THE PROPHET
OF THE
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS

BY

CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

THE PROPHET
OF THE
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.

I.

be active. They are of the bull-tongue variety, and are sometimes drawn by oxen. As often as otherwise they are followed by women.

        In the gracious June mornings, when winds are astir and wings are awhirl in the wide spaces of the sunlit air, the work seemed no hardship to Dorinda Cayce, - least of all one day when another plough ran parallel to the furrows of her own, and a loud, drawling, intermittent conversation became practicable. She paused often, and looked idly about her: sometimes at the distant mountains, blue and misty, against the indefinite horizon; sometimes down at the cool, dense shadows of the wooded valley, so far below the precipice, to which the steep clearing shelved; sometimes at the little log cabin on the slope above, sheltered by a beetling crag and shadowed by the pines; sometimes still higher at the great "bald" of the mountain, and its mingled phantasmagoria of shifting clouds and flickering sheen and glimmering peak.

        "He 'lowed ter me," she said, suddenly, "ez he hev been gin ter view strange sights a many a time in them fogs, an' sech."

        The eyes lifted to the shivering vapors might never have reflected aught but a tropical sunshine, so warm, so bright, so languorously calm were they. She turned them presently upon a

young man, who was ploughing with a horse close by, and who also came to a meditative halt in the turn-row. He too was of intermittent conversational tendencies, and between them it might be marveled that so many furrows were already run. He wore a wide-brimmed brown wool hat, set far back upon his head; a mass of straight yellow hair hung down to the collar of his brown jeans coat. His brown eyes were slow and contemplative. The corn was knee-high, and hid the great boots drawn over his trousers. As he moved there sounded the unexpected jingle of spurs. He looked, with the stolid, lack-lustre expression of the mountaineer, at the girl, who continued, as she leaned lightly on the plough- handles: -

        "I 'lowed ter him ez mebbe he hed drempt them visions. I knows I hev thunk some toler'ble cur'ous thoughts myself, ef I war tired an' sleepin' hard. But he said he reckoned I hed drempt no sech dreams ez his'n. I can't holp sorrowin' fur him some. He 'lowed ez Satan hev hunted him like a pa'tridge on the mounting."

        The young man's eyes dropped with sudden significance upon his plough-handles. A pair of pistols in their leather cases swung incongruously there. They gave a caustic suggestion of human adversaries as fierce as the moral pursuit

of the Principle of Evil, and the girl's face fell. In absence of mind she recommended her work.

        "Waal," she gently drawled, as the old ox languidly started down the row, "'pears like ter me ez it ain't goin' ter be no differ, nohow; it won't hender ye none."

        Her face was grave, but there was a smile in her eyes, which had the lustre and depth of a sapphire, and a lambent glow like the heart of a blue flame. They were fringed by long, black lashes, and her hair was black, also. Her pink calico sun-bonnet, flaring toward the front, showed it lying in moist tendrils on her brow, and cast an unwonted roseate tint upon the clear, healthful pallor of her complexion. She wore a dark blue homespun dress, and, despite her coarse garb and uncouth occupation and the gaunt old ox, there was something impressive in her simple beauty, her youth, and her elastic vigor. As she drove the ploughshare into the mould she might have seemed the type of a young civilization, - so fine a thing in itself, so roughly accoutred.

        When she came down the slope again, facing him, the pink curtain of her bonnet waving about her shoulders, her blue skirts fluttering among the blades of corn, a winged shadow sweeping along as if attendant upon her, while

a dove flew high above to its nest in the pines, he raised his hand with an imperative gesture, and she paused obediently. He had flushed deeply; the smouldering fire in his eyes was kindling. He leaned across the few rows of corn that stood between them.

        "I hev a word ter ax right now. Who air under conviction hyar?" he demanded.

        She seemed a trifle startled. Her grasp shifted uncertainly on the plough-handles, and the old ox, accustomed to rest only at the turnrow, mistook her intention, and started off. She stopped him with some difficulty, and then, "Convicted of sin?" she asked, in a voice that showed her appreciation of the solemnity of the subject.

        "I hev said it," the young man declared, with a half-suppressed irritation which confused her.

        She remained silent.

        "Mebbe it air yer granny," he suggested, with a sneer.

        She recoiled, with palpable surprise. "Granny made her peace fifty year ago," she declared, with pride in this anciently acquired grace, - "fifty year an' better."

        "The boys air convicted, then?" he asked, still leaning over the corn and still sneering.

        "The boys hev got thar religion, too," she faltered, looking at him with wide eyes, brilliant

with astonishment, and yet a trifle dismayed. Suddenly, she threw herself into her wonted confiding attitude, leaning upon her plough-handles, and with an appealing glance began an extenuation of her spiritual poverty: "'Pears like ez I hev never hed a call ter tell you-uns afore ez I hev hed no time yit ter git my religion. Granny bein' old, an' the boys at the still, I hev hed ter spin, an' weave, an' cook, an' sew, an' plough some, - the boys bein' mos'ly at the still. An' then, thar be Mirandy Jane, my brother Ab's darter, ez I hev hed ter l'arn how ter cook vittles. When I went down yander ter my aunt Jerushy's house in Tuckaleechee Cove, ter holp her some with weavin', I war plumb cur'ous ter know how Mirandy Jane would make out whilst I war gone. They 'lowed ez she hed cooked the vittles toler'ble, but ef she had washed a skillet or a platter in them three days I couldn't find it."

        Her tone was stern; all the outraged housekeeper was astir within her.

        He said nothing, and she presently continued discursively, still leaning on the plough-handles: "I never stayed away but them three days. I war n't sati'fied in my mind, nohow, whilst I bided down thar in Tuckaleechee Cove. I hankered cornsider'ble arter the baby. He air three year old now, an' I hev keered fur him

ever sence his mother died, - my brother Ab's wife, ye know, - two year ago an' better. They hed fedded him toler'ble whilst I war away, an' I fund him fat ez common. But they hed crost him somehows, an' he war ailin' in his temper when I got home, an' hed ter hev cornsider'ble coddlin'."

        She paused before the rising anger in his eyes.

        "Why air Mirandy Jane called ter l'arn how ter cook vittles?" he demanded, irrelevantly, it might have seemed.

        She looked at him in deprecating surprise. Yet she turned at bay.

        "I hev never hearn ez ye war convicted yerself, Rick Tyler!" she said, tartly. "Ye war never so much ez seen a-scoutin' round the mourner's bench. Ef I hev got no religion, ye hev got none, nuther."

        "Ye air minded ter git married, D'rindy Cayce," he said, severely, solving his own problem, "an' that's why Mirandy Jane hev got ter be l'arned ter take yer place at home."

        He produced this as if it were an accusation.

        She drew back, indignant and affronted, and with a rigid air of offended propriety. "I hev no call ter spen' words 'bout sech ez that, with a free-spoken man like you-uns," she staidly asseverated; and then she was about to move on.

Accepting her view of the gross unseemliness of his mention of the subject, the young fellow's anger gave way to contrition. "Waal, D'rindy," he said, in an eager, apologetic tone, "I hev seen that critter, that thar preacher, a-hangin' round you-uns's house a powerful deal lately, whilst I hev been obleeged ter hide out in the woods. An' bein' ez nobody thar owns up ter needin' religion but ye, I reckoned he war a-tryin' ter git ye ter take him an' grace tergether. That man hev got his mouth stuffed chock full o' words, - more 'n enny other man I ever see," he added, with an expression of deep disgust.

        Dorinda might be thought to abuse her opportunities. "He ain't studyin' 'bout'n me, no more 'n I be 'bout'n him," she said, with scant relish for the spectacle of Rick Tyler's jealousy. "Pa'son Kelsey jes' stops thar ter the house ter rest his bones awhile, arter he comes down off'n the bald, whar he goes ter pray."

        "In the name o' reason," exclaimed the young fellow petulantly, "why can't he pray somewhar else? A man ez hev got ter h'ist hisself on the bald of a mounting ten mile high - except what's lackin' - ter git a purchase on prayer hain't got no religion wuth talkin' 'bout. Sinner ez I am, I kin pray in the valley - way down yander in Tuckaleechee Cove - ez peart

ez on enny bald in the Big Smoky. That critter air a powerful aggervatin' contrivance."

        Her eyes still shone upon him. "'Pears like ter me ez it air no differ, nohow," she said, with her consolatory cadence. As she again started down the row, she added, glancing over her shoulder and relenting even to explanation, " 'T war granny's word ez Mirandy Jane hed ter be l'arned ter cook an' sech. She air risin' thirteen now, an' air toler'ble bouncin' an' spry, an' oughter be some use, ef ever. An' she mought marry when she gits fairly grown, an'," pausing in the turn-row for argument, and looking with earnest eyes at him, as he still stood in the midst of the waving corn, idly holding his plough-handles, where the pistols swung, "ef she did marry, 'pears like ter me ez she would be mightily faulted ef she could n't cook tasty."

        There was no reasonable doubt of this proposition, but it failed to convince, and in miserable cogitation he completed another furrow, and met her at the turn-row.

        "I s'pose ez Pa'son Kelsey an' yer granny air powerful sociable an' frien'ly," he hazarded, as they stood together.

        "I dunno ez them two air partic'lar frien'ly. Pa'son Kelsey air in no wise a sociable critter," said Dorinda, with a discriminating air. "He

ain't like Brother Jake Tobin, - though it 'pears like ter me ez his gift in prayer air manifested more survigrus ef ennything." She submitted this diffidently. Having no religion, she felt incompetent to judge of such matters. "'Pears like ter me ez Pa'son Kelsey air more like 'Lijah an' 'Lisha, an' them men, what he talks about cornsider'ble, an' goes out ter meet on the bald."

        "He don't meet them men on the bald; they air dead," said Rick Tyler, abruptly.

        She looked at him in shocked surprise.

        "That's jes' his addling way o' talkin'," continued the young fellow. "He don't mean fur true more 'n haffen what he say. He 'lows ez he meets the sperits o' them men on the bald."

        Once more she lifted her bright eyes to the shivering vapors, - vague, mysterious, veiling, in solemn silence the barren, awful heights.

        An extreme gravity had fallen upon her face. "Did they live in thar life-time up hyar in the Big Smoky, or in the valley kentry?" she asked, in a lowered voice.

        "I ain't sure 'bout'n that," he replied, indifferently.

        "'Crost the line in the old North State?" she hazarded, exhausting her knowledge of the habitable globe.

        "I hearn him read 'bout'n it wunst, but I furgits now."

        Still her reverent, beautiful eyes, full of the dreamy sunshine, were lifted to the peak. "It must hev been in the Big Smoky Mountings they lived," she said, with eager credulity, "fur he told me ez the word an' the prophets holped him when Satan kem a-huntin' of him like a pa'tridge on the mounting."

        The young fellow turned away, with a gesture of angry impatience.

        "Ef he hed ever hed the State o' Tennessee a-huntin' of him he would n't be so feared o' Satan. Ef thar war a warrant fur him in the sher'ff's pocket, an' the gran' jury's true bill fur murder lyin' agin him yander at Shaftesville, an' the gov'nor's reward, two hunderd dollars blood money, on him, he would n't be a-humpin' his bones round hyar so peart, a-shakin' in his shoes fur the fear o' Satan." He laughed, - a caustic, jeering laugh. "Satan's mighty active, cornsiderin' his age, but I 'd be willin' ter pit the State o' Tennessee agin him when it kem ter huntin' of folks like a pa'tridge."

