dead
+baby's hands, who had no need of it since coming into its infinite
+heritage of immortality, to the living waif, to whom it was like life
+itself, since it held all the essential values of existence. The idea
+smote him like an inspiration. He had ridden' twenty miles in a snowy
+night to beg the unwelcome mite from the custody of its father's
+half-brothers, who were on the eve of moving to a neighboring county
+with all their kin and belongings.
+
+Tyler Sudley was a slow man, and tenacious of impressions. He could
+remember every detail of the events as they had happened--the
+palpable surprise, the moment of hesitation, the feint of denial which
+successively ensued on his arrival. It mattered not what the season or
+the hour--he could behold at will the wintry dawn, the deserted cabin,
+the glow of embers dying on the hearth within; the white-covered
+wagon slowly a-creak along the frozen road beneath the gaunt, bare,
+overhanging trees, the pots and pans as they swung at the rear, the
+bucket for water swaying beneath, the mounted men beside it, the few
+head of swine and cattle driven before them. Years had passed, but he
+could feel anew the vague stir of the living bundle which he held on the
+pommel of his saddle, the sudden twist it gave to bring its inquiring,
+apprehensive eyes, so large in its thin, lank-jawed, piteous little
+countenance, to bear on his face, as if it understood its transfer of
+custody, and trembled lest a worse thing befall it. One of the women
+stopped the wagon and ran back to pin about its neck an additional
+wrapping, an old red-flannel petticoat, lest it should suffer in its
+long, cold ride. His heart glowed with vicarious gratitude for her
+forethought, and he shook her hand warmly and wished her well, and hoped
+that she might prosper in her new home, and stood still to watch the
+white wagon out of sight in the avenue of the snow-laden trees, above
+which the moon was visible, a-journeying too, swinging down the western
+sky.
+
+Laurelia Sudley sat in stunned amazement when, half-frozen, but
+triumphant and flushed and full of his story, he burst into the warm
+home atmosphere, and put the animated bundle down upon the hearth-stone
+in front of the glowing fire. For one moment she met its forlorn gaze
+out of its peaked and pinched little face with a vague hesitation in her
+own worn, tremulous, sorrow-stricken eyes. Then she burst into a tumult
+of tears, upbraiding her husband that he could think that another child
+could take the place of her dead child--all the dearer because it was
+dead; that she could play the traitor to its memory and forget her
+sacred grief; that she could do aught as long as she should live but
+sit her down to bewail her loss, every tear a tribute, every pang its
+inalienable right, her whole smitten existence a testimony to her love.
+It was in vain that he expostulated. The idea of substitution had
+never entered his mind. But he was ignorant, and clumsy of speech, and
+unaccustomed to analyze his motives. He could not put into words his
+feeling that to do for the welfare of this orphaned and unwelcome little
+creature all that they would have done for their own was in some sort a
+memorial to him, and brought them nearer to him--that she might find in
+it a satisfaction, an occupation--that it might serve to fill her empty
+life, her empty arms.
+
+But no! She thought, and the neighbors thought, and after a time Tyler
+Sudley came to think also, that he had failed in the essential duty
+to the dead--that of affectionate remembrance; that he was recreant,
+strangely callous. They all said that he had seemed to esteem one baby
+as good as another, and that he was surprised that his wife was not
+consoled for the loss of her own child because he took it into his head
+to go and toll off the Yerby baby from his father's half-brothers "ez
+war movin' away an' war glad enough ter get rid o' one head o' human
+stock ter kerry, though, _bein human_, they oughter been ashamed ter gin
+him away like a puppy-dog, or an extry cat, all hands consarned."
+
+From the standpoint she had taken Laurelia had never wavered. It was
+an added and a continual reproach to her husband that all the labor and
+care of the ill-advised acquisition fell to her share. She it was who
+must feed and clothe and tend the gaunt little usurper; he needs must
+be accorded all the infantile prerogatives, and he exacted much time and
+attention. Despite the grudging spirit in which her care was given she
+failed in no essential, and presently the interloper was no longer gaunt
+or pallid or apprehensive, but grew pink and cherubic of build, and
+arrogant of mind. He had no sensitive sub-current of suspicion as to his
+welcome; he filled the house with his gay babbling, and if no maternal
+chirpings encouraged the development of his ideas and his powers of
+speech, his cheerful spirits seemed strong enough to thrive on their own
+stalwart endowments. His hair began to curl, and a neighbor, remarking
+on it to Laurelia, and forgetting for the moment his parentage, said,
+in admiring glee, twining the soft tendrils over her finger, that Mrs.
+Sudley had never before had a child so well-favored as this one. From
+this time forth was infused a certain rancor into his foster-mother's
+spirit toward him. Her sense of martyrdom was complete when another
+infant was born and died, leaving her bereaved once more to watch this
+stranger grow up in her house, strong and hearty, and handsomer than any
+child of hers had been.
+
+The mountain gossips had their own estimate of her attitude.
+
+"I ain't denyin' but what she hed nat'ral feelin' fur her own chil'ren,
+bein' dead," said the dame who had made the unfortunate remark about
+the curling hair, "but Laurelia Sudley war always a contrary-minded,
+lackadaisical kind o' gal afore she war married, sorter set in
+opposition, an' now ez she ain't purty like she useter was, through
+cryin' her eyes out, an' gittin' sallow-complected an' bony, I kin
+notice her contrariousness more. Ef Tyler hedn't brung that chile
+home, like ez not she'd hev sot her heart on borryin' one herself
+from somebody. Lee-yander ain't in nowise abused, ez I kin see--ain't
+acquainted with the rod, like the Bible say he oughter be, an' ennybody
+kin see ez Laurelia don't like the name he gin her, yit she puts up with
+it. She larnt him ter call Ty 'Cap'n,' bein' she's sorter proud of it,
+'kase Ty war a cap'n of a critter company in the war: 'twarn't sech a
+mighty matter nohow; he jes got ter be cap'n through the other off'cers
+bein' killed off. An' the leetle boy got it twisted somehows, an' calls
+_her_ 'Cap'n 'an' Ty 'Neighbor,' from hearin' old man Jeemes, ez comes
+in constant, givin' him that old-fashioned name. 'Cap'n' 'bout fits
+Laurelia, though, an' that's a fac'."
+
+Laurelia's melancholy ascendency in the household was very complete. It
+was characterized by no turbulence, no rages, no long-drawn argument
+or objurgation; it expressed itself only in a settled spirit of
+disaffection, a pervasive suggestion of martyrdom, silence or sighs, or
+sometimes a depressing singing of hymn tunes. For her husband had long
+ago ceased to remonstrate, or to seek to justify himself. It was with
+a spirit of making amends that he hastened to concede every point of
+question, to defer to her preference in all matters, and Lauretta's sway
+grew more and more absolute as the years wore on. Leander Yerby could
+remember no other surroundings than the ascetic atmosphere of his home.
+It had done naught apparently to quell the innate cheerfulness of his
+spirit. He evidently took note, however, of the different standpoint
+of the "Captain" and his "Neighbor," for although he was instant in the
+little manifestations of respect toward her which he had been taught,
+his childish craft could not conceal their spuriousness.
+
+"That thar boy treats me ez ef I war a plumb idjit," Laurelia said one
+day, moved to her infrequent anger. "Tells me, 'Yes, ma'am, cap'n,'
+an' 'Naw, ma'am, cap'n,' jes ter quiet me--like folks useter do ter old
+Ed'ard Green, ez war in his dotage--an' then goes along an' does the
+very thing I tell him not ter do."
+
+Sudley looked up as he sat smoking his pipe by the fire, a shade of
+constraint in his manner, and a contraction of anxiety in his slow, dark
+eyes, never quite absent when she spoke to him aside of Leander.
+
+She paused, setting her gaunt arms akimbo, and wearing the manner of
+one whose kindly patience is beyond limit abused. "Kems in hyar, he do,
+a'totin' a fiddle. An' I says, 'Lee-yander Yerby, don't ye know that
+thar thing's the devil's snare?' 'N'aw, ma'am, cap'n,' he says, grinnin'
+like a imp; 'it's _my_ snare, fur I hev bought it from Peter Teazely
+fur two rabbits what I cotch in my trap, an' my big red rooster, an' a
+bag o' seed pop-corn, an' the only hat I hev got in the worl'. An' with
+that the consarn gin sech a yawp, it plumb went through my haid, An'
+then the critter jes tuk ter a-bowin' it back an' forth, a-playin' 'The
+Chicken in the Bread-trough' like demented, a-dancin' off on fust one
+foot an' then on t'other till the puncheons shuck. An' I druv him out
+the house. I won't stan' none o' Satan's devices hyar! I tole him he
+couldn't fetch that fiddle hyar whenst he kems home ter-night, an' I be
+a-goin' ter make him a sun-bonnet or a nightcap ter wear stiddier his
+hat that he traded off."
+
+She paused.
+
+Her husband had risen, the glow of his pipe fading in his unheeding
+hand, his excited eyes fixed upon her. "Laurely," he exclaimed, "ye
+ain't meanin' ez that thar leetle critter could play a chune fust off on
+a fiddle 'thout no larnin'!"
+
+She nodded her head in reluctant admission.
+
+He opened his mouth once or twice, emitting no sound. She saw how
+his elation, his spirit of commendation, his pride, set at naught her
+displeasure, albeit in self-defence, perchance, he dared not say a
+word. With an eye alight and an absorbed face, he laid his pipe on the
+mantel-piece, and silently took his way out of the house in search of
+the youthful musician.
+
+Easily found! The racked and tortured echoes were all aquake within
+half a mile of the spot where, bareheaded, heedless of the threatened
+ignominy alike of sun-bonnet or nightcap, Leander sat in the flickering
+sunshine and shadow upon a rock beside the spring, and blissfully
+experimented with all the capacities of catgut to produce sound.
+
+"Listen, Neighbor!" he cried out, descrying Tyler Sudley, who, indeed,
+could do naught else--"_listen!_ Ye won't hear much better fiddlin' this
+side o' kingdom come!" And with glad assurance he capered up and down,
+the bow elongating the sound to a cadence of frenzied glee, as his arms
+sought to accommodate the nimbler motions of his legs.
+
+Thus it was the mountaineers later said that Leander fell into bad
+company. For, the fiddle being forbidden in the sober Laurelia's house,
+he must needs go elsewhere to show his gift and his growing skill,
+and he found a welcome fast enough. Before he had advanced beyond his
+stripling youth, his untutored facility had gained a rude mastery over
+the instrument; he played with a sort of fascination and spontaneity
+that endeared his art to his uncritical audiences, and his endowment was
+held as something wonderful. And now it was that Laure-lia, hearing
+him, far away in the open air, play once a plaintive, melodic strain,
+fugue-like with the elfin echoes, felt a strange soothing in the sound,
+found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and
+assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said
+she "couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter by them ez hedn't
+larned, but ter play saaft an' slow an' solemn, and no dancin' chune,
+no frolic song--she warn't set agin that at all." And she desired of
+Leander a repetition of this sunset motive that evening when he had come
+home late, and she discovered him hiding the obnoxious instrument
+under the porch. But in vain. He did not remember it. It was some vague
+impulse, as unconsciously voiced as the dreaming bird's song in the
+sudden half-awake intervals of the night. Over and again, as he stood by
+the porch, the violin in his arms, he touched the strings tentatively,
+as if, perchance, being so alive, they might of their own motion recall
+the strain that had so lately thrilled along them:
+
+He had grown tall and slender. He wore boots to his knees now, and
+pridefully carried a "shoot-in'-iron" in one of the long legs--to his
+great discomfort. The freckles of his early days were merged into the
+warm uniform tint of his tanned complexion. His brown hair still
+curled; his shirt-collar fell away from his throat, round and full and
+white--the singer's throat--as he threw his head backward and cast his
+large roving eyes searchingly along the sky, as if the missing strain
+had wings.
+
+The inspiration returned no more, and Laurelia experienced a sense of
+loss. "Some time, Lee-yander, ef ye war ter kem acrost that chune agin,
+try ter set it in yer remembrance, an' play it whenst ye kem home," she
+said, wistfully, at last, as if this errant melody were afloat somewhere
+in the vague realms of sound, where one native to those haunts might
+hope to encounter it anew.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, cap'n, I will," he said, with his facile assent. But his
+tone expressed slight intention, and his indifference bespoke a too
+great wealth of "chunes"; he could feel no lack in some unremembered
+combination, sport of the moment, when another strain would come at
+will, as sweet perchance, and new.
+
+She winced as from undeserved reproach when presently Leander's
+proclivities for the society of the gay young blades about the
+countryside, sometimes reputed "evil men," were attributed to this exile
+of the violin from the hearth-stone. She roused herself to disputation,
+to indignant repudiation.
+
+"They talk ez ef it war _me_ ez led the drinkin', an' the gamin', an'
+the dancing and sech, ez goes on in the Cove, 'kase whenst Lee-yander
+war about fryin' size I wouldn't abide ter hev him a-sawin' away on the
+fiddle in the house enough ter make me deef fur life. At fust the racket
+of it even skeered Towse so he wouldn't come out from under the
+house fur two days an' better; he jes sot under thar an' growled, an'
+shivered, an' showed his teeth ef enny-body spoke ter him. Nobody don't
+like Lee-yan-der's performin' better'n I do whenst he plays them saaft,
+slippin'-away, slow medjures, ez sound plumb religious--ef 'twarn't a
+sin ter say so. Naw, sir, ef ennybody hev sot Lee-yander on ter evil
+ways 'twarn't me. My conscience be clear."
+
+Nevertheless she was grievously ill at ease when one day there rode up
+to the fence a tall, gaunt, ill-favored man, whose long, lean, sallow
+countenance, of a Pharisaic cast, was vaguely familiar to her, as one
+recognizes real lineaments in the contortions of a caricature or the
+bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence
+she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path
+with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an
+unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight
+an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how
+time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the
+secret sentiment had been chiselled into the face in the betrayals of
+the sculpture of fifteen years.
+
+"Nehemiah Yerby!" she exclaimed. "I would hev knowed ye in the happy
+land o' Canaan."
+
+"Let's pray we may all meet thar, Sister Sudley," he responded. "Let's
+pray that the good time may find none of us unprofitable servants."
+
+Mrs. Sudley experienced a sudden recoil. Not that she did not echo his
+wish, but somehow his manner savored of an exclusive arrogation of piety
+and a suggestion of reproach.
+
+"That's my prayer," she retorted, aggressively. "Day an' night, that's
+my prayer."
+
+"Yes'm, fur us an' our households, Sister Sudley--we mus' think o' them
+c'mitted ter our charge."
+
+She strove to fling off the sense of guilt that oppressed her, the
+mental attitude of arraignment. He was a young man when he journeyed
+away in that snowy dawn. She did not know what changes had come in his
+experience. Perchance his effervescent piety was only a habit of speech,
+and had no significance as far as she was concerned. The suspicion,
+however, tamed her in some sort. She attempted no retort. With a
+mechanical, reluctant smile, ill adjusted to her sorrow-lined face, she
+made an effort to assume that the greeting had been but the conventional
+phrasings of the day. "Kem in, kem in, Nehemiah; Tyler will be glad
+ter see ye, an' I reckon ye will be powerful interested ter view how
+Lee-yander hev growed an' prospered."
+
+She felt as if she were in some terrible dream as she beheld him slowly
+wag his head from side to side. He had followed her into the large main
+room of the cabin, and had laid his saddle-bags down by the side of the
+chair in which he had seated himself, his elbows on his knees, his hands
+held out to the flickering blaze in the deep chimney-place, his eyes
+significantly narrowing as he gazed upon it.
+
+"Naw, Sister Sudley," he wagged his head more mournfully still. "I kin
+but grieve ter hear how my nevy Lee-yander hev 'prospered,' ez ye call
+it, an' I be s'prised ye should gin it such a name. Oh-h-h, Sister
+Sudley!" in prolonged and dreary vocative, "I 'lowed ye war a
+godly woman. I knowed yer name 'mongst the church-goers an' the
+church-members." A faint flush sprang into her delicate faded cheek;
+a halo encircled this repute of sanctity; she felt with quivering
+premonition that it was about to be urged as a testimony against her.
+"Elsewise I wouldn't hev gin my cornsent ter hev lef the leetle lam',
+Lee-yander, in yer fold. Precious, precious leetle lam'!"
+
+Poor Laurelia! Were it not that she had a sense of fault under the
+scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although
+she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him
+esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better
+fight in her own interest. Why she did not renounce the true culprit
+as one on whom all godly teachings were wasted, and, adopting the
+indisputable vantage-ground of heredity, carry the war into the enemy's
+country, ascribing Leander's shortcomings to his Yerby blood, and with
+stern and superior joy proclaiming that he was neither kith nor kin of
+hers, she wondered afterward, for this valid ground of defence did not
+occur to her then. In these long mourning years she had grown dull; her
+mental processes were either a sad introspection or reminiscence. Now
+she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of
+care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and
+mended--ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and
+his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont
+to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this--the
+lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential--surged
+over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering.
