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[Illustration: HE WAS PALLID AND PANTING]




THE YOUNG MOUNTAINEERS

_SHORT STORIES_

BY

CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MALCOLM FRASER

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1897

Copyright, 1897,
BY MARY N. MURFREE.


_All rights reserved_.

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.




CONTENTS                                            PAGE


THE MYSTERY OF OLD DADDY'S WINDOW                      1
'WAY DOWN IN POOR VALLEY                              26
A MOUNTAIN STORM                                      63
BORROWING A HAMMER                                    83
THE CONSCRIPTS' HOLLOW                               103
A WARNING                                            172
AMONG THE CLIFFS                                     186
IN THE "CHINKING"                                    208
ON A HIGHER LEVEL                                    230
CHRISTMAS DAY ON OLD WINDY MOUNTAIN                  245




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                               PAGE


HE WAS PALLID AND PANTING   (see page 221)     _Frontispiece._
TOGETHER THEY WENT OVER THE CLIFF                     48
HOW LONG WAS IT TO LAST                              190
IN THE MIDST OF THE TORRENT                          242




THE MYSTERY OF OLD DADDY'S WINDOW


Picture to yourself a wild ravine, gashing a mountain spur, and with
here and there in its course abrupt descents. One of these is so deep
and sheer that it might be called a precipice.

High above it, from the steep slope on either hand, beetling crags jut
out. Their summits almost meet at one point, and thus the space below
bears a rude resemblance to a huge window. Through it you might see the
blue heights in the distance; or watch the clouds and sunshine shift
over the sombre mountain across the narrow valley; or mark, after the
day has faded, how the great Scorpio draws its shining curves along the
dark sky.

One night Jonas Creyshaw sat alone in the porch of his log cabin, hard
by on the slope of the ravine, smoking his pipe and gazing meditatively
at "Old Daddy's Window." The moon was full, and its rays fell aslant on
one of the cliffs, while the rugged face of the opposite crag was in the
shadow.

Suddenly he became aware that something was moving about the precipice,
the brink of which seems the sill of the window. Although this precipice
is sheer and insurmountable, a dark figure had risen from it, and stood
plainly defined against the cliff, which presented a comparatively
smooth surface to the brilliant moonlight.

Was it a shadow? he asked himself hastily.

His eyes swept the ravine, only thirty feet wide at that point, which
lies between the two crags whose jutting summits almost meet above it to
form Old Daddy's Window.

There was no one visible to cast a shadow.

It seemed as if the figure had unaccountably emerged from the sheer
depths below.

Only for a moment it stood motionless against the cliff. Then it flung
its arms wildly above its head, and with a nimble spring
disappeared--upward.

Jonas Creyshaw watched it, his eyes distended, his face pallid, his pipe
trembling in his shaking hand.

"Mirandy!" he quavered faintly.

His wife, a thin, ailing woman with pinched features and an uncertain
eye, came to the door.

"Thar," he faltered, pointing with his pipe-stem--"jes' a minit ago--I
seen it!--a ghost riz up over the bluff inter Old Daddy's Window!"

The woman fell instantly into a panic.

"'Twarn't a-beckonin', war it? 'Twarn't a-beckonin'? 'Kase ef it war,
ye'll hev ter die right straight! That air a sure sign."

A little of Jonas Creyshaw's pluck and common sense came back to him at
this unpleasant announcement.

"Not on _his_ say-so," he stoutly averred. "I ain't a-goin' ter do the
beck nor the bid of enny onmannerly harnt ez hev tuk up the notion ter
riz up over the bluff inter Old Daddy's Window, an' sot hisself ter
motionin' ter me."

He rose hastily, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and followed his
wife into the house. There he paused abruptly.

The room was lighted by the fitful flicker of the fire, for the nights
were still chilly, and an old man, almost decrepit, sat dozing in his
chair by the hearth.

"Mirandy," said Jonas Creyshaw in a whisper, "'pears like ter me ez
father hed better not be let ter know 'bout'n that thar harnt. It mought
skeer him so ez he couldn't live another minit. He hev aged some
lately--an' he air weakly."

This was "Old Daddy."

Before he had reached his thirtieth year, he was thus known, far and
wide.