        The sunshine in the girl's eyes was clouded. They had filled with tears. Still leaning on the plough-handles, she looked at him, with suddenly crimson cheeks and quivering lips. "I dunno how the State o' Tennessee kin git its own cornsent ter be so mean an' wicked ez it air," she said, his helpless little partisan.

        Despite their futility, her words comforted him. "An' I hev done nuthin', nohow!" he cried out, in shrill self-justification. "I could no more hender 'Bednego Tynes from shootin' Joel Byers down in his own door'n nuthin' in this worl'. I never even knowed they hed a grudge. "Bednego Tynes, he tole me ez he owed Joel a debt, an' war goin' ter see him 'bout'n it, an' wanted somebody along ter hear his word an' see jestice done 'twixt 'em. Thar air fower Byers boys, an' I reckon he war feared they would all jump on him at wunst, an' he wanted me ter holp him ef they did. An' I went along like a fool sheep, thinkin' 'bout nuthin'. An' when we got way down yander in Eskaqua Cove, whar Joel Byers's house air, he gin a hello at the fence, an' Joel kem ter the door. An' 'Bednego whipped up his riffle suddint an' shot him through the head, ez nip an' percise! An' thar stood Joel's wife, seein' it all. An' 'Bednego run off, nimble, I tell ye, an' I war so frustrated I run, too. Somebody cotched 'Bednego in the old North State the nex' week, an' the gov'nor hed ter send a requisition arter him. But sence I fund out ez they 'lowed I war aidin' an' abettin' 'Bednego, an' war goin' ter arrest me 'kase I war thar at the killin', they hev hed powerful little chance o' tryin' me in the court. An' whilst the gov'nor hed

his hand in, he offered a reward fur sech a lawless man ez I be."

        He broke off, visibly struggling for composure; then he recommenced in increasing indignation: "An' these hyar frien's o' mine in the Big Smoky, I 'll be bound they hanker powerful arter them two hunderd dollars blood money. I know ez I 'd hev been tuk afore this, ef it war n't fur them consarns thar." He nodded frowningly at the pistols. "Them's the only frien's I hev got."

        The girl's voice trembled. "'Pears like ye mought count me in," she said, reproachfully.

        "Naw," he retorted, sternly, "ye go round hyar sorrowin' fur a man ez hev got nuthin' ter be afeard of but the devil."

        She made no reply, and her meekness mollified him.

        "D'rindy," he said, in an altered tone, and with the pathos of a keen despair, "I hed fixed it in my mind a good while ago, when I could hev hed a house, an' lived like folks, stiddier like a wolf in the woods, ter ax ye ter marry me; but I war hendered by gittin' skeered 'bout'n yer bein' all in favor o' Amos Jeemes, ez kem up ter see ye from Eskaqua Cove, an' I did n't want ter git turned off. Mebbe ef I hed axed ye then I would n't hev tuk ter goin' along o' Abednego Tynes an' sech, an' the killin' o'

Joel would n't hev happened like it done. Would ye - would ye hev married me then?"

        Her eyes flashed. "Ye air fairly sodden with foolishness, Rick!" she exclaimed, angrily. "Air you-uns thinkin' ez I 'll 'low ez I would hev married a man four month ago ez never axed me ter marry, nohow?" Then, with an appreciation of the delicacy of the position and a conservation of mutual pride, she added, "An' I won't say nuther ez I would n't marry a man ez hev never axed me ter marry, nohow."

        Somehow, the contrariety of the proprieties, as she translated them, bewildered and baffled him. Even had he been looking at her he might hardly have interpreted, with his blunt perceptions, the dewy wistfulness of the eyes which she bent upon him. The word might promise nothing now. Still she would have valued it. He did not speak it. His eyes were fixed on Chilhowee Mountain, rising up, massive and splendid, against the west. The shadows of the clouds flecked the pure and perfect blue of the sunny slopes with a dusky mottling of purple. The denser shade in the valley had shifted, and one might know by this how the day wore on. The dew had dried from the long, keen blades of the Indian corn; the grasshoppers droned among them. A lizard

basked on a flat, white stone hard by. The old ox dozed in the turn-row.

        Suddenly Rick Tyler lifted his hand, with an intent gesture and a dilated eye. There came from far below, on the mountain road, the sound of a horse's hoof striking on a stone, again, and yet again. A faint metallic jingle - the air was so still now - suggested spurs. The girl's hand trembled violently as she stepped swiftly to his horse and took off the plough-gear. He had caught up a saddle that was lying in the turn-row, and as hastily buckled the girth about the animal.

        "Ef that air ennybody a-hankerin' ter see me, don't you-uns be a-denyin' ez I hev been hyar, D'rindy," he said, as he put his foot in the stirrup. "I reckon they hev fund out by now ez I be in the kentry round about. But keep 'em hyar ez long ez ye kin, ter gin me a start."

        He mounted his horse, and rode noiselessly away along the newly turned mould of the furrow.

        She stood leaning upon her plough-handles, and silently watching him. His equestrian figure, darkly outlined against the far blue mountains and the intermediate valley, seemed of heroic size against the landscape, which was reduced by the distance to the minimum of

proportion. The deep shadows of the woods, encompassing the clearing, fell upon him presently, and he, too, was but a shadow in the dusky monochrome of the limited vista. The dense laurel closed about him, and his mountain fastnesses, that had befriended him of yore, received him once again.

        Then up and down the furrows Dorinda mechanically followed the plough, her pulses throbbing, every nerve tense, every faculty alert. She winced when she heard the frequent striking of hoofs upon the rocky slopes of the road below. She was instantly aware when they were silent and the party had stopped to breathe the horses. She began accurately to gauge their slow progress.

        "'T ain't airish in no wise ter-day," she said, glancing about at the still, noontide landscape; "an' ef them air valley cattle they mus' git blowed mightily travelin' up sech steep mountings ez the Big Smoky." She checked her self-gratulation. "Though I ain't wantin' ter gloat on the beastis' misery, nuther," she stipulated.

        She paused presently at the lower end of the clearing, and looked down over the precipice, that presented a sheer sandstone cliff on one side, and on the other a wild confusion of splintered and creviced rocks, where the wild rose

bloomed in the niches and the grape-vine swung. The beech-trees on the slope below conserved beneath their dense, umbrageous branches a tender, green twilight. Loitering along in a gleaming silver thread by the roadside was a mountain rill, hardly gurgling even when with slight and primitive shift it was led into a hollow and mossy log, that it might aggregate sufficient volume in the dry season to water the horse of the chance wayfarer.

        The first stranger that rode into this shadowy nook took off a large straw hat and bared his brow to the refreshing coolness. His grizzled hair stood up in front after the manner denominated "a roach." His temples were deeply sunken, and his strongly marked face was long and singularly lean. He held it forward, as if he were snuffing the air. He had a massive and powerful frame, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh, and he looked like a hound in the midst of the hunting season.

        It served to quiet Dorinda's quivering nerves when he leisurely rode his big gray horse up to the trough, and dropped the rein that the animal might drink. If he were in pursuit he evidently had no idea how close he had pressed the fugitive. He was joined there by the other members of the party, six or eight in number, and presently a stentorian voice broke upon the

air. "Hello! Hello!" he shouted, hailing the log cabin.

        Mirandy Jane, a slim, long-legged, filly-like girl of thirteen, with a tangled black mane, the forelock hanging over her wild, prominent eyes, had at that moment appeared on the porch. She paused, and stared at the strangers with vivacious surprise. Then, taking sudden fright, she fled precipitately, with as much attendant confusion of pattering footfalls, flying mane, and excited snorts and gasps as if she were a troop of wild horses.

        "Granny! Granny!" she exclaimed to the old crone in the chimney corner, "thar's a man on a big gray critter down at the trough, an' I ain't s'prised none ef he air a raider!"

        The hail of the intruders was regarded as a challenge by some fifteen or twenty hounds that suddenly materialized among the beehives and the althea bushes, and from behind the ash-hopper and the hen-house and the rain-barrel. From under the cabin two huge curs came, their activity impeded by the blocks and chains they drew. These were silent, while the others yelped vociferously, and climbed over the fence, and dashed down the road.

        The horses pricked up their ears, and the leader of the party awaited the onslaught with a pistol in his hand.

        The old woman, glancing out of the window, observed this demonstration.

        "He'll kill one o' our dogs with that thar shootin'-iron o' his'n!" she exclaimed in trepidation. "Run, Mirandy Jane, an' tell him our dogs don't bite."

        The filly-like Mirandy Jane made great speed among the hounds, as she called them off, and remembered only after she had returned to the house to be afraid of the "shootin'-iron" herself.

        The old woman, who had come out on the porch, stood gazing at the party, shading her eyes with her hand, and a long-range colloquy ensued.

        "Good-mornin', madam," said the man at the trough.

        "Good-mornin', sir," quavered the old crone on the mountain slope.

        "I'm the sher'ff o' the county, madam, an' I 'd like ter know ef" -

        "Mirandy Jane," the old woman interrupted, in a wrathful undertone, "'pears like I hev hed the trouble o' raisin' a idjit in you-uns! Them ain't raiders, 'n nuthin' like it. Run an' tell the sher'ff we air dishin' up dinner right now, an' ax him an' his gang ter' light an' hitch, an' eat it along o' we-uns."

        The prospect was tempting. It was high

noon, and the posse had been in the saddle since dawn. Dorinda, with a beating heart, marked how short a consultation resulted in dismounting and hitching the horses; and then, with their spurs jingling and their pistols belted about them, the men trooped up to the house.

        As they seated themselves around the table, more than one looked back over his shoulder at the open window, in which was framed, as motionless as a painted picture, the vast perspective of the endless blue ranges and the great vaulted sky, not more blue, all with the broad, still, brilliant noontide upon it.

        "Ye ain't scrimped fur a view, Mis' Cayce, an' that's the Lord's truth!" exclaimed the officer.

        "Waal," said the old woman, as if her attention were called to the fact for the first time, "we kin see a power o' kentry from this spot o' ourn, sure enough; but I dunno ez it gins us enny more chance o' ever viewin' Canaan."

        "It's a sight o' ground ter hev ter hunt a man over, ez ef he war a needle in a haystack," and once more the officer turned and surveyed the prospect.

        The room was overheated by the fire which had cooked the dinner, and the old woman actively plied her fan of turkey feathers, pausing occasionally to readjust her cap, which had a

flapping frill and was surmounted by a pair of gleaming spectacles. A bandana kerchief was crossed over her breast, and she wore a blue-and- white-checked homespun dress of the same pattern and style that she had worn here fifty years ago. Her hands were tremulous and gnarled and her face was deeply wrinkled, but her interest in life was as fresh as Mirandy Jane's.