+
+"'Precious leetle lam','" she repeated, scornfully. "Precious he mus'
+hev been! Fur when ye lef him he hedn't a whole gyarmint ter his back,
+an' none but them that kivered him."
+
+Nehemiah Yerby changed color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he
+was skilled in the more aesthetic methods of argument.
+
+"We war pore--mighty pore indeed, Sister Sudley."
+
+Now, consciously in the wrong, Sister Sudley, with true feminine
+inconsistency, felt better. She retorted with bravado.
+
+"Needle an' thread ain't 'spensive nowhar ez I knows on, an' the
+gov'mint hev sot no tax on saaft home-made soap, so far ez hearn from."
+
+She briskly placed her chair, a rude rocker, the seat formed of a
+taut-stretched piece of ox-hide, beside the fire, and took up her
+knitting. A sock for Leander it was--one of many of all sizes. She
+remembered the first that she had measured for the bare pink toes which
+he had brought there, forlorn candidates for the comfortable integuments
+in which they were presently encased, and how she had morbidly felt that
+every stitch she took was a renunciation of her own children, since a
+stranger was honored in their place. The tears came into her eyes. It
+was only this afternoon that she had experienced a pang of self-reproach
+to realize how near happiness she was--as near as her temperament could
+approach. But somehow the air was so soft; she could see from where she
+sat how the white velvet buds of the aspen-trees in the dooryard had
+lengthened into long, cream-tinted, furry tassels; the maples on the
+mountain-side lifted their red flowering boughs against the delicate
+blue sky; the grass was so green; the golden candlesticks bunched along
+the margin of the path to the rickety gate were all a-blossoming. The
+sweet appeal of spring had never been more insistent, more coercive.
+Somehow peace, and a placid content, seemed as essential incidents in
+the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud,
+or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors
+of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across
+the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal
+lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the
+wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking
+the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season
+and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not
+now constrained to reproach herself that she was too happy.
+
+"Yes'm, pore though we war then--an' we couldn't look forward ter the
+Lord's prosperin' us some sence--we never would hev lef the precious
+leetle lam'"--his voice dwelt with unvanquished emphasis upon the
+obnoxious words--"'mongst enny but them persumed ter be godly folks.
+Tyler war a toler'ble good soldier in the war, an' hed a good name in
+the church, but _ye_ war persumed to be a plumb special Christian with
+no pledjure in this worl'."
+
+Laurelia winced anew. This repute of special sanctity was the pride of
+her ascetic soul. Few of the graces of life or of the spirit had she
+coveted, but her pre-eminence as a religionist she had fostered and
+cherished, and now through her own deeds of charity it seemed about to
+be wrested from her.
+
+"Lee-yander Yerby hev larnt nuthin' but good in this house, an' all my
+neighbors will tell you the same word. The Cove 'lows I hev been _too_
+strict."
+
+Nehemiah was glancing composedly about the room. "That thar 'pears
+ter be a fiddle on the wall, ain't it, Mis' Sudley?" he said, with an
+incidental air and the manner of changing the subject.
+
+Alack, for the aesthetic perversion! Since the playing of those
+melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had
+touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy
+old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its
+domicile under the porch for a position on the wall. It was boldly
+visible, and apparently no more ashamed of itself than was the big
+earthen jar half full of cream, which was placed close to the fireplace
+on the hearth in the hope that its contents might become sour enough by
+to-morrow to be churned.
+
+Laurelia looked up with a start at the instrument, red and lustrous
+against the brown log wall, its bow poised jauntily above it, and some
+glistening yellow reflection from the sun on the floor playing among the
+strings, elusive, soundless fantasies.
+
+Her lower jaw dropped. She was driven to her last defences, and sore
+beset. "It air a fiddle," she said, slowly, at last, and with an air of
+conscientious admission, as if she had had half a mind to deny it. "A
+fiddle the thing air." Then, as she collected her thoughts, "Brother
+Pete Vickers 'lows ez he sees no special sin in playin' the fiddle.
+He 'lows ez in some kentries--I disremember whar--they plays on 'em in
+church, quirin' an' hymn chunes an' sech."
+
+Her voice faltered a little; she had never thought to quote this fantasy
+in her own defence, for she secretly believed that old man Vickers must
+have been humbugged by some worldly brother skilled in drawing the long
+bow himself.
+
+Nehemiah Yerby seemed specially endowed with a conscience for the
+guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon
+their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is
+little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be on the ground first.
+
+"Air you-uns a-settin' under the preachin' o' Brother Peter Vickers?" he
+demanded in a sepulchral voice.
+
+"Naw, naw," she was glad to reply. "'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers
+wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live
+hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git
+no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees
+o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some
+powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a
+liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar
+ways. So Brother Vickers went back the road he kem."
+
+She knit off her needle while, with his head still bent forward,
+Nehemiah Yerby sourly eyed her, feeling himself a loser with Brother
+Vickers, in that he did not have the reverend man's incumbency as a
+grievance.
+
+"He 'pears ter me ter see mo' pleasure in religion 'n penance, ennyhow,"
+he observed, bitterly. "An' the Lord knows the bes' of us air sinners."
+
+"An' he laughs loud an' frequent--mightily like a sinner," she agreed.
+"An' whenst he prays, he prays loud an' hearty, like he jes expected
+ter git what he axed fur sure's shootin.' Some o' the breth-erin'
+sorter taxed him with his sperits, an' he 'lowed he couldn't holp but
+be cheerful whenst he hed the Lord's word fur it ez all things work
+tergether fur good. An' he laffed same ez ef they hedn't spoke ter him
+serious."
+
+"Look at that, now!" exclaimed Nehemiah. "An' that thar man ez good ez
+dead with the heart-disease."
+
+Laurelia's eyes were suddenly arrested by his keen, pinched, lined face.
+What there was in it to admonish her she could hardly have said, nor how
+it served to tutor her innocent craft.
+
+"I ain't so sure 'bout Brother Vickers bein' so wrong," she said,
+slowly. "He 'lowed ter me ez I hed spent too much o' my life
+a-sorrowin', 'stiddier a-praisin' the Lord for his mercies." Her face
+twitched suddenly; she could not yet look upon her bereavements as
+mercies. "He 'lowed I would hev been a happier an' a better 'oman ef I
+hed took the evil ez good from the Lord's hand, fur in his sendin' it's
+the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low
+what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev
+pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin
+but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter
+night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes--" She
+dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through
+the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and gold
+on the mountain's brow, were reflected roseate and amethyst and amber at
+the mountain's base on the steely surface of the river. "Brother Vickers
+'lowed he never hearn sech in all his life. It brung the tears ter his
+eyes--it surely did."
+
+"He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation
+an' fur Lee-yander's short-comin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air
+about ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the
+turnin' away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what
+p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be
+instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents
+o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on
+shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.'
+Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty
+ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin
+no longer."
+
+His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first
+seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his
+mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he
+spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.
+
+"Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken
+bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the
+ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't
+done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!" she exclaimed, with a pride which,
+as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's
+reputation as a high-tempered man and a "mighty handy fighter," and with
+implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.
+
+"Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley," Nehemiah gasped, as he
+made haste to qualify his asseveration. "I only charge you with havin'
+sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not
+_ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him!
+His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_
+never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty."
+
+He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in
+question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his
+meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose
+up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a
+bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. "Now, I put it to you,
+Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?--jes
+_be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!"
+
+Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one
+single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but
+as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect
+which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed
+face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it
+wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful;
+one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the
+mountain "a-courtin," She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here
+she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none
+of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it.
+
+Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph.
+"Aha, not ploughin'! But _Ty_ is ploughin', I seen him in the field. An'
+Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along
+through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin'
+through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An'
+under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it." He
+mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. "He never looked up
+wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' _a-ping, pang, ping,
+pang_," in a high falsetto, "went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur
+the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole _owel_,
+a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what _ping, pang, ping,
+pang_ meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in the bresh,
+an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified 'fore even
+sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez followed
+him."
+
+"How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?" demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing
+the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict
+proof.
+
+"Oh-h! by the fambly favor," protested the gaunt and hard-featured
+Nehemiah, capably. "I knowed the Yerby eye."
+
+"He hev got his mother's eyes." Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her
+stand-point with a vengeance. "He hev got his mother's _be-you-ti-ful
+blue_ eyes and her curling, silken brown hair--sorter red; little Yerby
+in _that_, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling
+hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will."
+
+"Mebbe so. I never seen him more'n a minit. But he might ez well hev a
+_be-you-ti-ful_ curlin' nose, like the elephint in the show, for all the
+use he air, or I be afeard air ever likely ter be."
+
+*****
+
+Tyler Sudley's face turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies,
+when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in
+the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team,
+and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange
+enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy
+the look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time
+ago--jealousy for the sake of her own children, that any loss, any
+grief, should be poignant and pierce his heart save for them. Now she
+was sorry for him; she felt with him.
+
+But as he continued silent, and only stared at her dumfounded and
+piteous, she grew frightened--she knew not of what.
+
+"Shucks, Ty!" she exclaimed, catching him by the sleeve with the
+impluse to rouse him, to awaken him, as it were, to his own old familiar
+identity; "ye ain't 'feared o' that thar snaggle-toothed skeer-crow in
+yander; he would be plumb comical ef he didn't look so mean-natured an'
+sech a hyper-crite."
+
+He gazed at her, his eyes eloquent with pain.
+
+"Laurely!" he gasped, "this hyar thing plumb knocks me down; it jes
+takes the breath o' life out'n me!"
+
+She hesitated for a moment. Any anxiety, any trouble, seemed so
+incongruous with the sweet spring-tide peace in the air, that one did
+not readily take it home to heart. Hope was in the atmosphere like an
+essential element; one might call it oxygen or caloric or vitality,
+according to the tendency of mind and the habit of speech. But the heart
+knew it, and the pulses beat strongly responsive to it. Faith ruled the
+world. Some tiny bulbous thing at her feet that had impeded her step
+caught her attention. It was coming up from the black earth, and the
+buried darkness, and the chill winter's torpor, with all the impulses
+of confidence in the light without, and the warmth of the sun, and the
+fresh showers that were aggregating in the clouds somewhere for its
+nurture--a blind inanimate thing like that! But Tyler Sudley felt none
+of it; the blow had fallen upon him, stunning him. He stood silent,
+looking gropingly into the purple dusk, veined with silver glintings
+of the moon, as if he sought to view in the future some event which he
+dreaded, and yet shrank to see.
+
+She had rarely played the consoler, so heavily had she and all her
+griefs leaned on his supporting arm. It was powerless now. She perceived
+this, all dismayed at the responsibility that had fallen upon her. She
+made an effort to rally his courage. She had more faith in it than in
+her own.
+
+"'Feard o' _him!_" she exclaimed, with a sharp tonic note of satire.
+"Kem in an' view him."
+
+"Laurely," he quavered, "I oughter hev got it down in writin' from him;
+I oughter made him sign papers agreein' fur me ter keep the boy till he
+growed ter be his own man."
+
+She, too, grew pale. "Ye ain't meanin' ter let him take the boy sure
+enough!" she gasped.
+
+"I moughtn't be able ter holp it; I dun'no' how the law stands. He air
+kin ter Lee-yander, an' mebbe hev got the bes' right ter him."
+
+She shivered slightly; the dew was falling, and all the budding herbage
+was glossed with a silver glister. The shadows were sparse. The white
+branches of the aspens cast only the symmetrical outline of the tree
+form on the illumined grass, and seemed scarcely less bare than in
+winter, but on one swaying bough the mocking-bird sang all the joyous
+prophecies of the spring to the great silver moon that made his gladsome
+day so long.
+
+She was quick to notice the sudden cessation of his song, the alert,
+downward poise of his beautiful head, his tense critical attitude.
+A mimicking whistle rose on the air, now soft, now keen, with swift
+changes and intricate successions of tones, ending in a brilliant
+borrowed roulade, delivered with a wonderful velocity and _elan_. The
+long tail feathers, all standing stiffly upward, once more drooped; the
+mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full
+throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely
+versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the
+futilely ambitious worldling no mote.
+
+The mimicking sound heralded the approach of Leander. Laurelia's heart,
+full of bitterness for his sake, throbbed tenderly for him. Ah, what
+was to be his fate! What unkind lot did the future hold for him in the
+clutches of a man like this! Suddenly she was pitying his mother--her
+own children, how safe!
+
+She winced to tell him what had happened, but she it was who, bracing
+her nerves, made the disclosure, for Sudley remained silent, the end of
+the ox-yoke in his trembling hands, his head bare to the moon and the
+dew, his face grown lined and old.
+
+Leander stood staring at her out of his moonlit blue eyes, his hat far
+back on the brown curls she had so vaunted, damp and crisp and clinging,
+the low limp collar of his unbleached shirt showing his round full
+throat, one hand resting on the high curb of the well, the other holding
+a great brown gourd full of the clear water which he had busied himself
+in securing while she sought to prepare him to hear the worst. His lips,
+like a bent bow as she thought, were red and still moist as he now and
+then took the gourd from them, and held it motionless in the interest
+of her narration, that indeed touched him so nearly. Then, as she made
+point after point clear to his comprehension, he would once more lift
+the gourd and drink deeply, for he had had an active day, inducing a
+keen thirst.
+
+[Illustration: An active day, inducing a keen thirst 241]
+
+She had been preparing herself for the piteous spectacle of his frantic
+fright, his futile reliance on them who had always befriended him, his
+callow forlorn helplessness, his tears, his reproaches; she dreaded
+them.
+
+He was silent for a reflective moment when she had paused. "But what's
+he want with me, Cap'n?" he suddenly demanded. "Mought know I warn't
+industrious in the field, ez he seen me off a-fiddlin' in the woods
+whilst Neighbor war a-ploughin'."
+
+"Mebbe he 'lows he mought _make_ ye industrious an' git cornsider'ble
+work out'n ye," she faltered, flinching for him.
+
+After another refreshing gulp from the gourd he canvassed this
+dispassionately. "Say his own chil'n air 'hearty feeders an' hard on
+shoe-leather?' Takes a good deal o' goadin' ter git ploughin' enough
+fur the wuth o' feed out'n a toler'ble beastis like old Blaze-face thar,
+don't it, Neighbor?--an' how is it a-goin' ter be with a human ez mebbe
+will hold back an' air sot agin plough-in' ennyhow, an' air sorter idle
+by profession? 'Twould gin him a heap o' trouble--more'n the ploughin'
+an' sech would be wuth--a heap o' trouble." Once more he bowed his head
+to the gourd.
+
+"He 'lowed ye shouldn't dwell no mo' in the tents o' sin. He seen the
+fiddle, Lee; it's all complicated with the fiddle," she quavered, very
+near tears of vexation.
+
+He lifted a smiling moonlit face; his half-suppressed laugh echoed
+gurglingly in the gourd. "Cap'n," he said, reassuringly, "jes let's hear
+Uncle Nehemiah talk some mo', an' ef I can't see no mo' likely work fur
+me 'n ploughin', I'll think myself mighty safe."
+
+They felt like three conspirators as after supper they drew their chairs
+around the fire with the unsuspicious Uncle Nehemiah. However, Nehemiah
+Yerby could hardly be esteemed unsuspicious in any point of view, so
+full of vigilant craft was his intention in every anticipation, so slyly
+sanctimonious was his long countenance.
+
+There could hardly have been a greater contrast than Tyler Sudley's
+aspect presented. His candid face seemed a mirror for his thought; he
+had had scant experience in deception, and he proved a most unlikely
+novice in the art. His features were heavy and set; his manner was
+brooding and depressed; he did not alertly follow the conversation; on
+the contrary, he seemed oblivious of it as his full dark eyes rested
+absently on the fire. More than once he passed his hand across them
+with a troubled, harassed manner, and he sighed heavily. For which his
+co-conspirators could have fallen upon him. How could he be so dull, so
+forgetful of all save the fear of separation from the boy whom he had
+reared, whom he loved as his own son; how could he fail to know that a
+jaunty, assured mien might best serve his interests until at any rate
+the blow had fallen; why should he wear the insignia of defeat
+before the strength of his claim was tested? Assuredly his manner was
+calculated to greatly reinforce Nehemiah Yerby's confidence, and to
+assist in eliminating difficulties in the urging of his superior rights
+and the carrying out of his scheme. Mrs. Sudley's heart sank as she
+caught a significant gleam from the boy's eyes; he too appreciated this
+disastrous policy, this virtual surrender before a blow was struck.
+
+"An' Ty ain't afeard o' bars," she silently commented, "nor wolves, nor
+wind, nor lightning, nor man in enny kind o' a free fight; but bekase
+he dun'no' how the _law_ stands, an' air afeard the law _mought_ be able
+ter take Lee-yander, he jes sets thar ez pitiful ez a lost kid, fairly
+ready ter blate aloud."
+
+She descried the covert triumph twinkling among the sparse light
+lashes and "crow-feet" about Nehemiah's eyes as he droned on an
+ever-lengthening account of his experiences since leaving the county.