"He air the man ez hev got a son," the mountaineers used to say in
grinning explanation. "Ter hear him brag 'bout'n that thar boy o' his'n,
ye'd think he war the only man in Tennessee ez ever hed a son."

Throughout all these years the name given in jocose banter had clung to
him, and now, hallowed by ancient usage, it was accorded to him
seriously, and had all the sonorous effect of a title.

So they said nothing to Old Daddy, but presently, when he had hobbled
off to bed in the adjoining shed-room, they fell to discussing their
terror of the apparition, and thus it chanced that the two boys, Tad and
Si, first made, as it were, the ghost's acquaintance.

Tad, a stalwart fellow of seventeen, sat listening spellbound before the
glowing embers. Si, a wiry, active, tow-headed boy of twelve, perched
with dangling legs on a chest, and looked now at the group by the fire,
and now through the open door at the brilliant moonlight.

"Waal, sir," he muttered, "I'll hev ter gin up the notion o' gittin'
that comical young ow_el_, what I hev done set my heart onto. 'Kase ef I
war ter fool round Old Daddy's Window, _now_, whilst I war a-cotchin' o'
the ow_el_, the ghost mought--cotch--_Me!_"

A sorry ghost, to be sure, that has nothing better to do than to "cotch"
_him!_ But perhaps Si Creyshaw is not the only one of us who has an
inflated idea of his own importance.

He was greatly awed, and he found many suggestions of supernatural
presence about the familiar room. As the fire alternately flared and
faded, the warping-bars looked as if they were dancing a clumsy measure.
The handle of a portly jug resembled an arm stuck akimbo, and its cork,
tilted askew, was like a hat set on one side; Si fancied there was a
most unpleasant grimace below that hat. The churn-dasher, left upon a
shelf to dry, was sardonically staring him out of countenance with its
half-dozen eyes. The strings of red pepper-pods and gourds and herbs,
swinging from the rafters, rustled faintly; it sounded to Si like a
moan.

He wished his father and mother would talk about some wholesome subject,
like Spot's new calf, for instance, instead of whispering about the
mystery of Old Daddy's Window.

He wished Tad would not look, as he listened, so much like a ghost
himself, with his starting eyes and pale, intent face. He even wished
that the baby would wake up, and put some life into things with a good
healthy, rousing bawl.

But the baby slept peacefully on, and after so long a time Si Creyshaw
slept too.

With broad daylight his courage revived. He was no longer afraid to
think of the ghost. In fact, he experienced a pleased importance in
giving Old Daddy a minute account of the wonderful apparition, for he
_felt_ as if he had seen it.

"'Pears ter me toler'ble comical, gran'dad, ez they never tole ye a word
'bout'n it all," he said in conclusion. "Ye mought hev liked ter seen
the harnt. Ef he war 'quainted with ye when he lived in this life, he
mought hev stopped an' jowed sociable fur a spell!"

How brave this small boy was in the cheerful sunshine!

Old Daddy hardly seemed impressed with the pleasure he had missed in
losing a sociable "jow" with a ghostly crony. He sat silent, blinking
in the sunshine that fell through the gourd-vines which clambered about
the porch where Si had placed his chair.

"'Twarn't much of a sizable sperit," Si declared; he seemed courageous
enough now to measure the ghost like a tailor. "It warn't more'n four
feet high, ez nigh ez dad could jedge. Toler'ble small fur a harnt!"

Still the old man made no reply. His wrinkled hands were clasped on his
stick. His white head, shaded by his limp black hat, was bent down close
to them. There was a slow, pondering expression on his face, but an
excited gleam in his eye. Presently, he pointed backward toward a little
unhewn log shanty that served as a barn, and rising with unwonted
alacrity, he said to the boy,--

"Fotch me the old beastis!"

Silas Creyshaw stood amazed, for Old Daddy had not mounted a horse for
twenty years.

"Studyin' 'bout'n the harnt so much hev teched him in the head," the
small boy concluded. Then he made an excuse, for he knew his
grandfather was too old and feeble to safely undertake a solitary jaunt
on horse-back.

"I war tole not ter leave ye fur a minit, gran'dad. I war ter stay nigh
ye an' mind yer bid."