        The great frame of the warping-bars on one side of the room was swathed with a rainbow of variegated yarn, and a spinning-wheel stood near the door. A few shelves, scrupulously neat, held piggins, a cracked blue bowl, brown earthenware, and the cooking utensils. There were rude gun-racks on the walls. These indicated the fact of several men in the family. It was the universal dinner-hour, yet none of them appeared. The sheriff reflected that perhaps they had their own sufficient reason to be shy of strangers, and the horses hitched outside advertised the presence and number of unaccustomed visitors within. When the usual appetizer was offered, it took the form of whiskey in such quantity that the conviction was forced upon him that it was come by very handily. However, he applied himself with great relish to the bacon and snap-beans, corn dodgers and fried chicken, not knowing that Mirandy Jane, who was esteemed altogether

second rate, had cooked them, and he spread honey upon the apple-pie, ate it with his knife, and washed it down with buttermilk, kept cold as ice in the spring, - the mixture being calculated to surprise a more civilized stomach.

        Not even his conscience was roused, - the first intimation of a disordered digestion. He listened to old Mrs. Cayce with no betrayal of divination when she vaguely but anxiously explained the absence of her son and his boys in the equivocal phrase, "Not round about ter-day, bein' gone off," and he asked how many miles distant was the Settlement, as if he understood they had gone thither. He was saying to himself, the brush whiskey warming his heart, that the revenue department paid him nothing to raid moonshiners, and there was no obligation of his office to sift any such suspicion which might occur to him while accepting an unguarded hospitality.

        He looked with somewhat appreciative eyes at Dorinda, as she went back and forth from the table to the pot which hung in the deep chimney-place above the smouldering coals. She had laid aside her bonnet. Her face was grave; her eyes were bright and excited; her hair was drawn back, except for the tendrils about her brow, and coiled, with the aid of a much-prized "tuckin' comb," at the back of

her head in a knot discriminated as Grecian in civilization. He remarked to her grandmother that he was a family man himself, and had a daughter as old, he should say, as Dorinda.

        "D'rindy air turned seventeen now," said Mrs. Cayce, disparagingly. "It 'pears like ter me ez the young folks nowadays air awk'ard an' back'ard. I war married when I war sixteen, - sixteen scant."

        The girl felt that she was indeed of advanced years, and the sheriff said that his daughter was not yet sixteen, and he thought it probable she weighed more than Dorinda.

        He lighted his pipe presently, and tilted his chair back against the wall.

        "Yes'm," he said, meditatively, gazing out of the window at the great panorama, "it's a pretty big spot o' kentry ter hev ter hunt a man over. Now ef 't war one o' the town folks we could make out ter overhaul him somehows; but a mounting boy, - why, he's ez free ter the hills ez a fox. I s'pose ye hain't seen him hyar-abouts?"

        "I hain't hearn who it air yit," the old woman replied, putting her hand behind her ear.

        "It's Rick Tyler; he hails from this deestric. I won't be 'stonished ef we ketch him this time. The gov'nor has offered two hunderd dollars

reward fur him; an' I reckon somebody will find it wuth while ter head him fur us."

        He was talking idly. He had no expectation of developments here. He had only stopped at the house in the first instance for the question which he had asked at every habitation along the road. It suddenly occurred to him as polite to include Dorinda in the conversation.

        "Ye hain't seen nor hearn of him, I s'pose, hev ye?" inquired the sheriff, directly addressing her.

        As he turned toward her he marked her expression. His own face changed suddenly. He rose at once.

        "Don't trifle with the law, I warn ye," he said, sternly. "Ye hev seen that man."

        Dorinda was standing beside her spinning-wheel, one hand holding the thread, the other raised to guide the motion. She looked at him, pale and breathless.

        "I hev seen him. I ain't onwillin' ter own it. Ye never axed me afore."

        The other members of the party had crowded in from the porch, where they had been sitting since dinner, smoking their pipes. The officer, realizing his lapse of vigilance and the loss of his opportunity, was sharply conscious, too, of their appreciation of his fatuity.

        "Whar did ye see him?" he asked.

        "I seen him hyar - this mornin'." There was a stir of excitement in the group. "He kem by on his beastis whilst I war a-ploughin', an' we talked a passel. An' then he tuk Pete's plough, ez war idle in the turnrow, an' holped along some; he run a few furrows."

        "Which way did he go?" asked the sheriff, breathlessly.

        "I dunno," faltered the girl.

        "Look-a-hyar!" he thundered, in rising wrath. "Ye'll find yerself under lock an' key in the jail at Shaftesville, ef ye undertake ter fool with me. Which way did he go?"

        A flush sprang into the girl's excited face. Her eyes flashed.

        "Ef ye kin jail me fur tellin' all I know, I can't holp it," she said, with spirit. "I kin tell no more."

        He saw the justice of her position. It did not make the situation easier for him. Here he had sat eating and drinking and idly talking while the fugitive, who had escaped by a hair's breadth, was counting miles and miles between himself and his lax pursuer. This would be heard of in Shaftesville, - and be a candidate for reëlection! He beheld already an exchange of significant glances among his posse. Had he asked that simple question earlier he might

now be on his way back to Shaftesville, his prisoner braceleted with the idle handcuffs that jingled in his pocket as he moved.

        He caught at every illusive vagary that might promise to retrieve his error. He declared that she could not say which way Rick Tyler had taken because he was not gone.

        "He's in this house right now!" he exclaimed. He ordered a search, and the guests, a little while ago so friendly, began exploring every nook and cranny.

        "No, no!" cried the old woman, shrilly, as they tried the door of the shed-room, which was bolted and barred. "Ye can't tech that thar door. It can't be opened, - not ef the Gov'nor o' Tennessee war hyar himself, a-moan-in' an' a-honin' ter git in."

        The sheriff's eyes dilated. "Open the door, - I summon ye!" he proclaimed, with his imperative official manner.

        "No! - I done tole ye," she said indignantly. "The word o' the men folks hev been gin ter keep that thar door shet, an' shet it's goin' ter be kep'."

        The officer laid his hand upon it.

        "Ye must n't bust it open!" shrilled the old woman. "Laws-a-massy! ef thar be many sech ez you-uns in Shaftesville, I ain't s'prised none that the Bible gits ter mournin' over the

low kentry, an' calls it a vale o' tears an' the valley o' the shadder o' death!"

        The sheriff had placed his powerful shoulder against the frail batten floor.

        "Hyar goes!" he said.

        There was a crash; the door lay in splinters on the floor; the men rushed precipitately over it.

        They came back laughing sheepishly. The officer's face was angry and scarlet.

        "Don't take the bar'l, - don't take the bar'l!" the old woman besought of him, as she fairly hung upon his arm. "I dunno how the boys would cavort ef they kem back an' fund the bar'l gone."

        He gave her no heed. "Why n't ye tell me that man war n't thar?" he asked of the girl.

        "Ye did n't ax me that word," said Dorinda.

        "No, 'Cajah Green, ye did n't," said one of the men, who, since the abortive result of their leader's suspicion, were ashamed of their mission, and prone to self-exoneration. "I 'll stand up ter it ez she answered full an' true every word ez ye axed her."

        "Lor'-a'mighty! Ef I jes' knowed aforehand how it will tech the boys when they view the door down onto the floor!" exclaimed the old woman. "They mought jounce round

hyar ez ef they war bereft o' reason, an' all thar hope o' salvation hed hung on the hinges. An' then agin they mought 'low ez they hed ruther hev no door than be at the trouble o' shettin' it an' barrin' it up ez they come an' go. They air mighty onsartin in thar temper, an' I hev never hankered ter see 'em crost. But fur the glory's sake, don't tech the bar'l. It 's been sot thar ter age some, ef the Lord will spare it."

        In the girl's lucent eyes the officer detected a gleam of triumph. How far away in the tangled labyrinths of the mountain wilderness, among the deer-paths and the cataracts and the cliffs, had these long hours led Rick Tyler!

        He spoke on his angry impulse: "An' I ain't goin' ter furgit in a hurry how I hev fund out ez ye air a-consortin' with criminals, an' aidin' an' abettin' men ez air fleein' from jestice an' wanted fur murder. Ye look out; ye 'll find yerself in Shaftesville jail 'fore long, I'm a-thinkin'."

        "He stopped an' talked ez other folks stop an' talk," Dorinda retorted. "I could n't hender, an' I hed no mind ter hender. He took no bite nor sup ez others hev done. 'Pears like ter me ez we hev gin aid an' comfort ter the off'cer o' the law, ez well ez we could."

        And this was the story that went down to Shaftesville.

        The man, his wrath rebounding upon himself, hung his head, and went down to the trough, and mounted his horse without another word.

        The others hardly knew what to say to Dorinda. But they were more deliberate in their departure, and hung around apologizing in their rude way to the old woman, who convulsively besought each to spare the barrel, which had been set in the shed-room to "age some, ef it could be lef' alone."

        Dorinda stood under the jack-bean vines, blossoming purple and white, and watched the men as they silently rode away. All the pride within her was stirred. Every sensitive fibre flinched from the officer's coarse threat. She followed him out of sight with vengeful eyes.

        "I wish I war a man!" she cried, passionately.

        "A-law, D'rindy!" exclaimed her grandmother, aghast at the idea. "That ain't manners!"

        The shadows were beginning to creep slowly up the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, as if they came from the depths of the earth. A roseate suffusion idealized range and peak to the east. The delicate skyey background of opaline tints and lustre made distinct and definite their majestic symmetry of outline. Ah!

and the air was so clear! What infinite lengths of elastic distances stretched between that quivering trumpet-flower by the fence and the azure heights which its scarlet horn might almost seem to cover! The sun, its yellow blaze burned out, and now a sphere of smouldering fire, was dropping down behind Chilhowee, royally purple, richly dark. Wings were in the air and every instinct was homeward. An eagle, with a shadow skurrying through the valley like some forlorn Icarus that might not soar, swept high over the landscape. Above all rose the great "bald," still splendidly illumined with the red glamour of the sunset, and holding its uncovered head so loftily against the sky that it might seem it had bared its brow before the majesty of heaven.

        When the "men folks," great, gaunt, bearded, jeans-clad fellows, stood in the shed-room and gazed at the splintered door upon the floor, it was difficult to judge what was the prevailing sentiment, so dawdling, so uncommunicative, so inexpressive of gesture, were they.

        "We knowed ez thar war strangers prowlin' roun'," said the master of the house, when he had heard his mother's excited account of the events of the day. "We war a-startin' home ter dinner, an' seen thar beastises hitched thar a-nigh the trough. An' I 'lowed ez mebbe they

mought be the revenue devils, so I jes' made the boys lay low. An' Sol war set ter watch, an' he gin tile word when they hed rid away."

        He was a man of fifty-five, perhaps, tough and stalwart. His face was as lined and seamed as that of his mother, who had counted nearly fourscore years, but his frame was almost as supple as at thirty. This trait of physical vigor was manifested in each of his muscular sons, and despite their slow and lank uncouthness, their movements suggested latent elasticity. In Dorinda, his only daughter, it graced her youth and perfected her beauty. He was known far and wide as "Ground-hog Cayce," but he would tell you, with a flash of the eye, that before the war he bore the Christian name of John.