+
+"It's a mighty satisfyin' thing ter be well off in yearthly goods an'
+chattels," said Laurelia, with sudden inspiration. "Ty, thar, is in
+debt."
+
+For Uncle Nehemiah had been dwelling unctuously upon the extent to which
+it had pleased the Lord to prosper him. His countenance fell suddenly.
+His discomfiture in her unexpected disclosure was twofold, in that
+it furnished a reason for Tyler's evident depression of spirits,
+demolishing the augury that his manner had afforded as to the success of
+the guest's mission, and furthermore, to Nehemiah's trafficking soul,
+it suggested that a money consideration might be exacted to mollify the
+rigors of parting.
+
+For Nehemiah Yerby had risen to the dignities, solvencies, and
+responsibilities of opening a store at the cross-roads in Kildeer
+County. It was a new and darling enterprise with him, and his mind
+and speech could not long be wiled away from the subject. This abrupt
+interjection of a new element into his cogitations gave him pause, and
+he did not observe the sudden rousing of Tyler Sud-ley from his revery,
+and the glance of indignant reproach which he cast on his wife. No man,
+however meek, or however bowed down with sorrow, will bear unmoved a
+gratuitous mention of his debts; it seems to wound him with all the
+rancor of insult, and to enrage him with the hopelessness of adequate
+retort or reprisal. It is an indignity, like taunting a ghost with
+cock-crow, or exhorting a clergyman to repentance. He flung himself all
+at once into the conversation, to bar and baffle any renewed allusion to
+that subject, and it was accident rather than intention which made him
+grasp Nehemiah in the vise of a quandary also.
+
+"Ye say ye got a store an' a stock o' truck, Nehemiah. Air ye ekal ter
+keepin' store an' sech?" he demanded, speculatively, with an inquiring
+and doubtful corrugation of his brows, from which a restive lock of hair
+was flung backward like the toss of a horse's mane.
+
+"I reckon so," Nehemiah sparely responded, blinking at him across the
+fireplace.
+
+"An' ye say ye hev applied fur the place o' postmaster?" Tyler prosed
+on. "All that takes a power o' knowledge--readin' an' writin' an'
+cipher-in' an' sech. How air ye expectin' to hold out, 'kase I know ye
+never hed no mo' larnin' than me, an' I war acquainted with ye till ye
+war thirty years old an' better?"
+
+The tenor of this discourse did not comport with his customary suavity
+and tactful courtesy toward a guest, but he was much harassed and had
+lost his balance. He had a vague idea that Mrs. Sudley hung upon the
+flank of the conversation with a complete summary of amounts, dates, and
+names of creditors, and he sought to balk this in its inception.
+Moreover, his forbearance with Nehemiah, with his presence, his
+personality, his mission, had begun to wane. Bitter reflections might
+suffice to fill the time were he suffered to be silent; but since a part
+in the conversation had been made necessary, he had for it no honeyed
+words.
+
+"I'd make about ez fit a postmaster, I know, ez that thar old ow_el_
+a-hootin' out yander. I could look smart an' sober like him, but that's
+'bout all the fur my school-larnin' kerried me, an' yourn didn't reach
+ter the nex' mile-post--an' that I know."
+
+Nehemiah's thin lips seemed dry. More than once his tongue appeared
+along their verges as he nervously moistened them. His small eyes
+had brightened with an excited look, but he spoke very slowly, and to
+Laurelia it seemed guardedly.
+
+"I tuk ter my book arterward, Brother Sudley. I applied myself ter
+larnin' vigorous. Bein' ez I seen the Lord's hand war liberal with
+the gifts o' this worl', I wanted ter stir myself ter desarve the good
+things."
+
+Sudley brought down the fore-legs of his chair to the floor with a
+thump. Despite his anxiety a slow light of ridicule began to kindle on
+his face; his curling lip showed his strong white teeth.
+
+"Waal, by gum! ye mus' hev been a sight ter be seen! Ye, forty or fifty
+years old, a-settin' on the same seat with the chil'n at the deestric'
+school, an' a-competin' with the leetle tadpoles fur 'Baker an' Shady'
+an sech!"
+
+He was about to break forth with a guffaw of great relish when Nehemiah
+spoke hastily, forestalling the laughter.
+
+"Naw; Abner Sage war thar fur a good while las' winter a-visitin' his
+sister, an' he kem an' gin me lessons an' set me copies thar at my
+house, an' I larnt a heap."
+
+Leander lifted his head suddenly. The amount of progress possible to
+this desultory and limited application he understood only too well. He
+had not learned so much himself to be unaware how much in time and labor
+learning costs. The others perceived no incongruity. Sudley's face was
+florid with pride and pleasure, and his wife's reflected the glow.
+
+"Ab Sage at the cross-roads! Then he mus' hev tole ye 'bout Lee-yander
+hyar, an' his larnin'. Ab tole, I know."
+
+Nehemiah drew his breath in quickly. His twinkling eyes sent out the
+keenest glance of suspicion, but the gay, affectionate, vaunting laugh,
+as Tyler Sudley turned around and clapped the boy a ringing blow on his
+slender shoulder, expressed only the plenitude of his simple vainglory.
+
+"Lee-yander hyar _knows it all!_" he boasted. "Old Ab himself don't know
+no mo'! I'll be bound old Ab went a-braggin'--hey, Lee-yander?"
+
+But the boy shrank away a trifle, and his smile was mechanical as he
+silently eyed his relative.
+
+"Ab 'lowed he war tur'ble disobejient," said Nehemiah, after a pause,
+and cautiously allowing himself to follow in the talk, "an' gi'n over ter
+playin' the fiddle." He hesitated for a moment, longing to stigmatize
+its ungodliness; but the recollection of Tyler Sudley's uncertain temper
+decided him, and he left it unmolested. "But Ab 'lowed ye war middlin'
+quick at figgers, Lee-yander--middlin' quick at figgers!"
+
+Leander, still silent and listening, flushed slightly. This measured
+praise was an offence to him; but he looked up brightly and obediently
+when his uncle wagged an uncouthly sportive head (Nehe-miah's anatomy
+lent itself to the gay and graceful with much reluctance), thrust
+his hands into his pockets, and, tilting himself back in his chair,
+continued:
+
+"I'll try ye, sonny--I'll try ye. How much air nine times seven?--nine
+times seven?"
+
+"Forty-two!" replied the boy, with a bright, docile countenance fixed
+upon his relative.
+
+There was a pause. "Right!" exclaimed Nehe-miah, to the relief of
+Sudley and his wife, who had trembled during the pause, for it seemed so
+threatening. They smiled at each other, unconscious that the examination
+meant aught more serious than a display of their prodigy's learning.
+
+"An', now, how much air twelve times eight?" demanded Nehemiah.
+
+"Sixty-six!" came the answer, quick as lightning.
+
+"Right, sir, every time!" cried Nehemiah with a glow of genuine
+exultation, as he brought down the fore-legs of the chair to the floor,
+and the two Sudleys laughed aloud with pleasure.
+
+Leander saw them all distorted and grimacing while the room swam round.
+The scheme was clear enough to him now. The illiterate Nehemiah, whose
+worldly prosperity had outstripped his mental qualifications, had
+bethought himself of filling the breach with his nephew, given away
+as surplusage in his burdensome infancy, but transformed into a unique
+utility under the tutelage of Abner Sage. It was his boasting of his
+froward pupil, doubtless, that had suggested the idea, and Leander
+understood now that he was to do the work of the store and the
+post-office under the nominal incumbency of this unlettered lout. Had
+the whole transaction been open and acknowledged, Leander would have had
+scant appetite for the work under this master; but he revolted at the
+flimsy, contemptible sham; he bitterly resented the innuendoes against
+the piety of the Sudleys, not that he cared for piety, save in
+the abstract; he was daunted by the brutal ignorance, the doltish
+inefficiency of the imposture that had so readily accepted his patently
+false answers to the simple questions. He had a sort of crude reverence
+for education, and it had seemed to him a very serious matter to take
+such liberties with the multiplication table. He valued, too, with a
+boy's stalwart vanity, his reputation for great learning, and he would
+not have lightly jeopardized it did he not esteem the crisis momentous.
+He knew not what he feared. The fraud of the intention, the groundless
+claim to knowledge, made Nehemiah's scheme seem multifariously guilty
+in some sort; while Tyler Sudley and his wife, albeit no wiser
+mathematically, had all the sanctions of probity in their calm,
+unpretending ignorance.
+
+"Ef Cap'n or Neighbor wanted ter run a post-office on my larnin', or ter
+keep store, they'd be welcome; but I won't play stalkin'-horse fur that
+thar man's still-hunt, sure ez shootin'," he said to himself.
+
+The attention which he bent upon the conversation thenceforth was an
+observation of its effect rather than its matter. He saw that he was
+alone in his discovery. Neither Sudley nor his wife had perceived any
+connection between the store, the prospective post-office, and the
+desire of the illiterate would-be postmaster to have his erudite nephew
+restored to his care.
+
+It may be that the methods of his "Neighbor" and the "Captain" in the
+rearing of Leander, the one with unbridled leniency, the other with
+spurious severity and affected indifference, had combined to foster
+self-reliance and decision of character, or it may be that these
+qualities were inherent traits. At all events, he encountered the
+emergency without an instant's hesitation. He felt no need of counsel.
+He had no doubts. He carried to his pallet in the roof-room no
+vacillations and no problems. His resolve was taken. For a time, as he
+listened to the movements below-stairs, the sound of voices still rose,
+drowsy as the hour waxed late; the light that flickered through the
+cracks in the puncheon flooring gradually dulled, and presently a harsh
+grating noise acquainted him with the fact that Sudley was shovelling
+the ashes over the embers; then the tent-like attic was illumined only
+by the moonlight admitted through the little square window at the gable
+end--so silent, so still, it seemed that it too slept like the silent
+house. The winds slumbered amidst the mute woods; a bank of cloud that
+he could see from his lowly couch lay in the south becalmed. The bird's
+song had ceased. It seemed to him as he lifted himself on his elbow that
+he had never known the world so hushed. The rustle of the quilt of gay
+glazed calico was of note in the quietude; the impact of his bare foot
+on the floor was hardly a sound, rather an annotation of his weight and
+his movement; yet in default of all else the sense of hearing marked it.
+His scheme seemed impracticable as for an instant he wavered at the head
+of the ladder that served as a stairway; the next moment his foot was
+upon the rungs, his light, lithe figure slipping down it like a shadow.
+The room below, all eclipsed in a brown and dusky-red medium, the
+compromise between light and darkness that the presence of the embers
+fostered, was vaguely revealed to him. He was hardly sure whether he saw
+the furniture all in place, or whether he knew its arrangement so well
+that he seemed to see. Suddenly, as he laid his hand on the violin on
+the wall, it became visible, its dark red wood richly glowing against
+the brown logs and the tawny clay daubing. A tiny white flame had shot
+up in the midst of the gray ashes, as he stood with the cherished object
+in his cautious hand, his excited eyes, dilated and expectant, searching
+the room apprehensively, while a vague thrill of a murmur issued from
+the instrument, as if the spirit of music within it had been wakened by
+his touch--too vague, too faintly elusive for the dormant and somewhat
+dull perceptions of Nehemiah Yerby, calmly slumbering in state in the
+best room.
+
+The faint jet of flame was withdrawn in the ashes as suddenly as it had
+shot forth, and in the ensuing darkness, deeper for the contrast with
+that momentary illumination, it was not even a shadow that deftly
+mounted the ladder again and emerged into the sheeny twilight of the
+moonlit roof-room. Lean-der was somehow withheld for a moment motionless
+at the window; it may have been by compunction; it may have been by
+regret, if it be possible to the very young to definitely feel either.
+There was an intimation of pensive farewell in his large illumined eyes
+as they rested on the circle of familiar things about him--the budding
+trees, the well, with its great angular sweep against the sky, the
+still sward, the rail-fences glistening with the dew, the river with
+the moonlight in a silver blazonry on its lustrous dark surface, the
+encompassing shadows of the gloomy mountains. There was no sound, not
+even among the rippling shallows; he could hear naught but the pain of
+parting throbbing in his heart, and from the violin a faint continuous
+susurrus, as if it murmured half-asleep memories of the melodies that
+had thrilled its waking moments. It necessitated careful handling as
+he deftly let himself out of the window, the bow held in his mouth, the
+instrument in one arm, while the other hand clutched the boughs of a
+great holly-tree close beside the house. It was only the moonlight on
+those smooth, lustrous leaves, but it seemed as if smiling white faces
+looked suddenly down from among the shadows: at this lonely hour, with
+none awake to see, what, strange things may there not be astir in the
+world, what unmeasured, unknown forces, sometimes felt through is the
+dulling sleep of mortals, and then called dreams! As he stood breathless
+upon the ground the wind awoke. He heard it race around the corner of
+the house, bending the lilac bushes, and then it softly buffeted him
+full in the face and twirled his hat on the ground. As he stooped to
+pick it up he heard whispers and laughter in the lustrous boughs of
+the holly, and the gleaming faces shifted with the shadows. He looked
+fearfully over his shoulder; the rising wind might waken some one of the
+household. His "Neighbor" was, he knew, solicitous about the weather,
+and suspicious of its intentions lest it not hold fine till all the oats
+be sown. A pang wrung his heart; he remembered the long line of seasons
+when, planting corn in the pleasant spring days, his "Neighbor" had
+opened the furrow with the plough, and the "Captain" had followed,
+dropping the grains, and he had brought up the rear with his hoe,
+covering them over, while the clouds floated high in the air, and
+the mild sun shone, and the wind kept the shadows a-flicker, and the
+blackbird and the crow, complacently and craftily watching them from
+afar, seemed the only possible threatening of evil in all the world.
+He hastened to stiffen his resolve. He had need of it. Tyler Sudley had
+said that he did not know how the law stood, and for himself, he was
+not willing to risk his liberty on it. He gazed apprehensively upon the
+little batten shutter of the window of the room where Nehe-miah Yerby
+slept, expecting to see it slowly swing open and disclose him there. It
+did not stir, and gathering resolution from the terrors that had beset
+him when he fancied his opportunity threatened, he ran like a frightened
+deer fleetly down the road, and plunged into the dense forest. The wind
+kept him company, rollicking, quickening, coming and going in fitful
+gusts. He heard it die away, but now and again it was rustling among a
+double file of beech-trees all up the mountainside. He saw the commotion
+in their midst, the effect of swift movement as the scant foliage
+fluttered, then the white branches of the trees all a-swaying like
+glistening arms flung upward, as if some bevy of dryads sped up the hill
+in elusive rout through the fastnesses.
+
+*****
+
+The next day ushered in a tumult and excitement unparalleled in the
+history of the little log-cabin. When Leander's absence was discovered,
+and inquiry of the few neighbors and search of the vicinity proved
+fruitless, the fact of his flight and its motive were persistently
+forced upon Ne-hemiah Yerby's reluctant perceptions, with the
+destruction of his cherished scheme as a necessary sequence. With some
+wild craving for vengeance he sought to implicate Sudley as accessory to
+the mysterious disappearance. He found some small measure of solace in
+stumping up and down the floor before the hearth, furiously railing at
+the absent host, for Sudley had not yet relinquished the bootless quest,
+and indignantly upbraiding the forlorn, white-faced, grief-stricken
+Laurelia, who sat silent and stony, her faded eyes on the fire,
+heedless of his words. She held in her lap sundry closely-rolled knitted
+balls--the boy's socks that she had so carefully made and darned. A pile
+of his clothing lay at her feet. He had carried nothing but his fiddle
+and the clothes he stood in, and if she had had more tears she could
+have wept for his improvidence, for the prospective tatters and rents
+that must needs befall him in that unknown patchless life to which he
+had betaken himself.
+
+Nehemiah Yerby argued that it was Sudley who had prompted the whole
+thing; he had put the boy up to it, for Leander was not so lacking in
+feeling as to flee from his own blood-relation. But he would set the law
+to spy them out. He would be back again, and soon.
+
+He may have thought better of this presently, for he was in great
+haste to be gone when Tyler Sudley returned, and to his amazement in a
+counterpart frame of mind, charging Nehemiah with the responsibility of
+the disaster. It was strange to Laurelia that she, who habitually strove
+to fix her mind on religious things, should so relish the aspect of Ty
+Sudley in his secular rage on this occasion.
+
+"Ye let we-uns hev him whilst so leetle an' helpless, but now that he
+air so fine growed an' robustious ye want ter git some work out'n him,
+an' he hev runned away an' tuk ter the woods tarrified by the very sight
+of ye," he averred. "He'll never kem back; no, he'll never kem back; fur
+he'll 'low ez ye would kem an? take him home with you; an' now the Lord
+only knows whar he is, an' what will become of him."
+
+His anger and his tumultuous grief, his wild, irrepressible anxiety for
+Leander's safety, convinced the crafty Nehemiah that he was no party to
+the boy's scheme. Sudley's sorrow was not of the kind that renders the
+temper pliable, and when Nehemiah sought to point a moral in the absence
+of the violin, and for the first time in Sudley's presence protested
+that he desired to save Leander from that device of the devil, the
+master of the house shook his inhospitable fist very close indeed to
+his guest's nose, and Yerby was glad enough to follow that feature
+unimpaired out to his horse at the bars, saying little more.