"That's my bid!" said the old man sternly. "Fotch the beastis."

There was no one else about the place. Jonas Creyshaw had gone fishing
shortly after daybreak. His wife had trudged off to her sister's house
down in the cove, and had taken the baby with her. Tad was ploughing in
the cornfield on the other side of the ravine. Si had no advice, and he
had been brought up to think that Old Daddy's word was law.

When the old man, mounted at last, was jogging up the road, Tad chanced
to come to the house for a bit of rope to mend the plough-gear. He saw,
far up the leafy vista, the departing cavalier. He cast a look of amazed
reproach upon Si. Then, speechless with astonishment, he silently
pointed at the distant figure.

Si was a logician.

"I never lef' _him_," he said. "He lef' _me_."

"Ye oughter rej'ice in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad
returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em 'll
git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur _nuthin'_, ye
triflin' shoat!"

"He lef' _me_!" Si stoutly maintained.

Meantime, Old Daddy journeyed on.

Except for the wonderful mountain air, the settlement, three miles
distant, had nothing about it to indicate its elevation. It was far from
the cliffs, and there was no view. It was simply a little hollow of a
clearing scooped out among the immense forests. When the mountaineers
clear land, they do it effectually. Not a tree was left to embellish the
yards of any of the four or five little log huts that constituted the
hamlet, and the glare was intense.

As six or eight loungers sat smoking about the door of the store, there
was nothing to intercept their astonished view of Old Daddy when he
suddenly appeared out of the gloomy forest, blinking in the sun and bent
half double with fatigue.

Even the rudest and coarsest of these mountaineers accord a praiseworthy
deference to the aged among them. Old Daddy was held in reverential
estimation at home, and was well accustomed to the respect shown him
now, when, for the first time in many years, he had chosen to jog
abroad. They helped him to dismount, and carried him bodily into the
store. After he had tilted his chair back against the rude counter, he
looked around with an important face upon the attentive group.

"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the strongest man
ever seen, sence Samson!"

"I hev always hearn that sayin', Old Daddy," acquiesced an elderly
codger, who, by reason of "rheumatics," made no pretension to muscle.

A gigantic young blacksmith looked down at his corded hammer-arm, but
said nothing.

A fly--several flies--buzzed about the sorghum barrel.

"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the bes' shot on
this hyar mounting."

"That's a true word, Old Daddy," assented the schoolmaster, who had
ceased to be a Nimrod since devoting himself to teaching the young idea
how to shoot.

The hunters smoked in solemn silence.

The shadow of a cloud drifted along the bare sandy stretch of the
clearing.

"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev got the peartest
boys in Tennessee."

"I'll gin ye that up, Old Daddy," cheerfully agreed the miller, whose
family consisted of two small "daughters."

The fathers of other "peart boys" cleared their throats uneasily, but
finally subsided without offering contradiction.

A jay-bird alighted on a blackberry bush outside, fluttered all his
blue and white feathers, screamed harshly, bobbed his crested head, and
was off on his gay wings.

"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev been gifted with the
sight o' what no other man on this mounting hev ever viewed."

The group sat amazed, expectant. But the old man preserved a stately
silence. Only when the storekeeper eagerly insisted, "What hev Jonas
seen? what war he gin ter view?" did Old Daddy bring the fore legs of
the chair down with a thump, lean forward, and mysteriously pipe out
like a superannuated cricket,--

"My son,--my son hev seen a harnt, what riz up over the bluff
a-purpose!"

"Whar 'bouts?" "When?" "Waal, sir!" arose in varied clamors.

So the proud old man told the story he had journeyed three laborious
miles to spread. It had no terrors for him, so completely was fear
swallowed up in admiration of his wonderful son, who had added to his
other perfections the gift of seeing ghosts.

The men discussed it eagerly. There were some jokes cracked--as it was
still broad noonday--and at one of these Old Daddy took great offense,
more perhaps because the disrespect was offered to his son rather than
to himself.

"Jes' gin Jonas the word from me," said the young blacksmith, meaning no
harm and laughing good-naturedly, "ez I kin tell him percisely what
makes him see harnts; it air drinkin' so much o' this onhealthy whiskey,
what hain't got no tax paid onto it. I looks ter see him jes'
a-staggerin' the nex' time I comes up with him."