        Nothing more was said on the subject until after supper, when they were all sitting, dusky shadows, on the little porch, where the fireflies sparkled and the vines fluttered, and one might look out and see the new moon, in the similitude of a silver boat, sailing down the western skies, off the headlands of Chilhowee. A cricket was shrilling in the weeds. The vague, sighing voice of the woods rose and fell with a melancholy monody. A creamy elder blossom glimmered in a corner of the rail fence, hard by, its delicate, delicious odor pervading the air.

        "I never knowed," said one of the young men, "ez this hyar sher'ff - this 'Cajah Green - war sech a headin' critter."

        "He never teched the bar'l," said the old woman, not wishing that he should appear blacker than he had painted himself.

        "I s'pose you-uns gin him an' his gang a bite an' sup," remarked Ground-hog Cayce.

        "They eat a sizable dinner hyar," put in Mirandy Jane, who, having cooked it, had no mind that it should be belittled.

        "An' they stayed a right smart while, an' talked powerful frien'ly an' sociable-like," said old Mrs. Cayce, "till the sher'ff got addled with the notion that we hed Rick Tyler hid hyar. An' unless we-uns hed tied him in the cheer or shot him, nuthin' in natur' could hev held him. I 'lowed 't war the dram he tuk, though D'rindy, thinks differ. They never teched the bar'l, though."

        "An' then," said Dorinda, with a sudden gush of tears, all the afflicted delicacy of a young and tender woman, all the overweening pride of the mountaineer, throbbing wildly in her veins, her heart afire, her helpless hands trembling, "he said the word ez he would lock me up in the jail at Shaftesville, sence I hed owned ter seein' a man ez he war n't peart enough ter ketch. He spoke that word ter me, - the jail!"

        She hung sobbing in the doorway.

        There was a murmur of indignation among the group, and John Cayce rose to his feet with furious oath.

        "He shell rue it" he cried, - "he shell rue it! Me an' mine take no word off'n nobody. My gran'dad an' his three brothers, one hunderd an' fourteen year ago, kem hyar from the old North State an' settled in the Big Smoky. They an' thar sons rooted up the wilderness. They crapped. They fit the beastis; they fit the Injun; they fit the British; an' this last little war o' ourn they fit each other. Thar hev never been a coward 'mongst 'em. Thar hev never been a key turned on one of 'em, or a door shet. They hev respected the law fur what it war wuth, an' they hev stood up fur thar rights agin it. They answer fur thar word, an' others hev ter answer." He paused for a moment.

        The moon, still in the similitude of a silver boat, swung at anchor in a deep indentation in the summit of Chilhowee that looked like some lonely pine-girt bay; what strange, mysterious fancies did it land from its cargo of sentiments and superstitions and uncanny influences!

        "Drindy," her father commanded, "make a mark on this hyar rifie-bar'l fur 'Cajah Green's word ter be remembered by."

        There was a flash in the faint moonbeams, as he held out to her a long, sharp knife. The rifle was in his hand. Other marks were on it commemorating past events. This was to be a foregone conclusion.

        "No, no!" cried the girl, shrinking back aghast. "I don't want him shot. I would n't hev him hurted fur me, fur nuthin'! I ain't keerin' now fur what he said. Let him be, - let him be."

        She had smarted under the sense of indignity. She had wanted their sympathy, and perhaps their idle anger. She was dismayed by the revengeful passion she had roused.

        "No, no!" she reiterated, as one of the younger men, her brother Peter, stepped swiftly out from the shadow, seized her hand with the knife trembling in it, and, catching the moonlight on the barrel of the rifle, guided upon it, close to the muzzle, the mark of a cross.

        The moon had weighed anchor at last, and dropped down behind the mountain summit, leaving the bay with a melancholy waning suffusion of light, and the night very dark.

II.

        So little speed they made that it seemed to Rick Tyler that weeks multiplied while they loitered.

        It might have been deemed the ideal of a sylvan life, - those days while he lay hid out on the Big Smoky. His rifle brought him food with but the glance of the eye and a touch on the trigger. "Ekal ter the prophet's raven, ef the truth war knowed," he said sometimes, while he cooked the game over a fire of deadwood gathered by the wayside. A handful of blackberries gave it a relish, and there were the ice-cold, never-failing springs of the range wherever he might turn.

        But for the unquiet thoughts that followed him from the world, the characteristic sloth of

the mountaineer might have spared him all sense of tedium, as he lay on the bank of a mountain stream, while the slow days waxed and waned. Often he would see a musk-rat - picturesque little body - swimming in a muddy dip. And again his listless gaze was riveted upon the quivering diaphanous wings of a snake-doctor, hovering close at hand, until the grotesque, airy thing would flit away. The arrowy sunbeams shot into the dense umbrageous tangles, and fell spent to earth as the shadows swayed. Farther down the stream two huge cliffs rose on either side of the channel, giving a narrow view of far-away blue mountains as through a gate. In and out stole the mist, uncertain whither. The wind came and went, paying no toll. Sometimes, when the sun was low, a shadow - an antlered shadow - slipped through like a fantasy.

        But when the skies would begin to darken and the night come tardily on, the scanty incidents of the day lost their ephemeral interest. His human heart would assert itself, and he would yearn for the life from which he was banished, and writhe with an intolerable anguish under his sense of injury.

        "An' the law holds me the same ez' Bednego Tynes, who killed Joel Byers, jes' ter keep his hand in, - hevin' killed another man afore, - an' I never so much ez lifted a finger agin him!"

        He pondered much on his past, and the future that he had lost. Sometimes he gave himself to adjusting, from the meagre circumstances of their common lot on Big Smoky, the future of those with whose lives his own had heretofore seemed an integrant part, and from which it should forevermore be dissevered. All the pangs of penance were in that sense of irrevocability. It was done, and here was his choice: to live the life of a skulking wolf, to prowl, to flee, to fight at bay, or to return and confront an outraged law. He experienced a frenzy of rage to realize how hardily his world would roll on without him. Big Smoky would not suffer! The sun would shine, and the crops ripen, and the harvest come, and the snows sift down, and the seasons revolve. The boys would shoot for beef, and there was to be a gander-pulling at the Settlement when the candidates should come, "stumpin' the Big Smoky" for the midsummer elections. And when, periodically, "the mountings" would awake to a sense of sin, and a revival would be instituted, all the people would meet, and clap their hands, and sing, and pray, and that busy sinner, D'rindy, might find time to think upon grace, and perhaps upon the man whom she likened to the prophets of old.

        Then Rick Tyler would start up from his bed of boughs, and stride wildly about among the

bowlders, hardly pausing to listen if he heard a wolf howling on the lonely heights. An owl would hoot derisively from the tangled laurel. And oh, the melancholy moonlight in the melancholy pines, where the whip-poor-will moaned and moaned!

        "I 'd shoot that critter ef I could make out ter see him!" cried the harassed fugitive, his every nerve quivering.

        It all began with Dorinda; it all came back to her. He drearily foresaw that she would forget him; and yet he could not know how the alienation was to commence, how it should progress, and the process of its completion. "All whilst I'm a-roamin' off with the painters an' sech!" he exclaimed, bitterly.

        And she, - her future was plain enough. There was a little log-cabin by the grist-mill: the mountains sheltered it; the valley held it as in the palm of a hand. Hardly a moment since, his jealous heart had been racked by the thought of the man she likened to the prophets of old, and now he saw her spinning in the door of Amos James's house, in the quiet depths of Eskaqua Cove.

        This vision stilled his heart. He was numbed by his despair. Somehow, the burly young miller seemed a fitter choice than the religious enthusiast, whose leisure was spent in praying

in the desert places. He wondered that he should ever have felt other jealousy, and was subacutely amazed to find this passion so elastic.

        With wild and haggard eyes he saw the day break upon this vision. It came in at the great gate, - a pale flush, a fainting star, a burst of song, and the red and royal sun.

        The morning gradually exerted its revivifying influence and brought a new impulse. He easily deceived himself, and disguised it as a reason.

        "This hyar powder is a-gittin' mighty low," he said to himself, examining the contents of his powder-horn. "An' that thar rifle eats it up toler'ble fast sence I hev hed ter hunt varmints fur my vittles. Ef that war the sher'ff a-ridin' arter me the day I war at Cayce's, he's done gone whar he b'longs by this time, - 't war two weeks ago; an' ef he ain't gone back he would n't be layin' fur me roun' the Settlemint, nohow. An' I kin git some powder thar, an' hear 'em tell what the mounting air a-doin' of. An' mebbe I won't be so durned lonesome when I gits back hyar."

        He mounted his horse, later in the day, and picked his way slowly down the banks of the stream and through the great gate.

        The Settlement on a spur of the Big Smoky illustrated the sacrilege of civilization. A number

of trees, girdled years ago, stretched above the fields their gigantic skeletons, suggesting their former majesty of mien and splendid proportions. Their forlorn leafless branches rattled together with a dreary sound, as the breeze stirred among the gaunt and pallid assemblage. The little log-cabins, five or six in number, were so situated among the stumps which disfigured the clearing that if a sudden wind should bring down one of the monarchical spectres of the forest it would make havoc only in the crops. The wheat was thin and backward. A little patch of cotton in a mellow dip served to show the plant at its minimum. There was tobacco, too, placed like the cotton where it was hoped it would take a notion to grow. Sorghum flourished, and the tasseled Indian corn, waving down a slope, had aboriginal suggestions of plumed heads and glancing quivers. A clamor of Guinea fowls arose, and geese and turkeys roved about in the publicity of the clearing with the confident air of esteemed citizens. Sheep were feeding among the ledges.

        It was hard to say what might be bought at the store except powder and coffee, and sugar perhaps, if "long-sweetenin'"might not suffice; for each of the half dozen small farms was a type of the region, producing within its own confines all its necessities. Hand-looms could

be glimpsed through open doors, and as yet the dry-goods trade is unknown to the homespunclad denizens of the Settlement. Beeswax, feathers, honey, dried fruit, are bartered here, and a night's rest has never been lost for the perplexities of the currency question on the Big Smoky Mountains.

        The proprietor of the store, his operations thus limited, was content to grow rich slowly, if needs were to grow rich at all. In winter he sat before the great wood fire in the store and smoked his pipe, and his crony, the blacksmith, often came, hammer in hand and girded with his leather apron, and smoked with him. In the summer he sat all day, as now, in front of the door, looking meditatively at the scene before him. The sunlight slanted upon the great dead trees; their forms were imposed with a wonderful distinctness upon the landscape that stretched so far below the precipice on which the little town was perched. They even touched, with those bereaved and denuded limbs, the far blue mountains encircling the horizon, and with their interlacing lines and curves they seemed some mysterious scripture engraven upon the world.

        It was just six o'clock, and the shadow of a bough that still held a mass of woven sticks, once the nest of an eagle, had reached the verge

of the cliff, when the sound of hoofs fell on the still air, and a man rode into the clearing from the encompassing woods.