+
+He aired his views, however, at each house where he made it convenient
+to stop on his way home, and took what comfort there might be in the
+role of martyr. Leander was unpopular in several localities, and
+was esteemed a poor specimen of the skill of the Sudleys in rearing
+children. He had been pampered and spoiled, according to general report,
+and more than one of his successive interlocutors were polite enough to
+opine that the change to Nehemiah's charge would have been a beneficent
+opportunity for much-needed discipline. Nehemiah was not devoid of some
+skill in interrogatory. He contrived to elicit speculations without
+giving an intimation of unduly valuing the answer.
+
+"He's 'mongst the moonshiners, I reckon," was the universal surmise.
+"He'll be hid mighty safe 'mongst them."
+
+For where the still might be, or who was engaged in the illicit
+business, was even a greater mystery than Leander's refuge. Nothing more
+definite could be elicited than a vague rumor that some such work was in
+progress somewhere along the many windings of Hide-and-Seek Creek.
+
+Nehemiah Yerby had never been attached to temperance principles, and,
+commercially speaking, he had thought it possible that whiskey on which
+no tax had been paid might be more profitably dispensed at his
+store than that sold under the sanctions of the government. These
+considerations, however, were as naught in view of the paralysis which
+his interests and schemes had suffered in Leander's flight. He dwelt
+with dismay upon the possibility that he might secure the postmastership
+without the capable assistant whose services were essential. In this
+perverse sequence of events disaster to his application was more to
+be desired than success. He foresaw himself browbeaten, humiliated,
+detected, a butt for the ridicule of the community, his pretensions in
+the dust, his pitiful imposture unmasked. And beyond these aesthetic
+misfortunes, the substantial emoluments of "keepin' store," with a
+gallant sufficiency of arithmetic to regulate prices and profits, were
+vanishing like the elusive matutinal haze before the noontide sun.
+Nehemiah Yerby groaned aloud, for the financial stress upon his
+spirit was very like physical pain. And in this inauspicious moment he
+bethought himself of the penalties of violating the Internal Revenue
+Laws of the United States.
+
+Now it has been held by those initiated into such mysteries that there
+is scant affinity between whiskey and water. Nevertheless, in this
+connection, Nehemiah Yerby developed an absorbing interest in the
+watercourses of the coves and adjacent mountains, especially their more
+remote and sequestered tributaries. He shortly made occasion to meet the
+county surveyor and ply him with questions touching the topography of
+the vicinity, cloaking the real motive under the pretence of an interest
+in water-power sufficient and permanent enough for the sawing of lumber,
+and professing to contemplate the erection of a saw-mill at the most
+eligible point. The surveyor had his especial vanity, and it was
+expressed in his frequent boast that he carried a complete map of
+the county graven upon his brain; he was wont to esteem it a gracious
+opportunity when a casual question in a group of loungers enabled him to
+display his familiarity with every portion of his rugged and mountainous
+region, which was indeed astonishing, even taking into consideration his
+incumbency for a number of terms, aided by a strong head for locality.
+Nehemiah Yerby's scheme was incalculably favored by this circumstance,
+but he found it unexpectedly difficult to support the figment which he
+had propounded as to his intentions. Fiction is one of the fine arts,
+and a mere amateur like Nehemiah is apt to fail in point of consistency.
+He was inattentive while the surveyor dilated on the probable value,
+the accessibility, and the relative height of the "fall" of the various
+sites, and their available water-power, and he put irrelevant queries
+concerning ineligible streams in other localities. No man comfortably
+mounted upon his hobby relishes an interruption. The surveyor would stop
+with a sort of bovine surprise, and break out in irritable parenthesis.
+
+"That branch on the t'other side o' Panther Ridge? Why, man alive, that
+thread o' water wouldn't turn a spider web."
+
+Nehemiah, quaking under the glance of his keen questioning eye, would
+once more lapse into silence, while the surveyor, loving to do what
+he could do well, was lured on in his favorite subject by the renewed
+appearance of receptivity in his listener.
+
+"Waal, ez I war a-sayin', I know every furlong o' the creeks once down
+in the Cove, an' all their meanderings, an' the best part o' them in the
+hills amongst the laurel and the wildernesses. But now the ways of sech
+a stream ez Hide-an'-Seek Creek are past finding out. It's a 'sinking
+creek,' you know; goes along with a good volume and a swift current for
+a while to the west, then disappears into the earth, an' ain't seen fur
+five mile, then comes out agin running due north, makes a tre-menjious
+jump--the Hoho-hebee Falls--then pops into the ground agin, an' ain't
+seen no more forever," he concluded, dramatically.
+
+"How d'ye know it's the same creek?" demanded Nehemiah, sceptically, and
+with a wrinkling brow.
+
+"By settin' somethin' afloat on it before it sinks into the ground--a
+piece of marked bark or a shingle or the like--an' finding it agin after
+the stream comes out of the caves," promptly replied the man of the
+compass, with a triumphant snap of the eye, as if he entertained a
+certain pride in the vagaries of his untamed mountain friend. "Nobody
+knows how often it disappears, nor where it rises, nor where it goes at
+last. It's got dozens of fust-rate millin' sites, but then it's too fur
+off fur you ter think about."
+
+"Oh no 'tain't!" exclaimed Nehemiah, suddenly.
+
+The surveyor stared. "Why, you ain't thinkin' 'bout movin' up inter the
+wilderness ter live, an' ye jes applied fur the post-office down at the
+crossroads? Ye can't run the post-office thar an' a sawmill thirty mile
+away at the same time."
+
+Nehemiah was visibly disconcerted. His wrinkled face showed the flush of
+discomfiture, but his craft rallied to the emergency.
+
+"Moughtn't git the post-office, arter all's come an' gone. Nothin' is
+sartin in this vale o' tears."
+
+"An' ye air goin' ter take ter the woods ef ye don't?" demanded the
+surveyor, incredulously. "Thought ye war goin' ter keep store?"
+
+"Waal, I dun'no'; jes talkin' round," said Nehemiah, posed beyond
+recuperation. "I mus' be a-joggin', ennyhow. Time's a-wastin'."
+
+As he made off hastily in the direction of his house, for this
+conversation had taken place at the blacksmith's shop at the
+cross-roads, the surveyor gazed after him much mystified.
+
+"What is that old fox slyin' round after? He ain't studyin' 'bout no
+saw-mill, inquirin' round about all the out-o'-the-way water-power in
+the ken-try fifty mile from where he b'longs. He's a heap likelier to
+be goin' ter start a wild-cat still in them wild places--git his whiskey
+cheap ter sell in his store."
+
+He shook his head sagely once for all, for the surveyor's mind was of
+the type prompt in reaching conclusions, and he was difficult to divert
+from his convictions.
+
+A feature of the development of craft to a certain degree is the
+persuasion that this endowment is not shared. A fine world it would
+be if the Nehemiah Yerbys were as clever as they think themselves, and
+their neighbors as dull. He readily convinced himself that he had given
+no intimation that his objects and motives were other than he professed,
+and with unimpaired energy he went to work upon the lines which he had
+marked out for himself. A fine chase Hide-and-Seek Creek led him, to be
+sure, and it tried his enthusiasms to the uttermost. What affinity
+this brawling vagrant had for the briers and the rocks and the tangled
+fastnesses! Seldom, indeed, could he press in to its banks and look
+down upon its dimpled, laughing, heedless face without the sacrifice of
+fragments of flesh and garments left impaled upon the sharp spikes
+of the budding shrubs. Often it so intrenched itself amidst the dense
+woods, and the rocks and chasms of its craggy banks, that approach was
+impossible, and he followed it for miles only by the sound of its wild,
+sweet, woodland voice. And this, too, was of a wayward fancy; now, in
+turbulent glee among the rocks, riotously chanting aloud, challenging
+the echoes, and waking far and near the forest quiet; and again it
+was merely a low, restful murmur, intimating deep, serene pools and
+a dallying of the currents, lapsed in the fulness of content. Then
+Nehemiah Yerby would be beset with fears that he would lose this
+whisper, and his progress was slight; he would pause to listen, hearing
+nothing; would turn to right, to left; would take his way back
+through the labyrinth of the laurel to catch a thread of sound, a mere
+crystalline tremor, and once more follow this transient lure. As the
+stream came down a gorge at a swifter pace and in a succession of
+leaps--a glassy cataract visible here and there, airily sporting with
+rainbows, affiliating with ferns and moss and marshy growths, the
+bounding spray glittering in the sunshine--it flung forth continuously
+tinkling harmonies in clear crystal tones, so penetrating, so definitely
+melodic, that more than once, as he paced along on his jaded horse,
+he heard in their midst, without disassociating the sounds, the _ping,
+pang, ping, pang_, of the violin he so condemned. He drew up at last,
+and strained his ear to listen. It did not become more distinct, always
+intermingled with the recurrent rhythm of the falling water, but always
+vibrating in subdued throbbings, now more acute, now less, as the
+undiscriminated melody ascended or descended the scale. It came from the
+earth, of this he was sure, and thus he was reminded anew of the caves
+which Hide-and-Seek Creek threaded in its long course. There was some
+opening near by, doubtless, that led to subterranean passages, dry
+enough here, since it was the stream's whim to flow in the open sunshine
+instead of underground. He would have given much to search for it had he
+dared. His leathery, lean, loose cheek had a glow of excitement upon it;
+his small eyes glistened; for the first time in his life, possibly, he
+looked young. But he did not doubt that this was the stronghold of the
+illicit distillers, of whom one heard so much in the Cove and saw so
+little. A lapse of caution, an inconsiderate movement, and he might be
+captured and dealt with as a spy and informer.
+
+Nevertheless his discovery was of scant value unless he utilized it
+further. He had always believed that his nephew had fled to the secret
+haunts of the moonshiners. Now he only knew it the more surely; and what
+did this avail him, and how aid in the capture of the recusant clerk and
+assistant postmaster? He hesitated a moment; then fixing the spot in his
+mind by the falling of a broad crystal sheet of water from a ledge
+some forty feet high, by a rotting log at its base that seemed to
+rise continually, although the moving cataract appeared motionless,
+by certain trees and their relative position, and the blue peaks on a
+distant skyey background of a faint cameo yellow, he slowly turned
+his horse's rein and took his way out of danger. It was chiefly some
+demonstration on the animal's part that he had feared. A snort, a
+hoof-beat, a whinny would betray him, and very liable was the animal to
+any of these expressions. One realizes how unnecessary is speech for the
+exposition of opinion when brought into contradictory relations with
+the horse which one rides or drives. All day had this animal snorted his
+doubts of his master's sanity; all day had he protested against these
+aimless, fruitless rambles; all day had he held back with a high head
+and a hard mouth, while whip and spur pressed him through laurel almost
+impenetrable, and through crevices of crags almost impassable. For were
+there not all the fair roads of the county to pace and gallop upon if
+one must needs be out and jogging! Unseen objects, vaguely discerned
+to be moving in the undergrowth affrighted the old plough-horse of the
+levels--infinitely reassured and whinnying with joyful relief when the
+head of horned cattle showed presently as the cause of the commotion. He
+would have given much a hundred times that day, and he almost said so
+a hundred times, too, to be at home, with the old bull-tongue plough
+behind him, running the straight rational furrow in the good bare open
+field, so mellow for corn, lying in the sunshine, inviting planting.
+
+"Ef I git ye home wunst more, I'll be bound I'll leave ye thar,"
+Nehemiah said, ungratefully, as they wended their way along; for without
+the horse he could not have traversed the long distances of his search,
+however unwillingly the aid was given.
+
+He annotated his displeasure by a kick in the ribs; and when the old
+equine farmer perceived that they were absolutely bound binward, and
+that their aberrations were over for the present, he struck a sharp gait
+that would have done honor to his youthful days, for he had worn out
+several pairs of legs in Nehemiah's fields, and was often spoken of as
+being upon the last of those useful extremities. He stolidly shook his
+head, which he thought so much better than his master's, and bedtime
+found them twenty miles away and at home.
+
+Nehemiah felt scant fatigue. He was elated with his project. He scented
+success in the air. It smelled like the season. It too was suffused
+with the urgent pungency of the rising sap, with the fragrance of the
+wild-cherry, with the vinous promise of the orchard, with the richness
+of the mould, with the vagrant perfume of the early flowers.
+
+He lighted a tallow dip, and he sat him down with writing materials at
+the bare table to indite a letter while all his household slept. The
+windows stood open to the dark night, and Spring hovered about outside,
+and lounged with her elbows on the sill, and looked in. He constantly
+saw something pale and elusive against the blackness, for there was no
+moon, but he thought it only the timid irradiation with which his tallow
+dip suffused the blossoming wands of an azalea, growing lithe and
+tall hard by. With this witness only he wrote the letter--an anonymous
+letter, and therefore he was indifferent to the inadequacies of his
+penmanship and his spelling. He labored heavily in its composition, now
+and then perpetrating portentous blots. He grew warm, although the fire
+that had served to cook supper had long languished under the bank of
+ashes. The tallow dip seemed full of caloric, and melted rapidly in
+pendulous drippings. He now and again mopped his red face, usually so
+bloodless, with his big bandanna handkerchief, while all the zephyrs
+were fanning the flying tresses of Spring at the window, and the soft,
+sweet, delicately attuned vernal chorus of the marshes were tentatively
+running over _sotto voce_ their allotted melodies for the season. Oh,
+it was a fine night outside, and why should a moth, soft-winged and
+cream-tinted and silken-textured, come whisking in from the dark, as
+silently as a spirit, to supervise Nehe-miah Yerby's letter, and travel
+up and down the page all befouled with the ink? And as he sought to
+save the sense of those significant sentences from its trailing silken
+draperies, why should it rise suddenly, circling again and again about
+the candle, pass through the flame, and fall in quivering agonies once
+more upon the page? He looked at it, dead now, with satisfaction. It had
+come so very near ruining his letter--an important letter, describing
+the lair of the illicit distillers to a deputy marshal of the revenue
+force, who was known to be in a neighboring town. He had good reason
+to withhold his signature, for the name of the informer in the ruthless
+vengeance of the region would be as much as his life was worth. The
+moth had not spoiled the letter--the laborious letter; he was so glad of
+that! He saw no analogies, he received not even a subtle warning, as he
+sealed and addressed the envelope and affixed the postage-stamp. Then he
+snuffed out the candle with great satisfaction.
+
+The next morning the missive was posted, and all Nehemiah Yerby's plans
+took a new lease of life. The information he had given would result in
+an immediate raid upon the place. Leander would be captured among the
+moonshiners, but his youth and his uncle's representations--for he
+would give the officers an inkling of the true state of the case--would
+doubtless insure the boy's release, and his restoration to those
+attractive commercial prospects which had been devised for him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The ordering of events is an intricate process, and to its successful
+exploitation a certain degree of sagacious prescience is a prerequisite,
+as well as a thorough mastery of the lessons of experience. For a day
+or so all went well in the inner consciousness of Nehemiah Yerby. The
+letter had satisfied his restless craving for some action toward the
+consummation of his ambition, and he had not the foresight to realize
+how soon the necessity of following it up would supervene. He first grew
+uneasy lest his letter had not reached its destination; then, when the
+illimitable field of speculation was thus opened out, he developed an
+ingenuity of imagination in projecting possible disaster. Day after
+day passed, and he heard naught of his cherished scheme. The
+revenuers--craven wretches he deemed them, and he ground his teeth with
+rage because of their seeming cowardice in their duty, since their duty
+could serve his interests--might not have felt exactly disposed to risk
+their lives in these sweet spring days, when perhaps even a man whose
+life belongs to the government might be presumed to take some pleasure
+in it, by attempting to raid the den of a gang of moonshiners on the
+scanty faith of an informer's word, tenuous guaranty at best, and now
+couched in an anonymous letter, itself synonym for a lie. Oh, what
+fine eulogies rose in his mind upon the manly virtue of courage! How
+enthusing it is at all times to contemplate the courage of others!--and
+how safe!
+
+Then a revulsion of belief ensued, and he began to fear that they might
+already have descended upon their quarry, and with all their captives
+have returned to the county town by the road by which they came--nearer
+than the route through the crossroads, though far more rugged. Why had
+not this possibility before occurred to him! He had so often prefigured
+their triumphant advent into the hamlet with all their guarded and
+shackled prisoners, the callow Leander in the midst, and his own
+gracefully enacted role of virtuous, grief-stricken, pleading
+relative, that it seemed a recollection--something that had really
+happened--rather than the figment of anticipation. But no word, no
+breath of intimation, had ruffled the serenity of the crossroads. The
+calm, still, yellow sunshine day by day suffused the land like the
+benignities of a dream--almost too good to be true. Every man with the
+heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the
+most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast
+of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence
+of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world
+might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's
+own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old
+horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and
+start at last of his own motion, dragging the plough, the share still
+unanchored in the ground, half across the field before he could be
+stopped. The vagaries of these "lands" that the absent-minded Nehemiah
+laid off attracted some attention.