Old Daddy rose with affronted dignity.

"My son," he declared vehemently,--"my son ain't gin over ter drinkin'
whiskey, tax or no tax. An' he ain't got no call ter stagger--_like some
folks!_"

And despite all apology and protest, he left the house in a huff.

His old bones ached with the unwonted exercise, and were rudely enough
jarred by the rough roads and the awful gaits of his ancient steed. The
sun was hot, and so was his heart, and when he reached home, infinitely
fatigued and querulous, he gave his son a sorry account of his reception
at the store. As he concluded, saying that five of the men had sent word
that they would be at Jonas Creyshaw's house at moon-rise "ter holp him
see the harnt," his son's brow darkened, and he strode heavily out of
the room.

He usually exhibited in a high degree the hospitality characteristic of
these mountaineers, but now it had given way to a still stronger
instinct.

"Si," he said, coming suddenly upon the boy, "put out right now fur
Bently's store at the settle_mint_, an' tell them sneaks ez hang round
thar ter sarch round thar own houses fur harnts, ef they hanker ter see
enny harnts. Ef they hev got the insurance ter kem hyar, they'll see
wusser sights 'n enny harnts. Tell 'em I ain't a-goin' ter 'low no man
ter cross my doorstep ez don't show Old Daddy the right medjure o'
respec'. They'd better keep out'n my way ginerally."

So with this bellicose message Si set out. But an unlucky idea occurred
to him as he went plodding along the sandy road.

"Whilst I'm a-goin' on this hyar harnt's yerrand"----The logical Si
brought up with a shiver.

"I went ter say--whilst I'm a-goin' on this hyar yerrand fur the
harnt"----This was as bad.

"Whilst," he qualified once more, "I'm a-goin' on this hyar yerrand
_'bout'n_ the harnt, I mought ez well skeet off in them deep woods a
piece ter see ef enny wild cherries air ripe on that tree by the spring.
I'll hev plenty o' time."

But even Si could not persuade himself that the cherries were ripe, and
he stood for a moment under the tree, staring disconsolately at the
distant blue ridges shimmering through the heated air. The sunlight was
motionless, languid; it seemed asleep. The drowsy drone of insects
filled the forest. As Si threw himself down to rest on the rocky brink
of the mountain, a grasshopper sprang away suddenly, high into the air,
with an agility that suggested to him the chorus of a song, which he
began to sing in a loud and self-sufficient voice:--

  "The grasshopper said--'Now, don't ye see
  Thar's mighty few dancers sech ez me--
    Sech ez _me_!--Sech ez ME!'"

This reminded Si of his own capabilities as a dancer. He rose and began
to caper nimbly, executing a series of steps that were singularly swift,
spry, and unexpected,--a good deal on the grasshopper's method. His
tattered black hat bobbed up and down on his tow head; his brown jeans
trousers, so loose on his lean legs, flapped about hilariously; his bare
heels flew out right and left; he snapped his fingers to mark the time;
now and then he stuck his arms akimbo, and cut what he called the
"widgeon-ping." But his freckled face was as grave as ever, and all the
time that he danced he sang:--

  "In the middle o' the night the rain kem down,
  An' gin the corn a fraish start out'n the ground,
  An' I thought nex' day ez I stood in the door,
  That sassy bug mus' be drownded sure!
  But thar war Goggle-eyes, peart an' gay,
  Twangin' an' a-tunin' up--'Now, dance away!
  Ye may sarch night an' day ez a constancy
  An' ye won't find a fiddler sech ez me!
    Sech ez _me_!--Sech ez ME!'"

As he sank back exhausted upon the ground, a new aspect of the scene
caught his attention.

Those blue mountains were purpling--there was an ever-deepening flush in
the west. It was close upon sunset, and while he had wasted the time,
the five men to whom his father had sent that stern message forbidding
them to come to his house were perhaps on their way thither, with every
expectation of a cordial welcome. There might be a row--even a
fight--and all because he had loitered.

How he tore out of the brambly woods! How he pounded along the sandy
road! But when he reached the settlement close upon nightfall, the
storekeeper's wife told him that the men had gone long ago.