        The storekeeper glanced up to greet the newcomer, but did not risk the fatigue of rising. Women looked out of the windows, and a girl on a porch, reeling yarn, found a reason to stop her work. A man came out of a house close by, and sat on the fence, within range of any colloquy in which he might wish to participate. The whole town could join at will in a municipal conversation. The forge fire showed a dull red against the dusky brown shadows in the recesses of the shop. The blacksmith stood in front of the door, his eyes shielded with his broad blackened right hand, and looked critically at the steed. Horses were more in his line than men. He was a tall, powerfully built fellow of thirty, perhaps, with the sooty aspect peculiar to his calling, a swarthy complexion, and a remarkably well-knit, compact, and muscular frame. He often said in pride, "Ef I hed hed the forgin' o' myself, I would n't hev welded on a pound more, or hammered out a leader differ."

        Suddenly detaching his attention from the horse, he called out, "Waal, sir! Ef thar ain't Rick Tyler!" This was addressed to the town at large. Then, "What ails ye, Rick? I hearn

tell ez you-uns war on yer way ter Shaftesville along o' the sher'ff." He had a keen and twinkling eye. He cast it significantly at the man on the fence. "Ye kem back, I reckon, ter git yer hand-cuffs mended at my shop. Gimme the bracelets." He held out his hand in affected anxiety.

        "I ain't a-wearin' no bracelets now." Rick Tyler's hasty impulse had its impressiveness. He leveled his pistol. "Ef ye hanker ter do enny mendin', I 'll gin ye repairs ter make in them cast-iron chit'lings o' yourn," he said, coolly.

        He was received at the store with a distinct accession of respect. The blacksmith stood watching him, with angry eyes, and a furtive recollection of the reward offered by the governor for his apprehension.

        The young fellow, with a sudden return of caution, did not at once venture to dismount; and Nathan Hoodendin, the storekeeper, rose for no customer. Respectively seated, for these diverse reasons, they transacted the negotiation.

        "Hy're, Rick," drawled the storekeeper, languidly. "I hopes ye keeps yer health," he added, politely.

        The young man melted at the friendly tone. This was the welcome he had looked for at the

Settlement. Loneliness had made his sensibilities tender, and "hiding out " affected his spirits more than dodging the officers in the haunts of men, or daring the cupidity roused, he knew, by the reward for his capture. The blacksmith's jeer touched him as cruelly as an attempt upon his liberty. "Jes' toler'ble," he admitted, with the usual rural reluctance to acknowledge full health. "I hopes ye an' yer fambly air thrivin'," he drawled, after a moment.

        A whiff came from the storekeeper's pipe; the smoke wreathed before his face, and floated away.

        "Waal, we air makin' out, - we air makin' out."

        "I kem over hyar," said Rick Tyler, proceeding to business, "ter git some powder out'n yer store. I wants one pound."

        Nathan Hoodendin smoked silently for a moment. Then, with a facial convulsion and a physical wrench, he lifted his voice.

        "Jer'miah!" he shouted in a wild wheeze. And again, "Jer'miah!"

        The invoked Jer'miah did not materialize at once. When a small tow-headed boy of ten came from a house among the stumps, with that peculiar deftness of tread characteristic of the habitually barefoot, he had an alert, startled

expression, as if he had just jumped out of a bush. His hair stood up in front; he had wide pop-eyes, and long ears, and a rabbit-like aspect that was not diminished as he scudded round the heels of Rick Tyler's horse, at which he looked apprehensively.

        "Jer'miah," said his father, with a pathetic cadence, "go into the store, bub, an' git Rick Tyler a pound o' powder."

        As Jeremiah started in, the paternal sentiment stirred in Nathan Hoodendin's breast.

        "Jer'miah," he wheezed, bringing the forelegs of the chair to the ground, and craning forward with unwonted alacrity to look into the dusky interior of the store, "don't ye be foolin' round that thar powder with no lighted tallow dip nor nuthin'. I 'll whale the life out'n ye ef ye do. Jes' weigh it by the winder."

        Whether from fear of a whaling by his active parent, or of the conjunction of a lighted tallow dip and powder, Jeremiah dispensed with the candle. He brought the commodity out presently, and Rick stowed it away in his saddlebags.

        "Can't ye 'light an' sot a while 'an talk, Rick?" said the storekeeper. "We-uns hev done hed our supper, but I reckon they could fix ye a snack yander ter the house."

        Rick said he wanted nothing to eat, but,

although he hesitated, he could not finally resist the splint-bottomed chair tilted against the wall of the store, and a sociable pipe, and the countryside gossip.

        "What's goin' on 'round the mounting?" he asked.

        Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, came and sat in another chair, and the man on the fence got off and took up his position on a stump hard by. The great red sun dropped slowly behind the purple mountains; and the full golden moon rose above the corn-field that lay on the eastern slope, and hung there between the dark woods on either hand; and the blades caught the light, and tossed with burnished flashes into the night; and the great ghastly trees assumed a ghostly whiteness; and the mystic writing laid on the landscape below had the aspect of an uninterpreted portent. The houses were mostly silent; now and then a guard-dog growled at some occult alarm; a woman somewhere was softly and fitfully singing a child to sleep, and the baby crooned too, and joined in the vague, drowsy ditty. And for aught else that could be seen, and for aught else that could be heard, this was the world.

        "Waal, the Tempter air fairly stalkin' abroad on the Big Smoky, - leastwise sence the summer season hev opened," said Nathan Hoodendin.

His habitual expression of heavy, joyless pondering had been so graven into his face that his raised grizzled eyebrows, surmounted by a multitude of perplexed wrinkles, his long, dismayed jaw, his thin, slightly parted lips, and the deep grooves on either side of his nose were not susceptible of many gradations of meaning. His shifting eyes, cast now at the stark trees, now at the splendid disk of the rising moon, betokened but little anxiety for the Principle of Evil aloose in the Big Smoky. "Fust, - lemme see, - thar war Eph Lowry, ez got inter a quar'l with his wife's half-brother's cousin, an' a-tusslin' 'roun' they cut one another right smart, an' some say ez Eph 'll never hev his eyesight right good no more. Then thar war Baker Teal, what the folks in Eskaqua Cove 'low let down the bars o' the milk-sick pen, one day las' fall, an' druv Jacob White's red cow in; an' his folks never knowed she hed grazed thar till they hed milked an' churned fur butter, when she lay down an' died o' the milksick. Ef they hed drunk her milk same ez common, 't would hev sickened 'em, sure, 'an mebbe killed 'em. An' they've been quar'lin' 'bout'n it ever sence. Satan's a-stirrin', - Satan's a-stirrin' 'roun' the Big Smoky."

        "Waal, I hearn ez some o' them folks in Eskaqua Cove 'low ez the red cow jes' hooked

down the bars, bein' a turrible hooker," spoke up the man on the stump, unexpectedly.

        "Waal, White an' his folks won't hear ter no sech word ez that," said the blacksmith; "an' arter jowin' an' jowin' back an' fo'th they went t'other day an' informed on Teal 'fore the jestice, an' the Squair fined him twenty-five dollars, 'cordin' ter the law o' Tennessee fur them ez m'liciously lets down the bars o' the milk-sick pen. An' Baker Teal hed ter pay, an' the county treasury an' the informers divided the money 'twixt 'em."

        "What did I tell you-uns? Satan's a-stirrin', - Satan's a-stirrin' 'roun' the Big Smoky," said the storekeeper, with a certain morbid pride in the Enemy's activity.

        "The constable o' this hyar deestric'," recommenced Gid Fletcher, who seemed as well informed as Nathan Hoodendin, "he advised 'em ter lay it afore the jestice; he war mighty peart 'bout'n that thar job. They 'low ter me ez he hev tuk up a crazy fit ez he kin beat Micajah Green fur sher'ff, an' he's a-skeetin' arter law-breakers same ez a rooster arter a Juny-bug. He 'lows it'll show the kentry what a peart sher'ff he'd make."

        "Shucks!" said the man on the stump. "I'll vote fur 'Cajah Green fur sher'ff agin the old boy; he hev got a nose fur game."

        "He hain't nosed you-uns out yit, hev be, Rick?" said the blacksmith, with feigned heartiness and a covert sneer.

        "Ho! ho! ho!" laughed Nathan Hoodendin. "What war I a-tellin' you-uns? Satan's a-stirrin', - Satan's surely a stirrin' on the Big Smoky."

        Rick sat silent in the moonlight, smoking his pipe, his brown wool hat far back, the light full on his yellow head. His face had grown a trifle less square, and his features were more distinctly defined than of yore; he did not look ill, but care had drawn a sharp line here and there.

        "One sher'ff's same ter you-uns ez another, ain't he, Rick?" said the man on the stump. "Any of 'em 'll do ter run from."

        "They tell it ter me," said the storekeeper, with so sudden a vivacity that it seemed it must crack his graven wrinkles, "ez the whole Cayce gang air a-goin' ter vote agin 'Cajah Green, 'count o' the way he jawed at old Mis' Cayce an' D'rindy, the day he run you-uns off from thar, Rick."

        "I ain't hearn tell o' that yit," drawled Rick, desolately, "bein' hid out."

        "Waal, he jawed at D'rindy, an' from what I hev hearn D'rindy jawed back; an' I dunno ez that's s'prisin', - the gal-folks ginerally do.

Leastwise, I know ez he sent word arterward ter D'rindy, by his dep'ty, - ez war a-scoutin' 'roun' hyar, arter you-uns, I reckon, Rick, - ez he would be up some day soon ter 'lectioneer, an' he war a-goin' ter stop ter thar house an' ax her pardin'. An' she sent him word, fur God's sake ter bide away from thar."

        A long pause ensued; the stars were faint and few; the iterative note of the katydid vibrated monotonously in the dark woods; dew was falling; the wind stirred.

        "What ailed D'rindy ter say that word?" asked Rick, mystified.

        "Waal, I dunno," said Hoodendin, indifferently. "I hev never addled my brains tryin' ter make out what a woman means. Though," he qualified, "I did ax the dep'ty an' Amos Jeemes from down yander in Eskaqua Cove, - the dep'ty hed purtended ter hev summonsed him ez a posse, an' they war jes' rollickin' 'roan' the kentry like two chickens with thar heads off, - I axed 'em what D'rindy meant, an' they 'lowed they did n't know, nor war they takin' it ter heart. They 'lowed ez she never axed them ter bide away from thar fur God's sake. An' then they snickered an' laffed, like single men do. An' I up an' tole 'em ez the Book sot it down ez the laffter o' fools is like the cracklin' o' bresh under a pot."

        Rick Tyler was eager, his eyes kindling, his breath quick. He looked with uncharacteristic alertness at the inexpressive face of the leisurely narrator.

        "They capered like a dunno-what-all on the Big Smoky, them two, - the off'cer o' the law an' his posse! Thar goin's on war jes' scandalous: they played kyerds, an' they consorted with the moonshiners over yander," nodding his head at the wilderness, "an' got ez drunk ez two fraish biled owels; an' they sung an' they hollered. An' they went ter the meetin'-house over yander whilst they war in liquor, an' the preacher riz up an' put 'em out. He's toler'ble tough, that thar Pa'son Kelsey, an' kin hold right smart show in a fight. An' the deputy, he straightened hisself, an' 'lowed he war a off'cer o' the law. An' Pa'son Kelsey, he 'lowed he war a off'cer o' the law, an' he 'lowed ez his law war higher 'n the law o' Tennessee. An' with that he barred up the door. They hed a cornsider'ble disturbamint at the meetin'-house yander at the Notch, an' the saints war tried in thar temper."