+
+"What ails yer furrows ter run so crooked, Nehemiah?" observed a
+passer-by, a neighbor who had been to the blacksmith-shop to get his
+plough-point sharpened; he looked over the fence critically. "Yer
+eyesight mus' be failin' some."
+
+"I dun'no'," rejoined Nehemiah, hastily. Then reverting to his own
+absorption. "War it you-uns ez I hearn say thar war word kem ter the
+crossroads 'bout some revenuers raid in' 'round some-whar in the woods?"
+
+The look of surprise cast upon him seemed to his alert anxiety to
+betoken suspicion. "Laws-a-massy, naw!" exclaimed his interlocutor. "Ye
+air the fust one that hev named sech ez that in these diggin's, fur I'd
+hev hearn tell on it, sure, ef thar hed been enny sech word goin' the
+rounds."
+
+Nehemiah recoiled into silence, and presently his neighbor went
+whistling on his way. He stood motionless for a time, until the man was
+well out of sight, then he began to hastily unhitch the plough-gear.
+His resolution was taken. He could wait no longer. For aught he knew the
+raiders might have come and gone, and be now a hundred miles away with
+their prisoners to stand their trial in the Federal court, his schemes
+might have all gone amiss, leaving him in naught the gainer. He could
+rest in uncertainty no more. He feared to venture further questions
+when no rumor stirred the air. They rendered him doubly liable
+to suspicion--to the law-abiding as a possible moonshiner, to any
+sympathizer with the distillers as a probable informer. He determined to
+visit the spot, and there judge how the enterprise had fared.
+
+When next he heard that fine sylvan symphony of the sound of the falling
+water--the tinkling bell-like tremors of its lighter tones mingling with
+the sonorous, continuous, deeper theme rising from its weight and
+volume and movement; with the surging of the wind in the pines; with
+the occasional cry of a wild bird deep in the new verdure of the forests
+striking through the whole with a brilliant, incidental, detached
+effect--no faint vibration was in its midst of the violin's string,
+listen as he might. More than once he sought to assure himself that he
+heard it, but his fancy failed to respond to his bidding, although again
+and again he took up his position where it had before struck his ear.
+The wild minstrelsy of the woods felt no lack, and stream and wind
+and harping pine and vagrant bird lifted their voices in their wonted
+strains. He could hardly accept the fact; he would verify anew the
+landmarks he had made and again return to the spot, his hat in his hand,
+his head bent low, his face lined with anxiety and suspense. No sound,
+no word, no intimation of human presence. The moonshiners were doubtless
+all gone long ago, betrayed into captivity, and Leander with them. He
+had so hardened his heart toward his recalcitrant young kinsman and his
+Sudley friends, he felt so entirely that in being among the moonshiners
+Leander had met only his deserts in coming to the bar of Federal
+justice, that he would have experienced scant sorrow if the nephew had
+not carried off with his own personality his uncle's book-keeper and
+postmaster's clerk. And so--alas, for Leander! As he meditated on the
+untoward manner in which he had overshot his target, this marksman
+of fate forgot the caution which had distinguished his approach, for
+hitherto it had been as heedful as if he fully believed the lion still
+in his den. He slowly patrolled the bank below the broad, thin, crystal
+sheet, seeing naught but its rainbow hovering elusively in the sun, and
+its green and white skein-like draperies pendulous before the great dark
+arch over which the cataract fell. The log caught among the rocks in
+the spray at the base was still there, seeming always to rise while the
+restless water seemed motionless.
+
+No trace that human beings had ever invaded these solitudes could he
+discover. No vague, faint suggestion of the well-hidden lair of the
+moonshiners did the wild covert show forth. "The revenuers war smarter'n
+me; I'll say that fur 'em," he muttered at last as he came to a
+stand-still, his chin in his hand, his perplexed eyes on the ground. And
+suddenly--a footprint on a marshy spot; only the heel of a boot, for the
+craggy ledges hid all the ground but this, a mere sediment of sand in
+a tiny hollow in the rock from which the water had evaporated. It was a
+key' to the mystery. Instantly the rugged edges of the cliff took on the
+similitude of a path. Once furnished with this idea, he could perceive
+adequate footing all adown the precipitous way. He was not young; his
+habits had been inactive, and were older even than his age. He could
+not account for it afterward, but he followed for a few paces this
+suggestion of a path down the precipitous sides of the stream. He had
+a sort of triumph in finding it so practicable, and he essayed it still
+farther, although the sound of the water had grown tumultuous at closer
+approach, and seemed to foster a sort of responsive turmoil of the
+senses; he felt his head whirl as he looked at the bounding, frothing
+spray, then at the long swirls of the current at the base of the fall
+as they swept on their way down the gorge. As he sought to lift his
+fascinated eyes, the smooth glitter of the crystal sheet of falling
+water so close before him dazzled his sight. He wondered afterward how
+his confused senses and trembling limbs sustained him along the narrow,
+rugged path, here and there covered with oozing green moss, and slippery
+with the continual moisture. It evidently was wending to a ledge. All at
+once the contour of the place was plain to him; the ledge led behind
+the cataract that fell from the beetling heights above. And within were
+doubtless further recesses, where perchance the moonshiners had worked
+their still. As he reached the ledge he could see behind the falling
+water and into the great concave space which it screened beneath the
+beetling cliff. It was as he had expected--an arched portal of jagged
+brown rocks, all dripping with moisture and oozing moss, behind the
+semi-translucent green-and-white drapery of the cascade.
+
+But he had not expected to see, standing quietly in the great vaulted
+entrance, a man with his left hand on a pistol in his belt, the mate of
+which his more formidable right hand held up with a steady finger on the
+trigger.
+
+This much Nehemiah beheld, and naught else, for the glittering profile
+of the falls, visible now only aslant, the dark, cool recess beyond,
+that menacing motionless figure at the vanishing-point of the
+perspective, all blended together in an indistinguishable whirl as his
+senses reeled. He barely retained consciousness enough to throw up both
+his hands in token of complete submission. And then for a moment he knew
+no more. He was still leaning motionless against the wall of rock when
+he became aware that the man was sternly beckoning to him to continue
+his approach. His dumb lips moved mechanically in response, but any
+sound must needs have been futile indeed in the pervasive roar of the
+waters. He felt that he had hardly strength for another step along
+the precipitous way, but there is much tonic influence in a beckoning
+revolver, and few men are so weak as to be unable to obey its behests.
+Poor Nehemiah tottered along as behooved him, leaving all the world,
+liberty, volition, behind him as the descending sheet of water fell
+between him and the rest of life and shut him off.
+
+"That's it, my leetle man! I thought you could make it!" were the first
+words he could distinguish as he joined the mountaineer beneath the
+crag.
+
+Nehemiah Yerby had never before seen this man. That in itself was
+alarming, since in the scanty population of the region few of its
+denizens are unknown to each other, at least by sight. The tone of
+satire, the gleam of enjoyment in his keen blue eye, were not reassuring
+to the object of his ridicule. He was tall and somewhat portly, and he
+had a bluff and offhand manner, which, however, served not so much
+to intimate his good-will toward you as his abounding good-humor with
+himself. He was a man of most arbitrary temper, one could readily judge,
+not only from his own aspect and manner, but from the docile, reliant,
+approving cast of countenance of his reserve force--a half-dozen men,
+who were somewhat in the background, lounging on the rocks about a huge
+copper still. They wore an attentive aspect, but offered to take no
+active part in the scene enacted before them. One of them--even at this
+crucial moment Yerby noticed it with a pang of regretful despair--held
+noiseless on his knee a violin, and more than once addressed himself
+seriously to rubbing rosin over the bow. There was scant music in
+his face--a square physiognomy, with thick features, and a shock of
+hay-colored hair striped somewhat with an effect of darker shades like
+a weathering stack. He handled the bow with a blunt, clumsy hand that
+augured little of delicate skill, and he seemed from his diligence to
+think that rosin is what makes a fiddle play. He was evidently one of
+those unhappy creatures furnished with some vague inner attraction to
+the charms of music, with no gift, no sentiment, no discrimination.
+Something faintly sonorous there was in his soul, and it vibrated to the
+twanging of the strings. He was far less alert to the conversation than
+the others, whose listening attitudes attested their appreciation of the
+importance of the moment.
+
+"Waal," observed the moonshiner, impatiently, eying the tremulous and
+tongue-tied Yerby, "hev ye fund what ye war a-huntin' fur?"
+
+So tenacious of impressions was Nehemiah that it was the violin in those
+alien hands which still focussed his attention as he stared gaspingly
+about. Leander was not here; probably had never been here; and the
+twanging of those strings had lured him to his fate. Well might he
+contemn the festive malevolence of the violin's influence! His letter
+had failed; no raider had intimidated these bluff, unafraid, burly
+law-breakers, and he had put his life in jeopardy in his persistent
+prosecution of his scheme. He gasped again at the thought.
+
+"_Waal_." said the moonshiner, evidently a man of short patience, and
+with a definite air of spurring on the visitor's account of himself, "we
+'ain't been lookin' fur any spy lately, but I'm 'lowin' ez we hev fund
+him."
+
+His fear thus put into words so served to realize to Yerby his immediate
+danger that it stood him in the stead of courage, of brains, of
+invention; his flaccid muscles were suddenly again under control; he
+wreathed his features with his smug artificial smile, that was like
+a grimace in its best estate, and now hardly seemed more than a
+contortion. But beauty in any sense was not what the observer was
+prepared to expect in Nehemiah, and the moonshiner seemed to accept the
+smile at its face value, and to respect its intention.
+
+"Spies don't kem climbin' down that thar path o' yourn in full view
+through the water"--for the landscape was as visible through the thin
+falling sheet as if it had been the slightly corrugated glass of a
+window--"do they?" Yerby asked, with a jocose intonation. "That thar
+shootin'-iron o' yourn liked ter hev skeered me ter death whenst I fust
+seen it."
+
+His interlocutor pondered on this answer for a moment. He had an adviser
+among his corps whose opinion he evidently valued; he exchanged a quick
+glance with one of the men who was but dimly visible in the shadows
+beyond the still, where there seemed to be a series of troughs leading a
+rill of running water down from some farther spring and through the tub
+in which the spiral worm was coiled. This man had a keen, white, lean
+face, with an ascetic, abstemious expression, and he looked less like
+a distiller than some sort of divine--some rustic pietist, with strange
+theories and unhappy speculations and unsettled mind. It was a face of
+subtle influences, and the very sight of it roused in Nehemiah a more
+heedful fear than the "shootin'-iron" in the bluff moonshiners hand had
+induced. He was silent, while the other resumed the office of spokesman.
+
+"Ye ain't 'quainted hyar "--he waved his hand with the pistol in it
+around at the circle of uncowering men, although the mere movement made
+Nehemiah cringe with the thought that an accidental discharge might as
+effectually settle his case as premeditated and deliberate murder. "Ye
+dun'no' none o' us. What air ye a-doin' hyar?"
+
+"Why, that thar war the very trouble," Yerby hastily explained. "_I
+didn't know none o' ye!_ I hed hearn ez thar war a still somewhars on
+Hide-an'-Seek Creek"--once more there ensued a swift exchange of glances
+among the party--"but nobody knew who run it nor whar 'twar. An' one
+day, considerable time ago, I war a-passin' nigh 'bouts an' I hearn that
+fiddle, an' that revealed the spot ter me. An' I kem ter-day 'lowin' ye
+an' me could strike a trade."
+
+Once more the bluff man of force turned an anxious look of inquiry to
+the pale, thoughtful face in the brown and dark green shadows beyond the
+copper gleam of the still. If policy had required that Nehemiah should
+be despatched, his was the hand to do the deed, and his the stomach
+to support his conscience afterward. But his brain revolted from the
+discriminating analysis of Nehemiah's discourse and a decision on
+its merits. "Trade fur what?" he demanded at last, on his own
+responsibility, for no aid had radiated from the face which his looks
+had interrogated.
+
+"Fur whiskey, o' course." Nehemiah made the final plunge boldly. "I
+be goin' ter open a store at the cross-roads, an' I 'lowed I could git
+cheaper whiskey untaxed than taxed. I 'lowed ye wouldn't make it ef ye
+didn't expec' ter sell it. I didn't know none o' you-uns, an' none o'
+yer customers. An' ez I expec' ter git mo' profit on sellin' whiskey
+'n ennything else in the store, I jes took foot in hand an' kem ter see
+'boutn it mysef. I never 'lowed, though, ez it mought look cur'ous ter
+you-uns, or like a spy, ter kem ez bold ez brass down the path in full
+sight."
+
+The logic of the seeming security of his approach, and the apparent
+value of his scheme, had their full weight. He saw credulity gradually
+overpowering doubt and distrust, and his heart grew light with relief.
+Even their cautious demur, intimating a reserve of opinion to the effect
+that they would think about it, did not daunt him now. He believed,
+in the simplicity of his faith in his own craft, now once more in the
+ascendant, that if they should accept his proposition he would be
+free to go without further complication of his relations with wild-cat
+whiskey. He could not sufficiently applaud his wits for the happy
+termination of the adventure to which they had led him. He had gone no
+further in the matter than he had always intended. Brush whiskey was the
+commodity that addressed itself most to his sense of speculation.
+For this he had always expected to ferret out some way of safely
+negotiating. He had gone no further than he should have done, at all
+events, a little later. He even began mentally to "figger on the price"
+down to which he should be able to bring the distillers, as he accepted
+a proffered seat in the circle about the still. He could neither divide
+nor multiply by fractions, and it is not too much to say that he might
+have been throttled on the spot if the moonshiners could have had a
+mental vision of the liberties the stalwart integers were taking with
+their price-current, so to speak, and the preternatural discount that
+was making so free with their profits. So absorbed in this pleasing
+intellectual exercise was Nehemiah that he did not observe that any one
+had left the coterie; but when a stir without on the rocks intimated an
+approach he was suddenly ill at ease, and this discomfort increased when
+the new-comer proved to be a man who knew him.
+
+"Waal, Nehemiah Yerby!" he exclaimed, shaking his friend's hand, "I
+never knowed you-uns ter be consarned in sech ez moonshinin'. I hev
+been a-neighborin' Isham hyar," he laid his heavy hand on the tall
+moonshiner's shoulder, "fur ten year an' better, but I won't hev nuthin'
+ter do with bresh whiskey or aidin' or abettin' in illicit 'stillin'. I
+like Isham, an' Isham he likes me, an' we hev jes agreed ter disagree."
+
+Nehemiah dared not protest nor seek to explain. He could invent no
+story that would not give the lie direct to his representations to the
+moonshiners. He felt that their eyes were upon him. He could only hope
+that his silence did not seem to them like denial--and yet was not
+tantamount to confession in the esteem of his upbraider.
+
+"Yes, sir," his interlocutor continued, "it's a mighty bad government
+ter run agin." Then he turned to the moonshiner, evidently taking up the
+business that had brought him here. "Lemme see what sorter brand ye hev
+registered fur yer cattle, Isham."
+
+Yerby's heart sank when the suspicion percolated through his brain that
+this man had been induced to come here for the purpose of recognizing
+him. More fixed in this opinion was he when no description of the brand
+of the cattle could be found, and the visitor finally went away, his
+errand bootless.
+
+From time to time during the afternoon other-men went out and returned
+with recruits on various pretexts, all of which Nehemiah believed masked
+the marshalling of witnesses to incriminate him as one of themselves,
+in order to better secure his constancy to the common interests, and in
+case he was playing false to put others into possession of the facts as
+to the identity of the informer. His liability to the law for aiding and
+abetting in moonshining was very complete before the day darkened, and
+his jeopardy as to the information he had given made him shake in his
+shoes.
+
+For at any moment, he reflected, in despair, the laggard raiders might
+swoop down upon them, and the choice of roles offered to him was to seem
+to them a moonshiner, or to the moonshiners an informer. The first
+was far the safer, for the clutches of the law were indeed feeble as
+contrasted with the popular fury that would pursue him unwearied for
+years until its vengeance was accomplished. From the one, escape was to
+the last degree improbable; from the other, impossible.
+
+Any pretext to seek to quit the place before the definite arrangements
+of his negotiation were consummated seemed even to him, despite his
+eagerness to be off, too tenuous, too transparent, to be essayed,
+although he devised several as he sat meditative and silent amongst the
+group about the still. The prospect grew less and less inviting as
+the lingering day waned, and the evening shadows, dank and chill,
+perceptibly approached. The brown and green recesses of the grotto were
+at once murkier, and yet more distinctly visible, for the glow of the
+fire, flickering through the crevices of the metal door of the furnace,
+had begun to assert its luminous quality, which was hardly perceptible
+in the full light of day, and brought out the depth of the shadows. The
+figures and faces of the moonshiners showed against the deepening gloom.