"They war powerful special ter git off early," she added, "'kase they
wanted ter be thar 'fore Old Daddy drapped off ter sleep. Some o' them
foolish, slack-jawed boys ter the store ter-day riled the old man's
feelin's, an' they 'lowed ter patch up the peace with him, an' let him
an' Jonas know ez they never meant no harm."

This suggestion buoyed up the boy's heart to some degree as he toiled
along the "short cut" homeward through the heavy shades of the gloomy
woods and the mystic effects of the red rising moon. But he was not
altogether without anxiety until, as he drew within sight of the log
cabin on the slope of the ravine, he heard Old Daddy piping pacifically
to the guests about "my son," and Jonas Creyshaw's jolly laughter.

The moon was golden now; Si could see its brilliant shafts of light
strike aslant upon the smooth surface of the cliff that formed the
opposite side of Old Daddy's Window. He stopped short in the deep shadow
of the more rugged crag. The vines and bushes that draped its many
jagged ledges dripped with dew. The boughs of an old oak, which grew
close by, swayed gently in the breeze. Hidden by its huge hole, Si cast
an apprehensive glance toward the house where his elders sat.

Certainly no one was thinking of him now.

"This air my chance fur that young ow_el_--ef ever," he said to himself.

The owl's nest was in the hollow of the tree. The trunk was far too
bulky to admit of climbing, and the lowest branches were well out of the
boy's reach. Some thirty feet from the ground, however, one of the
boughs touched the crag. By clambering up its rugged, irregular ledges,
making a zigzag across its whole breadth to the right and then a similar
zigzag to the left, Si might gain a position which would enable him to
clutch this bough of the tree. Thence he could scramble along to the
owl's stronghold.

He hesitated. He knew his elders would disapprove of so reckless an
undertaking as climbing about Old Daddy's Window, for in venturing
toward its outer verge, a false step, a crumbling ledge, the snapping of
a vine, would fling him down the sheer precipice into the depths below.

His hankering for a pet owl had nevertheless brought him here more than
once. It was only yesterday evening--before he had heard of the ghost's
appearance, however--that he had made his last futile attempt.

He looked up doubtfully. "I ain't ez strong ez--ez some folks," he
admitted.

"But then, come ter think of it," he argued astutely, "I don't weigh
nuthin' sca'cely, an' thar ain't much of me ter hev ter haul up thar."

He flung off his hat, he laid his wiry hands upon the wild grape-vines,
he felt with his bare feet for the familiar niches and jagged edges, and
up he went, working steadily to the right, across the broad face of the
cliff.

Its heavy shadow concealed him from view. Only one ledge, at the extreme
verge of the crag, jutted out into the full moonbeams. But this, by
reason of the intervening bushes and vines, could not be seen by those
who sat in the cabin porch on the slope of the ravine, and he was glad
to have light just here, for it was the most perilous point of his
enterprise. By deft scrambling, however, he succeeded in getting on the
moonlit ledge.

"I clumb like a painter!" he declared triumphantly.

He rested there for a moment before attempting to reach the vines high
up on the left hand, which he must grasp in order to draw himself up
into the shadowy niche in the rock, and begin his zigzag course back
again across the face of the cliff to the projecting bough of the tree.

But suddenly, as he still stood motionless on the ledge in the full
radiance of the moon, the clamor of frightened voices sounded at the
house. Until now he had forgotten all about the ghost. He turned,
horror-stricken.

There was the frightful thing, plainly defined against the smooth
surface of the opposite cliff--some thirty feet distant--that formed the
other side of Old Daddy's Window.

And certainly there are mighty few dancers such as that ghost! It lunged
actively toward the precipice. It suddenly dashed wildly back--gyrating
continually with singularly nimble feet, flinging wiry arms aloft and
maintaining a sinister silence, while the frightened clamor at the house
grew ever louder and more shrill.

Several minutes elapsed before Si recognized something peculiarly
familiar in the ghost's wiry nimbleness--before he realized that the
shadow of the cliff on which he stood reached across the ravine to the
base of the opposite cliff, and that the figure which had caused so much
alarm was only his own shadow cast upon its perpendicular surface.