        "The dep'ty 'lows ez Pa'son Kelsey air crazy in his mind," said the man on the stump. "The dep'ty said the pa'son talked ter him like ez ef he war a onregenerate critter. An' he 'lowed he war baptized in Scolacutta River two year ago

an' better. The dep'ty say these hyar mounting preachers hain't got no doctrine like the valley folks. He called Pa'son Kelsey a ignorant cuss!"

        "Laws-a-massy!" exclaimed Nathan Hoodendin, scandalized.

        "He say it fairly makes him laff ter hear Pa'son Kelsey performin' like he hed a cutthroat mortgage on a seat 'mongst the angels. He say ez he thinks Pa'son Kelsey speaks with more insurance 'n enny man he ever see."

        "I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, the dep'ty ain't got no religion, an' never war in Scolacutta River, 'thout it war a-fishin'," said the blacksmith, meditatively.

        The fugitive from justice, pining for the simple society of his world, listened like a starveling thing to these meagre details, so replete with interest to him, so full of life and spirit. The next moment he was sorry he had come.

        "That thar Amos Jeemes air a comical critter," said the man on the stump, after an interval of cogitation, and with a gurgling reminiscent laugh "He war a-cuttin' up his shines over thar ter Cayce's the t'other day; he war n't drunk then, ye onderstan'" -

        "I onderstan'. He war jes' fool, like he always air," said the blacksmith.

        "Edzactly," assented the man on the stump.

"An' he fairly made D'rindy laff ter see what the critter would say nex'. An' D'rindy always seemed ter me a powerful solemn sorter gal. Waal, she laffed at Amos. An' whilst him an' the deputy war a-goin' down the mounting - I went down ter Jeemes's mill ter leave some grist over night ter be ground - the dep'ty, he run Amos 'bout'n it. The dep'ty he 'lowed ez no gal hed ever made so much fun o' him, an' Amos 'lowed ez D'rindy did n't make game o' him. She thunk too much o' him fur that. An' that bold-faced dep'ty, he 'lowed he thought 't war him ez hed fund favior. An' Amos, - we war mighty nigh down in Eskaqua Cove then, - he turned suddint an' p'inted up the mounting. 'What kin you-uns view on the mounting?' he axed. The dep'ty, he stopped an' stared; an' thar, mighty nigh ez high ez the lower e-end o' the bald, war a light. 'That shines fur me ter see whilst I'm 'bleeged ter be in Eskaqua Cove,' sez Amos. An' the dep'ty said, 'I think it air a star!' An' Amos sez, sez he, 'Bless yer bones, I think so, too, - sometimes!' But 't war n't no star. 'T war jes' a light in the roof-room window o' Cayce's house; an' ye could see it, sure enough, plumb to the mill in Eskaqua Cove!"

        Rick rose to go. Why should he linger, and wring his heart, and garner bitterness to feed

upon in his lonely days? Why should he look upon the outer darkness of his life, and dream of the star that shone so far for another man's sake into the sheltered depths of Eskaqua Cove? He had an impulse which he scorned, for his sight was blurred as he laid his hand on the pommel of his saddle. He did not see that one of the other men rose, too.

        An approach, stealthy, swift, and the sinewy blacksmith flung himself upon his prisoner with the supple ferocity of a panther.

        "Naw - naw!" he said, showing his strong teeth, closely set. "We can't part with ye yit, Rick Tyler! I'll arrest you-uns, ef the sher'ff can't. The peace o' Big Smoky an' the law o' the land air ez dear ter me ez ter enny other man."

        The young fellow made a frantic effort to mount; then, as his horse sprang snorting away, he strove to draw one of his pistols. There was a turbulent struggle under the great silver moon and the dead trees. Again and again the swaying figures and their interlocked shadows reeled to the verge of the cliff; one striving to fall and carry the other with him, the other straining every nerve to hold back his captive.

        Even the storekeeper stood up and wheezed out a remonstrance.

        "Look-a-hyar, boys" - he began; then,

"Jer'miah," he broke off abruptly, as the hopeful scion peered shyly out of the store door, "clar out'n the way, sonny; they hev got shootin'-irons, an' some o' em mought go off."

        He himself stepped prudently back. The man on the stump, however, forgot danger in his excitement. He sat and watched the scene with an eager relish which might suggest that a love of bull-fights is not a cultivated taste.

        "Be them men a-wrastlin'?" called out a woman, appearing in the doorway of a neighboring house.

        "'Pears like it ter me," he said, dryly.

        The strength of despair had served to make the younger man the blacksmith's equal, and the contest might have terminated differently had Rick Tyler not stumbled on a ledge. He was forced to his knees, then full upon the ground, his antagonist's grasp upon his throat. The blacksmith roared out for help; the man on the stump slowly responded, and the storekeeper languidly came and overlooked the operation, as the young fellow was disarmed and securely bound, hand and foot.

        "Waal, now, Gid Fletcher, ye hev got him," said Nathan Hoodendin. "What d' ye want with him?"

        The blacksmith had risen, panting, with wild eyes, his veins standing out in thick cords,

perspiring from every pore, and in a bounding fury.

        "What do I want with him? I want ter put his head on my anvil thar, an' beat the foolishness out'n it with my hammer. I want ter kick him off'n this hyar bluff down ter the forge fires o' hell. That air what I want. An' the State o' Tennessee ain't wantin' much differ."

        "Gid Fletcher," said the man who had been sitting on the stump, - he spoke in an accusing voice, - "ye ain't keerin' nuthin' fur the law o' the land, nor the peace o' Big Smoky, nuther. It air jes' that two hunderd dollars blood money ye air cottonin' ter, an' ye knows it."

        The love of money, the root of evil, is so rare in the mountains that the blacksmith stood as before a deep reproof. Then, with a moral hardihood that matched his physical prowess, he asked, "An' what ef I be?"

        "What war I a-tellin' you-uns? Satan's a-stirrin', - Satan's a-stirrin' on the Big Smoky!" interpolated old Hoodendin.

        "Waal, I 'd never hev been hankerin' fur sech," drawled the moralist.

        A number of other men had come out from the houses, and a discussion ensued as to the best plan to keep the prisoner until morning. It was suggested that the time-honored

expedient in localities without the civilization of a jail - a wagon-body inverted, with a rock upon it - would be as secure as the state prison.

        "But who wants ter go ter heftin' rocks?" asked Nathan Hoodendin, pertinently.

        For the sake of convenience, therefore, they left the prisoner bound with a rope made fast around a stump, that he might not, in his desperation, roll himself from the crag, and deputing a number of the men to watch him by turns, the Settlement retired to its slumbers.

        The night wore on; the moon journeyed toward the mountains in the west; the mists rose to meet it, and glistened like a silver sea. Some lonely, undiscovered ocean, this; never a sail set, never a pennant flying; all the valley was submerged; the black summits in the distance were isolated and insular; the moonlight glanced on the sparkling ripples, on the long reaches of illusive vapor.

        At intervals cocks crew; a faint response, like farthest echoes, came from some neighboring cove; and then silence, save for the drone of the nocturnal insects and the far blast of a hunter's horn.

        "Jer'miah," said Rick Tyler, suddenly, as the boy crouched by one of the stumps and watched him with dilated, moonlit eyes, -

when Nathan Hoodendin's vigil came the little factotum served in his stead, - "Jer'miah, git my knife out 'n the store an' cut these hyar ropes. I'll gin ye my rifle ef ye will."

        The boy sprang up, scudded off swiftly, then came back, and crouched by the stump again.

        The moon slipped lower and lower; the silver sea had turned to molten gold; the stars that had journeyed westward with the moon were dying out of a dim blue sky. Over the corn-field in the east was one larger than the rest, burning in an amber haze, charged with an unspoken poetical emotion that set its heart of white fire aquiver.

        "I 'll gin ye my horse ef ye will."

        "I dassent," said Jer'miah.

        The morning star was burned out at last, and the prosaic day came over the corn-field.

III.

        Dorinda, hunting for the vagrant "crumply cow," paused sometimes when the wandering path led to the mountain's brink, and looked down those gigantic slopes and unmeasured depths. She carried her milk-piggin, and her head was uncovered. Now and then she called with long, vague vowels, "Soo - cow! Soo!" There was no response save the echoes and the vibrant iteration of the katydid. Once she heard an alien sound, and she paused to listen. From the projecting spur where she stood, looking across the Cove, she could see, above the forests on the slopes, the bare, uprising dome, towering in stupendous proportions against the sky. The sound came again and yet again, and she recognized the voice of the

man who was wont to go and pray in the desert places on the "bald" of the mountain, and whom she had likened to the prophets of old. There was something indescribably wild and weird in those appealing, tempestuous tones, now rising as in frenzy, and now falling as with exhaustion, - beseeching, adjuring, reproaching.

        "He hev fairly beset the throne o' grace!" she said, with a sort of pity for this insistent piety. A shivering, filmy mist was slipping down over the great dome. It glittered in the last rays of the sunlight, already vanished from the world below, like an illuminated silver gauze. She was reminded of the veil of the temple, and she had a sense of intrusion.

        "Prayer, though, air free for all," she remarked, as self-justification, since she had paused to hear.

        She did not linger. His voice died in the distance, and the solemnity of the impression was gradually obliterated. As she went she presently began to sing, sometimes interpolating, without a sense of interruption, her mellow call of "Soo - cow! Soo!" until it took the semblance of a refrain, with an abrupt crescendo. The wild roses were flowering along the paths, and the pink and white azaleas, - what perfumed ways, what lavish grace and beauty! The blooms of the laurel in the darkling

places were like a spangling of stars. Dew was falling, - it dashed into her face from the boughs that interlaced across the unfrequented path, - and still the light lingered, loath to leave. She heard the stir of some wild things in the hollow of a great tree, and then a faint, low growl. She fancied she saw a pair of bright eyes looking apprehensively at her.

        "We-uns hev got a baby at our house, too, an' we don't want yourn, ma'am; much obleeged, all the same," she said, with a laugh. But she looked back with a sort of pity for that alert maternal fear, and she never mentioned to the youngest brother, a persistent trapper, the little family of raccoons in the woods.

        She had forgotten the voice raised in importunate supplication on the "bald," until, pursuing the path, she was led into the road, hard by a little bridge, or more properly culvert, which had rotted long ago; the vines came up through the cavities in the timbers, and a blackberry bush, with a wren's nest, flourished in their midst. The road was fain to wade through the stream; but the channel was dry now, - a narrow belt of yellow sand lying in a long curving vista in the midst of the dense woods. A yoke of oxen, drawing a rude slide, paused to rest in the middle of the channel, and beside them was a man, of medium height, slender

but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder, and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair, that hung down to the collar of his coat. Her singing had prepared him for her advent, but he barely raised his eyes. That quick glance was incongruous with his dullard aspect; it held a spark of fire, inspiration, frenzy, - who can say?

        He spoke suddenly, in a meek, drawling way, and with the air of submitting the proposition: -

        "I hev gin the beastises a toler'ble hard day's work, an' I 'm a favorin' 'em goin' home."