+The sunset clouds were still red without; a vague roseate suffusion was
+visible through the falling water. The sun itself had not yet sunk, for
+an oblique and almost level ray, piercing the cataract, painted a series
+of faint prismatic tints on one side of the rugged arch. But while
+the outer world was still in touch with the clear-eyed day, night was
+presently here, with mystery and doubt and dark presage. The voice of
+Hoho-hebee Falls seemed to him louder, full of strange, uncomprehended
+meanings, and insistent iteration. Vague echoes were elicited.
+Sometimes in a seeming pause he could catch their lisping sibilant tones
+repeating, repeating--what? As the darkness encroached yet more heavily
+upon the cataract, the sense of its unseen motion so close at hand
+oppressed his very soul; it gave an idea of the swift gathering of
+shifting invisible multitudes, coming and going--who could say whence
+or whither? So did this impression master his nerves that he was glad
+indeed when the furnace door was opened for fuel, and he could see only
+the inanimate, ever-descending sheet of water--the reverse interior
+aspect of Hoho-hebee Falls--all suffused with the uncanny tawny light,
+but showing white and green tints like its diurnal outer aspect, instead
+of the colorless outlines, resembling a drawing of a cataract, which
+the cave knew by day. He did not pause to wonder whether the sudden
+transient illumination was visible without, or how it might mystify the
+untutored denizens of the woods, bear, or deer, or wolf, perceiving it
+aglow in the midst of the waters like a great topaz, and anon lost in
+the gloom. He pined to see it; the momentary cessation of darkness, of
+the effect of the sounds, so strange in the obscurity, and of the chill,
+pervasive mystery of the invisible, was so grateful that its influence
+was tonic to his nerves, and he came to watch for its occasion and to
+welcome it. He did not grudge it even when it gave the opportunity for a
+close, unfriendly, calculating scrutiny of his face by the latest
+comer to the still. This was the neighboring miller, also liable to the
+revenue laws, the distillers being valued patrons of the mill, and since
+he ground the corn for the mash he thereby aided and abetted in the
+illicit manufacture of the whiskey. His life was more out in the world
+than that of his underground _confreres_, and perhaps, as he had a
+thriving legitimate business, and did not live by brush whiskey, he
+had more to lose by detection than they, and deprecated even more any
+unnecessary risk. He evidently took great umbrage at the introduction of
+Nehemiah amongst them.
+
+"Oh yes," he observed, in response to the cordial greeting which he
+met; "an' I'm glad ter see ye all too. I'm powerful glad ter kem ter the
+still enny time. It's ekal ter goin' ter the settlemint, or plumb ter
+town on a County Court day. Ye see _everybody_, an' hear _all_ the news,
+an' meet up with _interesting strangers_, I tell ye, now, the mill's
+plumb lonesome compared ter the still, an' the mill's always hed the
+name of a place whar a heap o' cronies gathered ter swap lies, an'
+sech."
+
+The irony of this description of the social delights and hospitable
+accessibilities of a place esteemed the very stronghold of secrecy
+itself--the liberty of every man in it jeopardized by the slightest
+lapse of vigilance or judgment--was very readily to be appreciated by
+the group, who were invited by this fair show of words to look down
+the vista of the future to possible years of captivity in the jails
+of far-away States as Federal prisoners. The men gazed heavily and
+anxiously from one to another as the visitor sank down on the rocks in a
+relaxed attitude, his elbow on a higher ledge behind him, supporting his
+head on his hand; his other hand was on his hip, his arm stiffly akimbo,
+while he looked with an expression of lowering exasperation at Yerby.
+It was impossible to distinguish the color of his garb, so dusted
+with flour was he from head to foot; but his long boots drawn over his
+trousers to the knee, and his great spurs, and a brace of pistols in his
+belt, seemed incongruous accessories to the habiliments of a miller.
+His large, dark hat was thrust far back on his head; his hair, rising
+straight in a sort of elastic wave from his brow, was powdered white;
+the effect of his florid color and his dark eyes was accented by the
+contrast; his pointed beard revealed its natural tints because of his
+habit of frequently brushing his hand over it, and was distinctly
+red. He was lithe and lean and nervous, and had the impatient temper
+characteristic of mercurial natures. It mattered not to him what was
+the coercion of the circumstances which had led to the reception of the
+stranger here, nor what was the will of the majority; he disapproved
+of the step; he feared it; he esteemed it a grievance done him in his
+absence; and he could not conceal his feelings nor wait a more fitting
+time to express them in private. His irritation and objection evidently
+caused some solicitude amongst the others. He was important to them,
+and they deprecated his displeasure. Isham Beaton listened to the
+half-covert sneers of his words with perturbation plainly depicted on
+his face, and the man whom Nehemiah had at first noticed as one whose
+character seemed that of adviser, and whose opinion was valued, now
+spoke for the first time. He handed over a broken-nosed pitcher with the
+remark, "Try the flavor of this hyar whiskey, Alfred; 'pears like ter me
+the bes' we-uns hev ever hed."
+
+His voice was singularly smooth; it had all the qualities of culture;
+every syllable, every lapse of his rude dialect, was as distinct as if
+he had been taught to speak in this way; his tones were low and even,
+and modulated to suave cadences; the ear experienced a sense of relief
+after the loud, strident voice of the miller, poignantly penetrating and
+pitched high.
+
+"Naw, Hilary, I don't want nuthin' ter drink. 'Bleeged ter ye, but I
+ain't wantin' nuthin' ter drink," reiterated the miller, plaintively.
+
+Isham Beaton cast a glance of alarm at the dimly seen, monastic face
+of his adviser in the gloom. It was unchanged. Its pallor and its
+keen outline enabled its expression to be discerned as he himself went
+through the motions of sampling the rejected liquor, shook his head
+discerningly, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and deposited the
+pitcher near by on a shelf of the rock.
+
+A pause ensued. Nehemiah, with every desire to be agreeable, hardly knew
+how to commend himself to the irate miller, who would have none of his
+very existence. No one could more eagerly desire him to be away than he
+himself. But his absence would not satisfy the miller; nothing less than
+that the intruder should never have been here. Every perceptible lapse
+of the moonshiners into anxiety, every recurrent intimation of their
+most pertinent reason for this anxiety, set Nehemiah a-shaking in his
+shoes. Should it be esteemed the greatest good to the greatest number
+to make safely away with him, his fate would forever remain unknown, so
+cautious had he been to leave no trace by which he might be followed.
+He gazed with deprecating urbanity, and with his lips distended into a
+propitiating smile, at the troubled face powdered so white and with its
+lowering eyes so dark and petulant. He noted that the small-talk amongst
+the others, mere un individualized lumpish fellows with scant voice in
+the government of their common enterprise, had ceased, and that they no
+longer busied themselves with the necessary work about the still, nor
+with the snickering interludes and horse-play with which they were
+wont to beguile their labors. They had all seated them-selves, and were
+looking from one to the other of the more important members of the guild
+with an air which betokened the momentary expectation of a crisis. The
+only exception was the man who had the violin; with the persistent,
+untimely industry of incapacity, he twanged the strings, and tuned and
+retuned the instrument, each time producing a result more astonishingly
+off the key than before.
+
+He was evidently unaware of this till some one with senses ajar would
+suggest that all was not as it should be in the drunken reeling catch
+he sought to play, when he would desist in surprise, and once more
+diligently rub the bow with rosin, as if that mended the matter. The
+miller's lowering eyes rested on his shadowy outline as he sat thus
+engaged, for a moment, and then he broke out suddenly:
+
+"Yes, this hyar still is the place fur news, an' the place ter look
+out fur what ye don't expec' ter happen. It's powerful pleasant ter be
+a-meetin' of folks hyar--this hyar stranger this evenin' "--his gleaming
+teeth in the semi-obscurity notified Yerby that a smile of spurious
+politeness was bent upon him, and he made haste to grin very widely in
+response--"an' that thar fiddle 'minds me o' how unexpected 'twar whenst
+I met up with Lee-yander hyar--'pears ter me, Bob, ez ye air goin' ter
+diddle the life out'n his fiddle--an' Hilary jes begged an' beseeched me
+ter take the boy with me ter help 'round the mill, ez he war a-runnin'
+away. Ye want me ter 'commodate this stranger too, ez mebbe air runnin'
+from them ez wants him, hey Hilary?"
+
+The grin was petrified on Nehemiah's face. He felt his blood rush
+quickly to his head in the excitement of the moment. So here was the
+bird very close at hand! And here was his enterprise complete and
+successful. He could go away after the cowardly caution of the
+moonshiners should have expended itself in dallying and delay, with
+his negotiation for the "wild-cat" ended, and his accomplished young
+relative in charge. He drew himself erect with a sense of power. The
+moonshiners, the miller, would not dare to make an objection. He knew
+too much! he knew far too much!
+
+The door of the furnace was suddenly flung ajar, but he was too much
+absorbed to perceive the change that came upon the keen face of Hilary
+Tarbetts, who knelt beside it, as the guest's portentous triumphant
+smile was fully revealed. Yerby did not lose, however, the glance of
+reproach which the moonshiner cast upon the miller, nor the miller's
+air at once triumphant, ashamed, and regretful. He had in petulant pique
+disclosed the circumstance which he had pledged himself not to disclose.
+
+"This man's name is Yerby too," Hilary said, significantly, gazing
+steadily at the miller.
+
+The miller looked dumfounded for a moment. He stared from one to
+the other in silence. His conscious expression changed to obvious
+discomfiture. He had expected no such result as this. He had merely
+given way to a momentary spite in the disclosure, thinking it entirely
+insignificant, only calculated to slightly annoy Hilary, who had made
+the affair his own. He would not in any essential have thwarted his
+comrade's plans intentionally, nor in his habitual adherence to the
+principles of fair play would he have assisted in the boy's capture.
+He drew himself up from his relaxed posture; his spurred feet shuffled
+heavily on the stone floor of the grotto. A bright red spot appeared
+on each cheek; his eyes had become anxious and subdued in the quick
+shiftings of temper common to the red-haired gentry; his face of
+helpless appeal was bent on Hilary Tarbetts, as if relying on his
+resources to mend the matter; but ever and anon he turned his eyes,
+animated with a suspicious dislike, on Yerby, who, however, could
+have snapped his fingers in the faces of them all, so confident, so
+hilariously triumphant was he.
+
+"Yerby, I b'lieve ye said yer name war, an' so did Peter Green," said
+Tarbetts, still kneeling by the open furnace door, his pale cheek
+reddening in the glow of the fire.
+
+Thus reminded of the testimony of his acquaintance, Yerby did not
+venture to repudiate his cognomen.
+
+"An' what did ye kem hyar fur?" blustered the miller. "A-sarchin' fur
+the boy?"
+
+Yerby's lips had parted to acknowledge this fact, but Tarbetts suddenly
+anticipated his response, and answered for him:
+
+"Oh no, Alfred. Nobody ain't sech a fool ez ter kem hyar ter this
+hyar still, a stranger an' mebbe suspected ez a spy, ter hunt up stray
+children, an' git thar heads shot off, or mebbe drownded in a mighty
+handy water-fall, or sech. This hyar man air one o' we-uns. He air
+a-tradin' fur our liquor, an' he'll kerry a barrel away whenst he goes."
+
+Yerby winced at the suggestion conveyed so definitely in this crafty
+speech; he was glad when the door of the furnace closed, so that his
+face might not tell too much of the shifting thoughts and fears that
+possessed him.
+
+The miller's fickle mind wavered once more. If Yerby had not come
+for the boy, he himself had done no damage in disclosing Leander's
+whereabouts. Once more his quickly illumined anger was kindled against
+Tarbetts, who had caused him a passing but poignant self-reproach.
+"Waal, then, Hilary," he demanded, "what air ye a-raisin' sech a
+row fur? Lee-yander ain't noways so special precious ez I knows on.
+Toler'ble lazy an' triflin', an' mightily gi'n over ter moonin' over a
+readin'-book he hev got. That thar mill war a-grindin' o' nuthin' at all
+more'n haffen ter-day, through me bein' a-nap-pin', and Lee-yander
+plumb demented by his book so ez he furgot ter pour enny grist inter the
+hopper. Shucks! his kin is welcome ter enny sech critter ez that, though
+I ain't denyin' ez he'd be toler'ble spry ef he could keep his nose
+out'n his book," he qualified, relenting, "or his fiddle out'n his
+hands. I made him leave his fiddle hyar ter the still, an' I be goin'
+ter hide his book."
+
+"No need," thought Nehemiah, scornfully. Book and scholar and it might
+be fiddle too, so indulgent had the prospect of success made him, would
+by tomorrow be on the return route to the cross-roads. He even ventured
+to differ with the overbearing miller.
+
+"I dun'no' 'bout that; books an' edication in gin'ral air toler'ble
+useful wunst in a while;" he was thinking of the dark art of dividing
+and multiplying by fractions. "The Yerbys hev always hed the name o'
+bein' quick at thar book."
+
+Now the democratic sentiment in this country is bred in the bone,
+and few of its denizens have so diluted it with Christian grace as to
+willingly acknowledge a superior. In such a coterie as this "eating
+humble-pie" is done only at the muzzle of a "shootin'-iron."
+
+"Never hearn afore ez enny o' the Yerbys knowed B from bull-foot,"
+remarked one of the unindividualized lumpish moonshiners, shadowy,
+indistinguishable in the circle about the rotund figure of the still.
+He yet retained acrid recollections of unavailing struggles with the
+alphabet, and was secretly of the opinion that education was a painful
+thing, and, like the yellow-fever or other deadly disease, not worth
+having. Nevertheless, since it was valued by others, the Yerbys should
+scathless make no unfounded claims. "Ef the truth war knowed, nare one
+of 'em afore could tell a book from a bear-trap."
+
+Nehemiah's flush the darkness concealed; he moistened his thin lips, and
+then gave a little cackling laugh, as if he regarded this as pleasantry.
+But the demolition of the literary pretensions of his family once begun
+went bravely on.
+
+"Abner Sage larnt this hyar boy all he knows," another voice took up
+the testimony. "Ab 'lows ez his mother war quick at school, but his
+dad--law! I knowed Ebenezer Yerby! He war a frien'ly sorter cuss,
+good-nachured an' kind-spoken, but ye could put all the larnin' he hed
+in the corner o' yer eye."
+
+"An' Lee-yander don't favor none o' ye," observed another of the
+undiscriminated, unimportant members of the group, who seemed to the
+groping scrutiny of Nehemiah to be only endowed with sufficient identity
+to do the rough work of the still, and to become liable to the Federal
+law. "Thar's Hil'ry--he seen it right off. Hil'ry he tuk a look at
+Lee-yander whenst he wanted ter kem an' work along o' we-uns, 'kase
+his folks wanted ter take him away from the Sudleys. Hil'ry opened the
+furnace door--jes so; an' he cotch the boy by the arm"--the great brawny
+fellow, unconsciously dramatic, suited the action to the word, his face
+and figure illumined by the sudden red glow--"an' Hil'ry, he say, 'Naw,
+by God--ye hev got yer mother's eyes in yer head, an' I'll swear ye
+sha'n't larn ter be a sot!' An' that's how kem Hil'ry made Alf Bixby
+take Lee-yander ter work in the mill. Ef ennybody tuk arter him he
+war convenient ter disappear down hyar with we-uns. So he went ter the
+mill."
+
+"An' I wisht I hed put him in the hopper an' ground him up," said the
+miller, in a blood-curdling tone, but with a look of plaintive anxiety
+in his eyes. "He hev made a heap o' trouble 'twixt Hil'ry an' me fust
+an' last. Whar's Hil'ry disappeared to, en-nyways?"
+
+For the flare from the furnace showed that this leading spirit amongst
+the moonshiners had gone softly out. Nehemiah, whose courage was
+dissipated by some subtle influence of his presence, now made bold to
+ask, "An' what made him ter set store on Lee-yander's mother's eyes?"
+His tone was as bluffly sarcastic as he dared.
+
+"Shucks--ye mus' hev hearn that old tale," said the miller, cavalierly.
+"This hyar Malviny Hixon--ez lived down in Tanglefoot Cove then--her an'
+Hil'ry war promised ter marry, but the revenuers captured him--he war
+a-runnin' a still in Tanglefoot then--an' they kep' him in jail somewhar
+in the North fur five year. Waal, she waited toler'ble constant fur
+two or three year, but Ebenezer Yerby he kem a-visitin' his kin down in
+Tanglefoot Cove, an' she an' him met at a bran dance, an' the fust thing
+I hearn they war married, an' 'fore Hil'ry got back she war dead an'
+buried, an' so war Ebenezer."
+
+There was a pause while the flames roared in the furnace, and the
+falling water desperately dashed upon the rocks, and its tumultuous
+voice continuously pervaded the silent void wildernesses without, and
+the sibilant undertone, the lisping whisperings, smote the senses anew.
+
+"He met up with cornsider'ble changes fur five year," remarked one of
+the men, regarding the matter in its chronological aspect.
+
+Nehemiah said nothing. He had heard the story before, but it had been
+forgotten. A worldly mind like his is not apt to burden itself with
+the sentimental details of an antenuptial romance of the woman whom his
+half-brother had married many years ago.