He stopped short in those antics which had been induced by mortal
terror; of course, his shadow, too, was still instantly. It stood upon
the brink of the precipice which seems the sill of Old Daddy's Window,
and showed distinctly on the smooth face of the cliff opposite to him.

He understood, after a moment's reflection, how it was that as he had
climbed up on the ledge in the full moonlight his shadow had seemed to
rise gradually from the vague depths below the insurmountable
precipice.

He sprang nimbly upward to seize the vines that shielded him from the
observation of the ghost-seers on the cabin porch, and as he caught them
and swung himself suddenly from the moonlit ledge into the gloomy shade,
he noticed that his shadow seemed to fling its arms wildly above its
head, and disappeared upward.

"That air jes' what dad seen las' night when I war down hyar afore,
a-figurin' ter ketch that thar leetle ow_el_," he said to himself when
he had reached the tree and sat in a crotch, panting and excited.

After a moment, regardless of the coveted owl, he swung down from branch
to branch, dropped easily from the lowest upon the ground, picked up his
hat, and prepared to skulk along the "short cut," strike the road, and
come home by that route as if he had just returned from the settlement.

"'Kase," he argued sagely, "ef them skeered-ter-death grown folks war
ter find out ez _I_ war the _harnt_--I mean ez the _harnt_ war
_me_--ennyhow," he concluded desperately, "I'd KETCH it--sure!"

So impressed was he with this idea that he discreetly held his tongue.

And from that day to this, Jonas Creyshaw and his friends have been
unable to solve the mystery of Old Daddy's Window.




'WAY DOWN IN POOR VALLEY


CHAPTER I

There was the grim Big Injun Mountain to the right, with its bare,
beetling sandstone crags. There was the long line of cherty hills to the
left, covered by a dark growth of stunted pines. Between lay that
melancholy stretch of sterility known as Poor Valley,--the poorest of
the several valleys in Tennessee thus piteously denominated, because of
the sorry contrast which they present to the rich coves and fertile
vales so usual among the mountains of the State.

How poor the soil was, Ike Hooden might bitterly testify; for ever since
he could hold a plough he had, year after year, followed the old
"bull-tongue" through the furrows of the sandy fields which lay around
the log cabin at the base of the mountain. In the intervals of
"crappin'" he worked at the forge with his stepfather, for close at
hand, in the shadow of a great jutting cliff, lurked a dark little
shanty of unhewn logs that was a blacksmith's shop.

When he first began this labor, he was, perhaps, the youngest striker
that ever wielded a sledge. Now, at eighteen, he had become expert at
the trade, and his muscles were admirably developed. He was tall and
robust, and he had never an ache nor an ill, except in his aching heart.
But his heart was sore, for in the shop he found oaths and harsh
treatment, and even at home these pursued him; while outside, desolation
was set like a seal on Poor Valley.

One drear autumnal afternoon, when the sky was dull, a dense white mist
overspread the valley. As Ike plodded up the steep mountain side, the
vapor followed him, creeping silently along the deep ravines and chasms,
till at length it overtook and enveloped him. Then only a few feet of
the familiar path remained visible.

Suddenly he stopped short and stared. A dim, distorted something was
peering at him from over the top of a big boulder. It was moving--it
nodded at him. Then he indistinctly recognized it as a tall, conical
hat. There seemed a sort of featureless face below it.

A thrill of fear crept through him. His hands grew cold and shook in his
pockets. He leaned forward, gazing intently into the thick fog.

An odd distortion crossed the vague, featureless face--like a leer,
perhaps. Once more the tall, conical hat nodded fantastically.

"Ef ye do that agin," cried Ike, in sudden anger, all his pluck coming
back with a rush, "I'll gin ye a lick ez will weld yer head an' the
boulder together!"

He lifted his clenched fist and shook it.

"Haw! haw! haw!" laughed the man in the mist.

Ike cooled off abruptly. He had been kicked and cuffed half his life,
but he had never been laughed at. Ridicule tamed him. He was ashamed,
and he remembered that he had been afraid, for he had thought the man
was some "roamin' harnt."

"I dunno," said Ike sulkily, "ez ye hev got enny call ter pounce so
suddint out'n the fog, an' go ter noddin' that cur'ous way ter folks ez
can't half see ye."