        A long pause ensued. The oxen hung down their weary heads, with the symbol of slavery upon them. The smell of ferns and damp mould was on the air. Rotting logs lay here and there, where the failing water had stranded them. The grape-vine, draping the giant oaks, swayed gently, and suggested an observation to break the silence.

        "How air the moral vineyard a-thrivin'?" she asked, solemnly.

        He looked downcast. "Toler'ble, I reckon."

        "I hearn tell ez thar war a right smart passel o' folks baptized over yander in Scolacutta River," she remarked, encouragingly.

        "I baptized fourteen."

        She turned the warm brightness of her eyes upon him. "They hed all fund grace!" she exclaimed.

        "They 'lowed so. I hopes they'll prove it by thar works," he said, without enthusiasm.

        "Ye war a-prayin' fur 'em on the bald?" she asked, apprehending that he accounted these converts peculiarly precarious.

        "Naw," he replied, with moody sincerity; "I war a-prayin' for myself."

        There was another pause, longer and more awkward than before.

        "What work be you-uns a-doin' of?" asked Dorinda, timidly. She quailed a trifle before the uncomprehended light in his eyes. It was not of her world, she felt instinctively.

        "I hev ploughed some, holpin' Jonas Trice, an' hev been a-haulin' wood. I tuk my rifle along," he added, "thinkin' I mought see suthin' ez would be tasty fur the old men's supper ez I kem home, but I forgot ter look around keen."

        There was a sudden sound along the road, - a sound of quick hoof-beats. Because of the deep sand the rider was close at hand before his approach was discovered. He drew rein abruptly, and they saw that it was Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith of the Settlement.

        "Hev you-uns hearn the news?" he cried, excitedly, as he threw himself from the saddle.

        The man, leaning on the rifle, looked up, with no question in his eyes. There was an almost monastic indifference to the world suggested in his manner.

        "Thar 's a mighty disturbamint at the Settlemint.

        Las' night this hyar Rick Tyler, - what air under indictment fur a-killin' o' Joel Byers, - he kem a-nosin' 'roun' the Settlemint a-tryin' ter buy powder" -

        Dorinda stretched out her hand; the trees were unsteady before her; the few faint stars, no longer pulsating points of light, described a circle of dazzling gleams. She caught at the yoke on the neck of the oxen; she leaned upon the impassive beast, and then it seemed that every faculty was merged in the sense of hearing. The horse had moved away from the blacksmith, holding his head down among the bowlders, and snuffing about for the water he remembered here with a disappointment almost pathetic.

        "War he tuk?" demanded the preacher.

        "Percisely so," drawled the blacksmith, with a sub-current of elation in his tone.

        There was a sudden change in Kelsey's manner. He turned fiery eyes upon the blacksmith. Light and life were in every line of his

face. He drew himself up tense and erect; he stretched forth his hand with an accusing gesture.

        "T war you-uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy!"

        "Lord, pa'son, how 'd you-uns know that?" exclaimed the blacksmith. His manner combined a deference, which in civilization we reccognize as respect for the cloth, with the easy familiarity, induced by the association since boyhood, of equals in age and station. "I hed n't let on a word, hed I, D'rindy?"

        The idea of an abnormal foreknowledge, mysteriously possessed, had its uncanny influences. The lonely woods were darkening about them. The stars seemed very far off. A rotting log in the midst of the debris of the stream, in a wild tangle of underbrush and shelving rocks, showed fox-fire and glowed in the glooms.

        "I knowed," said Kelsey, contemptuously waiving the suggestion of miraculous forecast, "bekase the sher'ff hain't been in the Big Smoky for two weeks, an' that thar danglin' shadder o' his'n rid off las' Monday from Jeemes's Mill in Eskaqua Cove. An' the constable o' the deestric air sick abed. So I 'lowed 't war you-uns."

        "An' why air it me more 'n enny other man

at the Settlemint?" The blacksmith's blood was rising; his sensibilities descried a covert taunt which as yet his slower intelligence failed to comprehend.

        "An' ye hev rid with speed fur the sher'ff - or mebbe ter overhaul the dep'ty - ter come an' jail the prisoner afore he gits away."

        "An' why me, more 'n the t'others?" demanded the blacksmith.

        "Yer heart air ez hard ez yer anvil, Gid Fletcher," said the mind-reader. "Thar ain't another man on the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the gallus or the pen'tiary the frien' ez trested him, who hev done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest law. Ef the law tuk him, that's a differ."

        "'T ain't fur we-uns ter jedge o' the law!" exclaimed Gid Fletcher, his logic sharpened by the anxiety of his greed and his prideful self-esteem. "Let the law jedge o' his crime."

        "Jes' so; let the law take him, an' let the law try him. The law is ekal ter it. Ef the sher'ff summons me with his posse, I'll hunt Rick Tyler through all the Big Smoky" -

        "Look-a-hyar, Hi Kelsey, the Gov'nor o' Tennessee hev offered a reward o' two hunderd dollars" -

        "Blood money," interpolated the parson.

        "Ye kin call it so, ef so minded; but ef it war right fur the Gov'nor ter offer it, it air right fur me ter yearn it."

        He had come very close. It was his nature and his habit to brook no resistance. He subdued the hard metals upon his anvil. His hammer disciplined the iron. The fire wrought his will. His instinct was to forge this man's opinion into the likeness of his own. His conviction was the moral swage that must shape the belief of others.

        "It air lawful fur me ter yearn it," he repeated.

        "Lawful!" exclaimed the parson, with a tense, jeering laugh. "Judas war a law-abidin' citizen. He mos' lawfully betrayed his Frien' ter the law. Them thirty pieces o' silver! Sech currency ain't out o' circulation yit!"

        Quick as a flash the blacksmith's heavy hand struck the prophet in the face. The next moment his sudden anger was merged in fear. He stood, unarmed, at the mercy of an assaulted and outraged man, with a loaded rifle in his hands, and all the lightnings of heaven quivering in his angry eyes.

        Gid Fletcher had hardly time to draw the breath he thought his last, when the prophet slowly turned the other cheek.

        "In the name of the Master," he said, with all the dignity of his calling.

        As the blacksmith mounted his horse and rode away, he felt that the parson's rifle-ball would be preferable to the gross slur that he had incurred. His reputation, moral and spiritual, was annihilated; and he held this dear, for piety, or its simulacrum, on the primitive Big Smoky, is the point of honor. What a text! What an illustration of iniquity he would furnish for the sermons, foretelling wrath and vengeance, that sometimes shook the Big Smoky to its foundations! He was cast down, and indignant too.

        "Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin' up sech a pious mouth, an' a-turnin' the t'other cheek, an' sech, ter me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff in a many a free-handed fight, an' hev drawed his shootin'-irons on folks agin an' agin! An' he fairly tuk the dep'ty, at that thar disturbamint at the meet'n'-house, by the scruff o' the neck, an' shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin', an' drapped him out'n the door. An' now ter be a-turnin' the t'other cheer! An' thar 's that thar D'rindy, a-seein' it all, an' a-lookin' at it ez wide-eyed ez a cat in the dark."

        Dorinda went home planning a rescue. Against the law this probably was, she thought. "Ef it air - it ought n't ter be," she concluded,

arbitrarily. "It don't hurt nobody." How serious it was - a felony - she did not know, nor did she care. She went on sturdily, debating within herself how best to tell the news. With an intuitive knowledge of human nature, she reckoned on the prejudice aroused by the recital of the blacksmith's assault upon the preacher and the forbearance of the man of God. She began to count those who would be likely to attempt the enterprise when it should be suggested. There were the five men at home, all bold, reckless, antagonistic to the law, and at odds with the sheriff. She paused, with a frightened face and a wild gesture as if to ward off an unforeseen danger. Send them to meet him! Never, never would she lift her hand or raise her voice to aid in fulfilling that grimly prophesied death on the muzzle of the old rifle-barrel. She trembled at the thought of her precipitancy. His life was in her hand. With a constraining moral sense she felt that it was she who had placed it in jeopardy, and that she held it in trust.

        She was cold, shivering. There was a change in the temperature; perhaps hail had fallen somewhere near, for the rare air had icy suggestions. She was seldom out so late, and was glad to see, high on the slope, the light that was wont to shine like a star into the dark

depths of Eskaqua Cove. The white mists gathered around it; a circle of pearly light encompassed it, like Saturn's ring. As she came nearer, the roof of the house defined itself, with its oblique ridge-pole against the sky, and its clay and stick chimney, also built in defiance of rectangles, and its little porch, the curtaining hop-vines, dripping, dripping, with dew. In the corner of the rail fence was the "crumply cow," chewing her cud.

        The radiance of firelight streamed out through the open door, around which was grouped a number of shadows, of intent and wistful aspect. These were the hounds, and they crowded about her ecstatically as she came up on the porch.

        She paused at the door, and looked in with melancholy eyes. The light fell on her face, still damp with the dew, giving its gentle curves a subdued glister, like marble; the dark blue of her dress heightened its fairness. A sudden smile broke upon it as she leaned forward. There were three men, Ab, Pete, and Ben, seated around the fire; but she was looking at none of them, and they silently followed her gaze. Only one pair of eyes met hers, - the eyes of a fat young person, wonderfully muscular for the tender age of three, who sat in the chimney-corner in a little wooden chair,

and preserved the important and impassive air of a domestic magnate. This was hardly impaired by his ill-defined, infantile features, his large tow-head, his stolid blue eyes, his feminine garb of blue-checked cotton, short enough to disclose sturdy white calves and two feet with the usual complement of toes. He looked at her in grave recognition, but made no sign.

        "Jacob," she softly drawled, "why n't ye go ter bed?"

        But Jacob was indisposed for conversation on this theme; he said nothing.

        "Why n't you-uns git him ter bed?" she asked of the assemblage at large. "He 'll git stunted, a-settin' up so late in the night."

        "Waal," said one of the huge jeans-clad mountaineers, taking his pipe from his mouth, and scrutinizing the subject of conversation, "I 'low it takes more 'n three full grown men ter git that thar survigrus buzzard ter bed when he don't want ter go thar, an' we war n't a-goin' ter resk it."

        "I did ax him ter go ter bed, D'rindy," said another of the bearded giants, "but he 'lowed he would n't. I never see a critter so pompered ez Jacob; he ain't got no medjure o' respec' fur nobody."

        The subject of these strictures gazed unconcernedly first at one speaker, then at the other.

Dorinda still looked at him, her face transfigured by its tender smile. But she was fain to exert her authority. "Waal, Jacob," she said, decisively, "ye mus' gin yer cornsent ter go ter bed, arter a while."

        Jacob calmly nodded. He expected to go to bed some time that night.

        The hounds had taken advantage of Dorinda's entrance to creep into the room and adjust themselves among the family group about the fire. One of them, near Jacob, lured by the tempting plumpness, put out a long red tongue, and gave a furtive lick to his fat white leg. The little mountaineer promptly doubled his plucky fist, and administered a sharp blow on the black nose of the offender, whose yelp of repentant pain attracted attention to the canine intruders. Ab Cayce rose to his feet with an oath. There was a shrill chorus of anguish as he actively kicked them out with his great cowhide boots.