+
+A persuasion that it was somewhat unduly long-lived impressed others of
+the party.
+
+"It's plumb cur'us Hil'ry ain't never furgot her," observed one of them.
+"He hev never married at all. My wife says it's jes contrariousness.
+Ef Mal-viny hed been his wife an' died, he'd hev married agin 'fore the
+year war out. An' I tell my wife that he'd hev been better acquainted
+with her then, an' would hev fund out ez no woman war wuth mournin'
+'bout fur nigh twenty year. My wife says she can't make out ez how
+Hil'ry 'ain't got pride enough not ter furgive her fur givin' him the
+mitten like she done. An' I tell my wife that holdin' a gredge agin a
+woman fur bein' fickle is like holdin' a gredge agin her fur bein' a
+woman."
+
+He paused with an air, perceived somehow in the brown dusk, of having
+made a very neat point. A stir of assent was vaguely suggested when some
+chivalric impulse roused a champion at the farther side of the worm,
+whose voice rang out brusquely:
+
+"Jes listen at Tom! A body ter hear them tales he tells 'bout argufyin'
+with his wife would 'low he war a mighty smart, apt man, an' the pore
+foolish 'oman skeercely hed a sensible word ter bless herself with.
+When everybody that knows Tom knows he sings mighty small round home. Ye
+stopped too soon, Tom. Tell what yer wife said to that."
+
+Tom's embarrassed feet shuffled heavily on the rocks, apparently in
+search of subterfuge. The dazzling glintings from the crevices of the
+furnace door showed here and there gleaming teeth broadly agrin.
+
+"Jes called me a fool in gineral," admitted the man skilled in argument.
+
+"An' didn't she 'low ez men folks war fickle too, an' remind ye o' yer
+young days whenst ye went a-courtin' hyar an' thar, an' tell over a
+string o' gals' names till she sounded like an off'cer callin' the
+roll?"
+
+"Ye-es," admitted Tom, thrown off his balance by this preternatural
+insight, "but all them gals war a-tryin' ter marry me--not me tryin' ter
+marry them."
+
+There was a guffaw at this modest assertion, but the disaffected
+miller's tones dominated the rude merriment.
+
+"Whenst a feller takes ter drink folks kin spell out a heap o' reasons
+but the true one--an' that's 'kase he likes it. Hil'ry 'ain't never
+named that 'oman's name ter me, an' I hev knowed him ez well ez ennybody
+hyar. Jes t'other day whenst that boy kem, bein' foolish an' maudlin, he
+seen suthin' on-common in Lee-yander's eyes--they'll be mighty oncommon
+ef he keeps on readin' his tomfool book, ez he knows by heart, by the
+firelight when it's dim. Ef folks air so sot agin strong drink, let 'em
+drink less tharsefs. Hear Brother Peter Vickers preach agin liquor, an'
+ye'd know ez all wine-bibbers air bound fur hell."
+
+"But the Bible don't name 'whiskey' once," said the man called Tom,
+in an argumentative tone. "Low wines I'll gin ye up;" he made the
+discrimination in accents betokening much reasonable admission; "but
+nare time does the Bible name whiskey, nor yit peach brandy, nor
+apple-jack."
+
+"Nor cider nor beer," put in an unexpected recruit from the darkness.
+
+The miller was silent for a moment, and gave token of succumbing to this
+unexpected polemic strength. Then, taking thought and courage together,
+"Ye can't say the Bible ain't down on 'strong drink'?" There was no
+answer from the vanquished, and he went on in the overwhelming miller's
+voice: "Hil'ry hed better be purtectin' his-self from strong drink,
+'stiddier the boy--by makin' him stay up thar at the mill whar he knows
+thar's no drinkin' goin' on--ez will git chances at it other ways, ef
+not through him, in the long life he hev got ter live. The las' time the
+revenuers got Hil'ry 'twar through bein' ez drunk ez a fraish-biled
+owl. It makes me powerful oneasy whenever I know ye air all drunk an'
+a-gallopadin' down hyar, an' no mo' able to act reasonable in case o'
+need an' purtect yersefs agin spies an' revenuers an' sech 'n nuthin' in
+this worl'. The las' raid, ye 'member, we hed the still over yander;" he
+jerked his thumb in the direction present to his thoughts, but unseen
+by his coadjutors; "a man war wounded, an' we dun'no' but what killed in
+the scuffle, an' it mought be a hang-in' matter ter git caught now. Ye
+oughter keep sober; an' ye know, Isham, ye oughter keep Hil'ry sober. I
+dun'no' why ye can't. I never could abide the nasty stuff--it's enough
+ter turn a bullfrog's stomach. Whiskey is good ter sell--not ter drink.
+Let them consarned idjits in the flat woods buy it, an' drink it.
+Whiskey is good ter sell--not ter drink."
+
+This peculiar temperance argument was received in thoughtful silence,
+the reason of all the mountaineers commending it, while certain of them
+knew themselves and were known to be incapable of profiting by it.
+
+Nehemiah had scant interest in this conversation. He was conscious of
+the strain on his attention as he followed it, that every point of
+the situation should be noted, and its utility canvassed at a leisure
+moment. He marked the allusion to the man supposed to have been killed
+in the skirmish with the raiders, and he appraised its value as coercion
+in any altercation that he might have in seeking to take Leander from
+his present guardians. But he felt in elation that this was likely to
+be of the slightest; the miller evidently found himself hampered rather
+than helped by the employment of the boy; and as to the moonshiner's
+sentimental partisanship, for the sake of an old attachment to the
+dead-and-gone mountain girl, there was hardly anything in the universe
+so tenuous as to bear comparison with its fragility. "A few drinks
+ahead," he said to himself, with a sneer, "an' he won't remember who
+Malviny Hixon was, ef thar is ennything in the old tale--which it's
+more'n apt thar ain't."
+
+He began, after the fashion of successful people, to cavil because his
+success was not more complete. How the time was wasting here in this
+uncomfortable interlude! Why could he not have discovered Leander's
+whereabouts earlier, and by now be jogging along the road home with the
+boy by his side? Why had he not bethought himself of the mill in
+the first instance--that focus of gossip where all the news of the
+countryside is mysteriously garnered and thence dispensed bounteously to
+all comers? It was useless, as he fretted and chafed at these untoward
+omissions, to urge in his own behalf that he did not know of the
+existence of the mill, and that the miller, being an ungenial and
+choleric man, might have perversely lent himself to resisting his demand
+for the custody of the young runaway. No, he told himself emphatically,
+and with good logic, too, the miller's acrimony rose from the fact of
+a stranger's discovery of the still and the danger of his introduction
+into its charmed circle. And that reflection reminded him anew of his
+own danger here--not from the lawless denizens of the place, but from
+the forces which he himself had evoked, and again he glanced out toward
+the water-fall as fearful of the raiders as any moonshiner of them all.
+
+But what sudden glory was on the waters, mystic, white, an opaque
+brilliance upon the swirling foam and the bounding spray, a crystalline
+glitter upon the smooth expanse of the swift cataract! The moon was in
+the sky, and its light, with noiseless tread, sought out strange,
+lonely places, and illusions were astir in the solitudes. Pensive peace,
+thoughts too subtle for speech to shape, spiritual yearnings, were
+familiars of the hour and of this melancholy splendor; but he knew none
+of them, and the sight gave him no joy. He only thought that this was a
+night for the saddle, for the quiet invasion of the woods, when the few
+dwellers by the way-side were lost in slumber. He trembled anew at
+the thought of the raiders whom he himself had summoned; he forgot his
+curses on their laggard service; he upbraided himself again that he had
+not earlier made shift to depart by some means--by any means--before
+the night came with this great emblazoning bold-faced moon that but
+prolonged the day; and he started to his feet with a galvanic jerk and a
+sharp exclamation when swift steps were heard on the rocks outside, and
+a man with the lightness of a deer sprang down the ledges and into the
+great arched opening of the place.
+
+"'Tain't nobody but Hil'ry," observed Isham Beaton, half in reproach,
+half in reassurance. The pervasive light without dissipated in some
+degree the gloom within the grotto; a sort of gray visibility was on
+the appurtenances and the figures about the still, not strong enough to
+suggest color, but giving contour. His fright had been marked, he knew;
+a sort of surprised reflectiveness was in the manner of several of the
+moonshiners, and Ne-hemiah, with his ready fears, fancied that this
+inopportune show of terror had revived their suspicions of him. It
+required some effort to steady his nerves after this, and when footfalls
+were again audible outside, and all the denizens of the place sat calmly
+smoking their pipes without so much as a movement toward investigating
+the sound, he, knowing whose steps he had invited thither, had great
+ado with the coward within to keep still, as if he had no more reason to
+fear an approach than they.
+
+A great jargon in the tone of ecstasy broke suddenly on the air upon
+this new entrance, shattering what little composure Nehemiah had been
+able to muster; a wide-mouthed exaggeration of welcome in superlative
+phrases and ready chorus. Swiftly turning, he saw nothing for a moment,
+for he looked at the height which a man's head might reach, and the
+new-comer measured hardly two feet in stature, waddled with a very
+uncertain gait, and although he bore himself with manifest complacence,
+he had evidently heard the like before, as he was jovially hailed by
+every ingratiating epithet presumed to be acceptable to his infant
+mind. He was attended by a tall, gaunt boy of fifteen, barefooted, with
+snaggled teeth and a shock of tow hair, wearing a shirt of unbleached
+cotton, and a pair of trousers supported by a single suspender drawn
+across a sharp, protuberant shoulder-blade behind and a very narrow
+chest in front.
+
+But his face was proud and happy and gleeful, as if he occupied some
+post of honor and worldly emolument in attending upon the waddling
+wonder on the floor in front of him, instead of being assigned the
+ungrateful task of seeing to it that a very ugly baby closely related
+to him did not, with the wiliness and ingenuity of infant nature, invent
+some method of making away with himself. For he _was_ an ugly baby as
+he stood revealed in the flare of the furnace door, thrown open that his
+admirers and friends might feast their eyes upon him. His short wisps
+of red hair stood straight up in front; his cheeks were puffy and round,
+but very rosy; his eyes were small and dark, but blandly roguish; his
+mouth was wide and damp, and had in it a small selection of sample
+teeth, as it were; he wore a blue checked homespun dress garnished down
+the back with big horn buttons, sparsely set on; he clasped his chubby
+hands upon a somewhat pompous stomach; he sidled first to the right,
+then to the left, in doubt as to which of the various invitations he
+should accept.
+
+"Kem hyar, Snooks!" "Right hyar, Toodles!" "Me hyar, Monkey Doodle!"
+"Hurrah fur the lee-tle-est moonshiner on record!" resounded fulsomely
+about him. Many were the compliments showered upon him, and if his
+flatterers told lies, they had told more wicked ones. The pipes all went
+out, and the broken-nosed pitcher languished in disuse as he trotted
+from one pair of outstretched arms to another to give an exhibition of
+his progress in the noble art of locomotion; and if he now and again sat
+down, unexpectedly to himself and to the spectator, he was promptly put
+upon his feet again with spurious applause and encouragement. He gave an
+exhibition of his dancing--a funny little shuffle of exceeding temerity,
+considering the facilities at his command for that agile amusement, but
+he was made reckless by praise--and they all lied valiantly in chorus.
+He repeated all the words he knew, which were few, and for the most part
+unintelligible, crowed like a cock, barked like a dog, mewed like a cat,
+and finally went away, his red cheeks yet more ruddily aglow, grave and
+excited and with quickly beating pulses, like one who has achieved some
+great public success and led captive the hearts of thousands.
+
+The turmoils of his visit and his departure were great indeed. It all
+irked Nehemiah Yerby, who had scant toleration of infancy and little
+perception of the jocosity of the aspect of callow human nature, and it
+seemed strange to him that these men, all with their liberty, even their
+existence, jeopardized upon the chances that a moment might bring forth,
+could so relax their sense of danger, so disregard the mandates
+of stolid common-sense, and give themselves over to the puerile
+beguilements of the visitor. The little animal was the son of one of
+them, he knew, but he hardly guessed whom until he marked the paternal
+pride and content that had made unwontedly placid the brow of the irate
+miller while the ovation was in progress. Nehemiah greatly preferred the
+adult specimen of the race, and looked upon youth as an infirmity
+which would mend only with time. He was easily confused by a stir; the
+gurglings, the ticklings, the loud laughter both in the deep bass of the
+hosts and the keen treble of the guest had a befuddling effect upon him;
+his powers of observation were numbed. As the great, burly forms shifted
+to and fro, resuming their former places, the red light from the open
+door of the furnace illumining their laughing, bearded countenances,
+casting a roseate suffusion upon the white turmoils of the cataract,
+and showing the rugged interior of the place with its damp and dripping
+ledges, he saw for the first time among them Leander's slight figure and
+smiling face; the violin was in his hand, one end resting on a rock as
+he tightened a string; his eyes were bent upon the instrument, while his
+every motion was earnestly watched by the would-be fiddler.
+
+Nehemiah started hastily to his feet. He had not expected that the boy
+would see him here. To share with one of his own household a secret like
+this of aiding in illicit distilling was more than his hardihood could
+well contemplate. As once more the contemned "ping-pang" of the process
+of tuning fell upon the air, Leander chanced to lift his eyes. They
+smilingly swept the circle until they rested upon his uncle. They
+suddenly dilated with astonishment, and the violin fell from his
+nerveless hand upon the floor. The surprise, the fear, the repulsion his
+face expressed suddenly emboldened Nehemiah. The boy evidently had
+not been prepared for the encounter with his relative here. Its only
+significance to his mind was the imminence of capture and of being
+constrained to accompany his uncle home. He cast a glance of indignant
+reproach upon Hilary Tarbetts, who was not even looking at him. The
+moonshiner stood filling his pipe with tobacco, and as he deftly
+extracted a coal from the furnace to set it alight, he shut the door
+with a clash, and for a moment the whole place sunk into invisibility,
+the vague radiance vouchsafed to the recesses of the grotto by the
+moonbeams on the water without annihilated for the time by the contrast
+with the red furnace glare. Nehemiah had a swift fear that in this
+sudden eclipse Leander might slip softly out and thus be again lost to
+him, but as the dull gray light gradually reasserted itself, and the
+figures and surroundings emerged from the gloom, resuming shape and
+consistency, he saw Leander still standing where he had disappeared in
+the darkness; he could even distinguish his pale face and lustrous eyes.
+Leander at least had no intention to shirk explanations.
+
+"Why, Uncle Nehemiah!" he said, his boyish voice ringing out tense and
+excited above the tones of the men, once more absorbed in their wonted
+interests. A sudden silence ensued amongst them. "What air ye a-doin'
+hyar?"
+
+"Waal, ah, Lee-yander, boy--" Nehemiah hesitated. A half-suppressed
+chuckle among the men, whom he had observed to be addicted to
+horse-play, attested their relish of the situation. Ridicule is always
+of unfriendly intimations, and the sound served to put Nehemiah on his
+guard anew. He noticed that the glow in Hilary's pipe was still and
+dull: the smoker did not even draw his breath as he looked and listened.
+Yerby did not dare avow the true purpose of his presence after his
+representations to the moonshiners, and yet he could not, he would not
+in set phrase align himself with the illicit vocation. The boy was too
+young, too irresponsible, too inimical to his uncle, he reflected in a
+sudden panic, to be intrusted with this secret. If in his hap-hazard,
+callow folly he should turn informer, he was almost too young to
+be amenable to the popular sense of justice. He might, too, by some
+accident rather than intention, divulge the important knowledge so
+unsuitable to his years and his capacity for guarding it. He began to
+share the miller's aversion to the introduction of outsiders to the
+still. He felt a glow of indignation, as if he had always been a
+party in interest, that the common safety should not be more jealously
+guarded. The danger which Leander's youth and inexperience threatened
+had not been so apparent to him when he first heard that the boy had
+been here, and the menace was merely for the others. As he felt the
+young fellow's eyes upon him he recalled the effusive piety of
+his conversation at Tyler Sudley's house, his animadversions on
+violin-playing and liquor-drinking, and Brother Peter Vickers's mild and
+merciful attitude toward sinners in those un-spiced sermons of his,
+that held out such affluence of hope to the repentant rather than to
+the self-righteous. The blood surged unseen into Nehe-miah's face.
+For shame, for very shame he could not confess himself one with these
+outcasts. He made a feint of searching in the semi-obscurity for the
+rickety chair on which he had been seated, and resumed his former
+attitude as Leander's voice once more rang out:
+
+"What air ye a-doin' hyar, Uncle Nehemiah?"
+
+"Jes a-visitin', sonny; jes a-visitin'."
+
+There was a momentary pause, and the felicity of the answer was
+demonstrated by another chuckle from the group. His senses, alert to the
+emergency, discriminated a difference in the tone. This time the laugh
+was with him rather than at him. He noted, too, Leander's dumfounded
+pause, and the suggestion of discomfiture in the boy's lustrous eyes,
+still widely fixed upon him. As Leander stooped to pick up the violin he
+remarked with an incidental accent, and evidently in default of retort,
+"I be powerful s'prised ter view ye hyar."
