Title: The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895
Author: Murfree, Mary Noailles
Language: English
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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
protégé, 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
rôle 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 rôle 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 rôles 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 _confrères_, 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 _mêlée_, 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
_mêlée_, 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 this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895" ***

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