        "Git out'n hyar, ye dad-burned beastises! I hev druv ye out fifty times sence sundown; now stay druv!"

        He emphasized the lesson with several gratuitous kicks after the room and the porch were fairly cleared. But before he was again seated the dogs were once more clustered about the door, with intent bobbing heads and glistening

eyes that peered in wistfully, with a longing for the society of their human friends, and a pathetic anxiety to be accounted of the family circle.

        There was more stir than usual in the interval between supper and bedtime. During the three memorable days that Dorinda had sojourned in Tuckaleechee Cove Miranda Jane's ineffective administration had resulted in domestic chaos in several departments. The lantern by which the cow was to be milked was nowhere to be found. The filly-like Miranda Jane, with her tousled mane and black forelock hanging over her eyes, was greatly distraught in the effort to remember where it had been put and for what it had been last used, and was "plumb beat out and beset," she declared, as she cantered in and cantered out, and took much exercise in the search, to little purpose. One of the men rose presently, and addressed himself to the effort. He found it at last, and handed it to Dorinda without a word. He did not offer to milk the cow, as essentially a feminine task, in the mountains, as to sew or knit. When she came back she sat down among them in the chair usually occupied by her grandmother, - who had in her turn gone on a visit to "Aunt Jerushy" in Tuckaleechee Cove, - and as she busied herself in putting on her needles

a sizable stocking for Jacob she did not join in the fragmentary conversation.

        Ab Cayce, the eldest, talked fitfully as he smoked his pipe, - a lank, lantern-jawed man, with a small, gleaming eye and a ragged beard. The youngest of the brothers, Solomon, was like him, except that his long chin, of the style familiarly denominated jimber-jawed, was still smooth and boyish, and, big-boned as he was, he lacked in weight and somewhat in height the proportions of the senior. Peter was the contentious member of the family. He was wont to bicker in solitary disaffection, until he seemed to disprove the adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. He was afflicted with a stammer, and at every obstruction his voice broke out with startling shrillness, several keys higher than the tone with which the sentence commenced. He was loose-jointed and had a shambling gait; his hair seemed never to have outgrown the bleached, colorless tone so common among the children of the mountains, and it hung in long locks of a dreary drab about his sun-embrowned face. His teeth were irregular, and protruded slightly. "Ez hard-favored ez Pete Cayce," was a proverb on the Big Smoky. His wrangles about the amount of seed necessary to sow to the acre, and his objurgation concerning the horse he had been ploughing with that day, filled the evening.

        "Thar ain't a durned fool on the Big Smoky ez dunno that thar sayin' 'bout 'n the beastises: -

                        'One white huff - buy him;
                        Two white huffs - try him;
                        Three white huffs - deny him;
                        Four white huffs an' a white nose -
                        Take off his hide an' feed him ter the crows.' "

        Outside, the rising wind wandered fitfully through the Great Smoky, like a spirit of unrest. The surging trees in the wooded vastness on every side filled the air with the turbulent sound of their commotion. The fire smouldered on the hearth. The room was visible in the warm glow: the walls, rich and mellow with the alternate dark shade of the hewn logs and the dull yellow of the "daubin';" the great frame of the warping-bars, hung about with scarlet and blue and saffron yarn; the brilliant strings of red pepper, swinging from the rafters. The spinning-wheel, near the open door, revolved slightly, with a stealthy motion, when the wind touched it, as though some invisible woodland thing had half a mind for uncanny industrial experiments.

        Dorinda told her news at last, in few words and with what composure she could command. As the listeners broke into surprised ejaculations and comments, she sat gazing silently at the fire. Should she speak the thought nearest

her heart? Should she suggest a rescue? She was torn by contending terrors, - fears for them, for the man in his primitive shackles at the Settlement, for the enemy whose life she felt she had jeopardized. She had a wild vision - half in hope, half in anguish - of her brothers, in the saddle, armed to the teeth and riding like the wind. They had not moved of their own accord. Should she urge them to go?

        Oh, never had the long days on the Big Smoky, never had all the years that had visibly rolled from east to west with the changing seasons, brought her so much of life as the last few hours, - such intensity of emotion, such swiftness of thought, such baffling perplexity, such woe!

IV.

        Yet he was cognizant of his own deeper, subtler springs of action. There was that within him which forbade him to take the life of an unarmed man, but he piqued himself that he forbore. He had withheld even the return of the blow. But he knew that in refraining he had struck deeper still. He dwelt upon the scene with the satisfaction of an inventor. He, too, could foresee the consequences: the bloodcurdling eloquence; the port and pose of a martyr; the far-spread distrust of the blacksmith's professions of piety, under which that doughty religionist already quaked.

        And as he reflected he replied, tartly, to the monitor within, "Be angry and sin not."

        And the monitor had no text.

        Because of the night drifting down, perhaps, drifting down with a chilling change; because of the darkened solemnity of the dreary

woods; because of the stars shining with a splendid aloofness from all that is human; because of the melancholy suggestions of a will-o'-the-wisp glowing in a marshy tangle, his exultant mood began to wane.

        "Thar it is!" he cried, suddenly, pointing at the mocking illusion, - "that's my religion: looks like fire, an' it 's fog!"

        His mind had reverted to his wild supplications in the solitudes of the "bald," - his unanswered prayers. The oxen had paused of their own accord to rest, and he stood looking at the spectral gleam.

        "I 'd never hev thunk o' takin' up with religion," he said, in a shrill, upbraiding tone, "ef I hed been let ter live along like other men be, or ef me an' mine could die like other folks be let ter die! But it 'peared ter me ez religion war 'bout all ez war lef', arter I hed gin the baby the stuff the valley doctor hed lef' fur Em'ly, - bein' ez I could n't read right the old critter's cur'ous scrapin's with his pencil, - an' gin Em'ly the stuff fur the baby. An' it died. An' then Em'ly got onsettled an' crazy, an' tuk ter vagrantin' 'roun', an' fell off'n the bluff. An' some say she flunged herself off'n it. And I knows she flunged herself off'n it through bein' out'n her mind with grief."

        He paused, leaning on the yoke, his dreary

eyes still on the ignis fatuus of the woods. "An' then Brother Jake Tobin 'lowed ez religion war fur sech ez me. I hed no mind ter religion. But the worl' hed in an' about petered out for me. An' I tuk up with religion. I hev served it five year faithful. An' now" - he cast his angry eyes upward - "ye let me believe that thar is no God!"

        So it was that Satan hunted him like a partridge on the mountains. So it was that he went out into the desert places to upbraid the God in whom he believed because he believed that there was no God. There was a tragedy in his faith and his unfaith. That this untrained, untutored mind should grope among the irreconcilable things, - the problems of a merciful God and his afflicted people, foreordained from the beginning of the world and free agents! That to the ignorant mountaineer should come those distraught questions that vex polemics, and try the strength of theologies, and give the wise men an illimitable field for the display of their agile and ingenious solutions and substitutions! He knew naught of this; the wild Alleghanies intervened between his yearning, empty despair and their plenished fame, the splendid superstructure on the ruins of their faith. He thought himself the only unbeliever in a Christian world, the only inherent

infidel; a mysteriously accursed creature, charged with the discovery of the monstrous fallacy of that beneficent comfort, assuaging the grief of a stricken world, and called an overruling Providence. Again his flickering faith would flare up, and he would reproach God who had suffered its lapse. This was his secret and his shame, and he guarded it. And so when he preached his wild sermons with a certain natural eloquence; and prayed his frantic prayers, instinct with all the sincerities of despair; and sang with the people the mournful old hymns in the little meeting-house on the notch, or on the banks of the Scolacutta River, where they went down to be baptized, his keen introspection, his more dissent, which he might not forbear, yet would not avow, were an intolerable burden, and his spiritual life was the throe of a spiritual anguish.

        Often there was no intimation in those sermons of his of the quaint doctrines which delight the simple men of his calling in that region, who are fain to feel learned. His Christ, to judge from this mood, was a Paramount Emotion: not the Christ who confuted the wise men in the temple, and read in the synagogues, and said dark allegories; but he who stilled the storm, and healed the sick, and raised the dead, and wept, most humanly, for the friend whom

he loved. Kelsey's trusting heart contended with his doubting mind, and the simple humanities of these sermons comforted him. Sometimes he sought consolation otherwise; he would remember that he had never been like his fellows. This was only another manifestation of the dissimilarity that dated from his earliest recollections. He had from his infancy peculiar gifts. He was learned in the signs of the weather, and predicted the mountain storms; he knew the haunts and habits of every beast and bird in the Great Smoky, every leaf that burgeons, every flower that blows. So deep and incisive a knowledge of human nature had he that this faculty was deemed supernatural, and akin to the gift of prophecy. He himself understood, although perhaps he could not have accurately limited and defined it, that he exercised unconsciously a vigilant attention and an acute discrimination; his forecast was based upon observation so close and unsparing, and a power of deduction so just, that in a wider sphere it might have been called judgment, and, reinforced by education, have attained all the functions of a ripened sagacity.

        Crude as it was, it did not fail of recognition. In many ways his "word" was sought and heeded. His influence yielded its richest effect when his confrére of the pulpit would call

on him to foretell the fate of the sinner and the wrath of God to the Big Smoky. And then Brother Jake Tobin would accompany the glowing picture by a slow rhythmic clapping of hands and a fragmentary chant, "That dreadful Day air a-comin' along!" - bearing all the time a smiling and beatific countenance, as if he were fireproof himself, and brimstone and flame were only for his friends.

        Rousing himself from his reverie with a sigh, Hiram Kelsey urged the oxen along the sandy road, which had here and there a stony interval threatening the slide with dissolution at every jolt. They began presently to quicken their pace of their own accord. The encompassing woods and the laurel were so dense that no gleam of light was visible till they brought up suddenly beside a rail fence, and the fitful glimmer of firelight from an open door close at hand revealed the presence of a double log cabin. There was an uninclosed passage between the two rooms, and in this a tall, gaunt woman was standing.

        "Thar be Hi now, with the steers," she said, detecting the dim bovine shadows in the flickering gleams.

        "Tell Hiram ter come in right now," cried a chirping voice, like a superannuated cricket. "I hev a word ter ax him."

        "Tell Hiram ter feed them thar steers fust," cried out another ancient voice, keyed several tones lower, and also with the ring of authority.

        "Tell Hiram," shrilly piped the other, "ter hustle his bones, ef he knows what air good fur 'em."

        "Tell Hiram," said the deeper voice, sustaining the antiphonal effect, "I want them thar steers feded foreshortly."

        Then ensued a muttered wrangle within, and finally the shriller voice was again uplifted: "Tell Hiram what my word air."

        "An' ye tell Hiram what my word air."

        The woman, who was tall as a grenadier, and had a voice like velvet, looked meekly back into the room, upon each mandate, with a nod of mild obedience.

        "Ye hearn 'em," she said softly to Kelsey. Evidently she could not undertake the hazard of discriminating between these coequal authorities.

        "I hearn 'em," he replied.

        She sat down near the door, and resumed her occupation of monotonously peeling June apples for "sass." Her brown calico sunbonnet, whi