+
+Nehemiah smarted under the sense of unmerited reproach; so definitely
+aware was he of being out of the character which he had assumed and
+worn until it seemed even to him his own, that he felt as if he
+were constrained to some ghastly masquerade. Even the society of the
+moonshiners as their guest was a reproach to one who had always piously,
+and in such involuted and redundant verbiage, spurned the ways and
+haunts of the evil-doer. According to the dictates of policy he should
+have rested content with his advantage over the silenced lad. But his
+sense of injury engendered a desire of reprisal, and he impulsively
+carried the war into the enemy's country.
+
+"I ain't in no ways s'prised ter view you-uns hyar, Lee-yander," he
+said. "From the ways, Lee-yander, ez ye hev been brung up by them
+slack-twisted Sud-leys--ungodly folks 'ceptin' what little regeneration
+they kin git from the sermons of Brother Peter Vick-ers, who air
+onsartain in his mind whether folks ez ain't church-members air goin'
+ter be damned or no--I ain't s'prised none ter view ye hyar." He
+suddenly remembered poor Laurelia's arrogations of special piety, and
+it was with exceeding ill will that he added: "An' Mis' Sudley in
+partic'lar. Ty ain't no great shakes ez a shoutin' Christian. I dun'no'
+ez I ever hearn him shout once, but his wife air one o' the reg'lar,
+mournful, unrejicing members, always questioning the decrees of
+Providence, an' what ain't no nigher salvation, ef the truth war knowed,
+'n a sinner with the throne o' grace yit ter find."
+
+Leander had not picked up the violin; this disquisition had arrested
+his hand until his intention was forgotten. He came slowly to the
+perpendicular, and his eyes gleamed in the dusk. A vibration of anger
+was in his voice as he retorted:
+
+"Mebbe so--mebbe they air sinners; but they'd look powerful comical
+'visitin' 'hyar!"
+
+"Ty Sudley ain't one o' the drinkin' kind," interpolated the miller, who
+evidently had the makings of a temperance man. "He never sot foot hyar
+in his life."
+
+"Them ez kem a-visitin' hyar," blustered the boy, full of the
+significance of his observations and experience, "air either wantin' a
+drink or two 'thout payin' fur it, or else air tradin' fur liquor ter
+sell, an' that's the same ez moonshinin' in the law."
+
+There was a roar of delight from the circle of lumpish figures about the
+still which told the boy that he had hit very near to the mark. Nehemiah
+hardly waited for it to subside before he made an effort to divert
+Leander's attention.
+
+"An' what _air you-uns_ doin' hyar?" he demanded. "Tit for tat."
+
+"Why," bluffly declared Leander, "I be a-runnin' away from you-uns. An'
+I 'lowed the still war one place whar I'd be sure o' not meetin' ye.
+Not ez I hev got ennything agin moonshinin' nuther," he added, hastily,
+mindful of a seeming reflection on his refuge. "Moonshinin' _is
+business_, though the United States don't seem ter know it. But I hev
+hearn ye carry on so pious 'bout not lookin' on the wine whenst it be
+red, that I 'lowed ye wouldn't like ter look on the still whenst--whenst
+it's yaller." He pointed with a burst of callow merriment at the big
+copper vessel, and once more the easily excited mirth of the circle
+burst forth irrepressibly.
+
+Encouraged by this applause, Leander resumed: "Why, _I_ even turns
+my back on the still myself out'n respec' ter the family--Cap'n an'
+Neighbor bein' so set agin liquor. Cap'n's ekal ter preachin' on it
+ef ennything onexpected war ter happen ter Brother Vickers. An' when I
+_hev_ ter view it, I look at it sorter cross-eyed." The flickering
+line of light from the crevice of the furnace door showed that he
+was squinting frightfully, with the much-admired eyes his mother had
+bequeathed to him, at the rotund shadow, with the yellow gleams of the
+metal barely suggested in the brown dusk. "So I tuk ter workin' at the
+mill. An' _I_ hev got nuthin' ter do with the still." There was a pause.
+Then, with a strained tone of appeal in his voice, for a future
+with Uncle Nehe-miah had seemed very terrible to him, "So ye warn't
+a-sarchin' hyar fur me, war ye, Uncle Nehemiah?"
+
+Nehemiah was at a loss. There is a peculiar glutinous quality in
+the resolve of a certain type of character which is not allied to
+steadfastness of purpose, nor has it the enlightened persistence of
+obstinacy. In view of his earlier account of his purpose he could not
+avow his errand; it bereft him of naught to disavow it, for Uncle
+Nehemiah was one of those gifted people who, in common parlance, do not
+mind what they say. Yet his reluctance to assure Lean-der that he was
+not the quarry that had led him into these wilds so mastered him, the
+spurious relinquishment had so the aspect of renunciation, that he
+hesitated, started to speak, again hesitated, so palpably that Hilary
+Tarbetts felt impelled to take a hand in the game.
+
+"Why don't ye sati'fy the boy, Yerby?" he said, brusquely. He took his
+pipe out of his mouth and turned to Leander. "Naw, bub. He's jes
+tradin' fur bresh whiskey, that's all; he's sorter skeery 'bout bein' a
+wild-catter, an' he didn't want ye ter know it."
+
+The point of red light, the glow of his pipe, the only exponent of
+his presence in the dusky recess where he sat, shifted with a quick,
+decisive motion as he restored it to his lips.
+
+The blood rushed to Nehemiah's head; he was dizzy for a moment; he heard
+his heart thump heavily; he saw, or he fancied he saw, the luminous
+distention of Leander's eyes as this Goliath of his battles was thus
+delivered into his hands. To meet him here proved nothing; the law was
+not violated by Nehemiah in the mere knowledge that illicit whiskey was
+in process of manufacture; a dozen different errands might have brought
+him. But this statement put a sword, as it were, into the boy's hands,
+and he dared not deny it.
+
+"'Pears ter me," he blurted out at last, "ez ye air powerful slack with
+yer jaw."
+
+"Lee-yander ain't," coolly returned Tarbetts. "He knows all thar is ter
+know 'bout we-uns--an' why air ye not ter share our per'ls?"
+
+"I ain't likely ter tell," Leander jocosely reassured him. "But I can't
+help thinkin' how it would rejice that good Christian 'oman, Cap'n
+Sudley, ez war made ter set on sech a low stool 'bout my pore old
+fiddle."
+
+And thus reminded of the instrument, he picked it up, and once more,
+with the bow held aloft in his hand, he dexterously twanged the strings,
+and with his deft fingers rapidly and discriminatingly turned the
+screws, this one up and that one down. The earnest would-be musician,
+who had languished while the discussion was in progress, now plucked up
+a freshened interest, and begged that the furnace door might be set ajar
+to enable him to watch the process of tuning and perchance to detect its
+subtle secret. No objection was made, for the still was nearly
+empty, and arrangements tending to replenishment were beginning to be
+inaugurated by several of the men, who were examining the mash in tubs
+in the further recesses of the place. They were lighted by a lantern
+which, swinging to and fro as they moved, sometimes so swiftly as to
+induce a temporary fluctuation threatening eclipse, suggested in the
+dusk the erratic orbit of an abnormally magnified fire-fly. It barely
+glimmered, the dullest point of white light, when the rich flare from
+the opening door of the furnace gushed forth and the whole rugged
+interior was illumined with its color. The inadequate moonlight fell
+away; the chastened white splendor on the foam of the cataract,
+the crystalline glitter, timorously and elusively shifting, were
+annihilated; the swiftly descending water showed from within only a
+continuously moving glow of yellow light, all the brighter from the
+dark-seeming background of the world glimpsed without. A wind had risen,
+unfelt in these recesses and on the weighty volume of the main sheet of
+falling water, but at its verge the fitful gusts diverted its downward
+course, tossing slender jets aslant, and sending now and again a shower
+of spray into the cavern. Nehemiah remembered his rheumatism with
+a shiver. The shadows of the men, instead of an unintelligible
+comminglement with the dusk, were now sharp and distinct, and the light
+grotesquely duplicated them till the cave seemed full of beings who were
+not there a moment before--strange gnomes, clumsy and burly, slow of
+movement, but swift and mysterious of appearance and disappearance. The
+beetling ledges here and there imprinted strong black similitudes of
+their jagged contours on the floor; with the glowing, weird illumination
+the place seemed far more uncanny than before, and Leander, with his
+face pensive once more in response to the gentle strains slowly elicited
+by the bow trembling with responsive ecstasy, his large eyes full of
+dreamy lights, his curling hair falling about his cheek as it rested
+upon the violin, his figure, tall and slender and of an adolescent
+grace, might have suggested to the imagination a reminiscence of Orpheus
+in Hades. They all listened in languid pleasure, without the effort to
+appraise the music or to compare it with other performances--the bane of
+more cultured audiences; only the ardent amateur, seated close at hand
+on a bowlder, watched the bowing with a scrutiny which betokened
+earnest anxiety that no mechanical trick might elude him. The miller's
+half-grown son, whose ear for any fine distinctions in sound might be
+presumed to have been destroyed by the clamors of the mill, sat a trifle
+in the background, and sawed away on an imaginary violin with many
+flourishes and all the exaggerations of mimicry; he thus furnished the
+zest of burlesque relished by the devotees of horse-play and simple
+jests, and was altogether unaware that he had a caricature in his shadow
+just behind him, and was doing double duty in making both Leander and
+himself ridiculous. Sometimes he paused in excess of interest when
+the music elicited an amusement more to his mind than the long-drawn,
+pathetic cadences which the violinist so much affected. For in sudden
+changes of mood and in effective contrast the tones came showering forth
+in keen, quick staccato, every one as round and distinct as a globule,
+but as unindividualized in the swift exuberance of the whole as a drop
+in a summer's rain; the bow was but a glancing line of light in its
+rapidity, and the bounding movement of the theme set many a foot astir
+marking time. At last one young fellow, an artist too in his way, laid
+aside his pipe and came out to dance. A queer _pas seul_ it might have
+been esteemed, but he was light and agile and not ungraceful, and he
+danced with an air of elation--albeit with a grave face--which added to
+the enjoyment of the spectator, for it seemed so slight an effort. He
+was long-winded, and was still bounding about in the double-shuffle and
+the pigeon-wing, his shadow on the wall nimbly following every motion,
+when the violin's cadence quavered off in a discordant wail, and
+Leander, the bow pointed at the waterfall, exclaimed: "Look out!
+Somebody's thar! Out thar on the rocks!"
+
+[Illustration: Look out! Somebody's thar! 313]
+
+It was upon the instant, with the evident intention of a surprise, that
+a dozen armed men rushed precipitately into the place. Nehemiah, his
+head awhirl, hardly distinguished the events as they were confusedly
+enacted before him. There were loud, excited calls, unintelligible,
+mouthing back in the turbulent echoes of the place, the repeated word
+"Surrender!" alone conveying meaning to his mind. The sharp, succinct
+note of a pistol-shot was a short answer. Some quick hand closed the
+door of the furnace and threw the place into protective gloom. He was
+vaguely aware that a prolonged struggle that took place amongst a
+group of men near him was the effort of the intruders to reopen it. All
+unavailing. He presently saw figures drawing back to the doorway out of
+the _melee_, for moonshiner and raider were alike indistinguishable,
+and he became aware that both parties were equally desirous to gain the
+outer air. Once more pistol-shots--outside this time--then a tumult of
+frenzied voices. Struck by a pistol-ball, Tarbetts had fallen from the
+ledge under the weight of the cataract and into the deep abysses below.
+The raiders were swiftly getting to saddle again. Now and then a crack
+mountain shot drew a bead upon them from the bushes; but mists were
+gathering, the moon was uncertain, and the flickering beams deflected
+the aim. Two or three of the horses lay dead on the river-bank, and
+others carried double, ridden by men with riddled hats. They were in
+full retreat, for the catastrophe on the ledge of the cliff struck
+dismay to their hearts. Had the man been shot, according to the
+expectation of those who resist arrest, this would be merely the logical
+sequence of events. But to be hurled from, a crag into a cataract
+savored of atrocity, and they dreaded the reprisals of capture.
+
+It was soon over. The whole occurrence, charged with all the
+definitiveness of fate, was scant ten minutes in transition. A laggard
+hoof-beat, a faint echo amidst the silent gathering of the moonlit
+mists, and the loud plaint of Hoho-hebee Falls were the only sounds that
+caught Nehemiah's anxious ear when he crept out from behind the empty
+barrels and tremulously took his way along the solitary ledges, ever
+and anon looking askance at his shadow, that more than once startled
+him with a sense of unwelcome companionship. The mists, ever thickening,
+received him into their midst. However threatening to the retreat of the
+raiders, they were friendly to him. Once, indeed, they parted, showing
+through the gauzy involutions of their illumined folds the pale moon
+high in the sky, and close at hand a horse's head just above his own,
+with wild, dilated eyes and quivering nostrils. Its effect was as
+detached as if it were only drawn upon a canvas; the mists rolled over
+anew, and but that he heard the subdued voice of the rider urging the
+animal on, and the thud of the hoofs farther away, he might have thought
+this straggler from the revenue party some wild illusion born of his
+terrors.
+
+The fate of Hilary Tarbetts remained a mystery. When the stream was
+dragged for his body it was deemed strange that it should not be found,
+since the bowlders that lay all adown the rocky gorge so interrupted the
+sweep of the current that so heavy a weight seemed likely to be caught
+amongst them. Others commented on the strength and great momentum of the
+flow, and for this reason it was thought that in some dark underground
+channel of Hide-and-Seek Creek the moonshiner had found his sepulchre.
+A story of his capture was circulated after a time; it was supposed that
+he dived and swam ashore after his fall, and that the raiders overtook
+him on their retreat, and that he was now immured, a Federal prisoner.
+The still and all the effects of the brush-whiskey trade disappeared
+as mysteriously, and doubtless this silent flitting gave rise to the
+hopeful rumor that Tarbetts had been seen alive and well since that
+fateful night, and that in some farther recesses of the wilderness,
+undiscovered by the law, he and like comrades continue their chosen
+vocation. However that may be, the vicinity of Hoho-hebee Falls, always
+a lonely place, is now even a deeper solitude. The beavers, unmolested,
+haunt the ledges; along their precipitous ways the deer come down to
+drink; on bright days the rainbow hovers about the falls; on bright
+nights they glimmer in the moon; but never again have they glowed with
+the shoaling orange light of the furnace, intensifying to the deep tawny
+tints of its hot heart, like the rich glamours of some great topaz.
+
+This alien glow it was thought had betrayed the place to the raiders,
+and Nehemiah's instrumentality was never discovered. The post-office
+appointment was bestowed upon his rival for the position, and it was
+thought somewhat strange that he should endure the defeat with such
+exemplary resignation. No one seemed to connect his candidacy with his
+bootless search for his nephew. When Leander chanced to be mentioned,
+however, he observed with some rancor that he reckoned it was just
+as well he didn't come up with Lee-yander; there was generally mighty
+little good in a runaway boy, and Lee-yander had the name of being
+disobejent an' turr'ble bad.
+
+Leander found a warm welcome at home. His violin had been broken in the
+_melee_, and the miller, though ardently urged, never could remember the
+spot where he had hidden the book--such havoc had the confusion of that
+momentous night wrought in his mental processes. Therefore, unhampered
+by music or literature, Leander addressed himself to the plough-handles,
+and together that season he and "Neighbor" made the best crop of their
+lives.
+
+Laurelia sighed for the violin and Leander's music, though, as she
+always made haste to say, some pious people misdoubted whether it were
+not a sinful pastime. On such occasions it went hard with Leander not
+to divulge his late experiences and the connection of the pious
+Uncle Nehemiah therewith. But he always remembered in time Laurelia's
+disability to receive confidences, being a woman, and consequently
+unable to keep a secret, and he desisted.
+
+One day, however, when he and Ty Sudley, ploughing the corn, now
+knee-high, were pausing to rest in the turn-row, a few furrows apart, in
+an ebullition of filial feeling he told all that had befallen him in his
+absence. Ty Sudley, divided between wrath toward Nehemiah and quaking
+anxiety for the dangers that Leander had been constrained to run--_ex
+post facto_ tremors, but none the less acute--felt moved now and then to
+complacence in his prodigy.
+
+"So 'twar _you-uns ez_ war smart enough ter slam the furnace door an'
+throw the whole place inter darkness! That saved them moonshiners and
+raiders from killin' each other. It saved a deal o' bloodshed--ez sure
+ez shootin\ 'Twar mighty smart in ye. But"--suddenly bethinking himself
+of sundry unfilial gibes at Uncle Nehemiah and the facetious account
+of his plight--"Lee-yander, ye mustn't be so turr'ble bad, sonny; ye
+_mustn't_ be so _turr'ble_ bad."
+
+"Naw, ma'am, Neighbor, I won't," Leander protested.
+
+And he went on following the plough down the furrow and singing loud and
+clear.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOONSHINERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 23631.txt or 23631.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/6/3/23631/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
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