"I never knowed afore," said the man in the mist, with mock apology in
his tone and in the fantastic gyrations of his nodding hat, "ez it air
you-uns ez owns this mounting." He looked derisively at Ike from head to
foot. "Ye air the biggest man in Tennessee, ain't ye?"

"Naw!" said Ike shortly, feeling painfully awkward, as an overgrown boy
is apt to do.

"Waal, from yer height, I mought hev thunk ye war that big Injun that
the old folks tells about," and the stranger broke suddenly into a
hoarse, quavering chant:--

  "'A red man lived in Tennessee,
      Mighty big Injun, sure!
  He growed ez high ez the tallest tree,
  An' he sez, sez he, "Big Injun, me!"
      Mighty big Injun, sure!'"

"Waal, waal," in a pensive voice, "so ye ain't him? I'm powerful glad ye
tole me that, sonny, 'kase I mought hev got skeered hyar in the woods by
myself with that big Injun."

He laughed boisterously, and began to sing again:--

  "'Settlers blazed out a road, ye see,
      Mighty big Injun, sure!
  He combed thar hair with a knife. Sez he,
  "It's combed fur good! Big Injun, me!"
      Mighty big Injun, sure!'"

He broke out laughing afresh, and Ike, abashed and indignant, was about
to pass on, when the man gayly balanced himself on one foot, as if he
were about to dance a grotesque jig, and held out at arm's length a big
silver coin.

It was a dollar. That meant a great deal to Ike, for he earned no money
he could call his own.

"Free an' enlightened citizen o' these Nunited States," the man
addressed him with mock solemnity, "I brung this dollar hyar fur
you-uns."

"What air ye layin' off fur me ter do?" asked Ike.

The man grew abruptly grave. "Jes' stable this hyar critter fur a night
an' day."

For the first time Ike became aware of a horse's flank, dimly seen on
the other side of the boulder.

"Ter-morrer night ride him up ter my house on the mounting. Ye hev hearn
tell o' me, hain't ye, Jedge? My name's Grig Beemy. Don't kem till
night, 'kase I won't be thar till then. I hev got ter stop
yander--yander"--he looked about uncertainly, "yander ter the sawmill
till then, 'kase I promised ter holp work thar some. I'll gin ye the
dollar now," he added liberally, as an extra inducement.

"I'll be powerful glad ter do that thar job fur a dollar," said Ike,
thinking, with a glow of self-gratulation, of the corn which he had
raised in his scanty leisure on his own little patch of ground, and
which he might use to feed the animal.

"But hold yer jaw 'bout'n it, boy. Yer stepdad wouldn't let the beastis
stay thar a minute ef he knowed it, 'kase--waal--'kase me an' him hev
hed words. Slip the beastis in on the sly. Pearce Tallam don't feed an'
tend ter his critters nohow. I hev hearn ez his boys do that job, so he
ain't like ter find it out. On the sly--that's the trade."

Ike hesitated.

Once more the man teetered on one foot, and held out the coin
temptingly. But Ike's better instincts came to his aid.

"That barn b'longs ter Pearce Tallam. I puts nuthin' thar 'thout his
knowin' it. I ain't a fox, nur a mink, nur su'thin wild, ter go skulkin'
'bout on the sly."

Then he pressed hastily on out of temptation's way.

"Haw! haw! haw!" laughed the man in the mist.

There was no mirth in the tones now; his laugh was a bitter gibe. As it
followed Ike, it reminded him that the man had not yet moved from beside
the boulder, or he would have heard the thud of the horse's hoofs.

He turned and glanced back. The opaque white mist was dense about him,
and he could see nothing. As he stood still, he heard a muttered oath,
and after a time the man cleared his throat in a rasping fashion, as if
the oath had stuck in it.

Ike understood at last. The man was waiting for somebody. And this was
strange, here in the thick fog on the bleak mountainside. But Ike said
to himself that it was no concern of his, and plodded steadily on, till
he reached a dark little log house, above which towered a flaring yellow
hickory tree.

Within, ranged on benches, were homespun-clad mountain children. A
high-shouldered, elderly man sat at a table near the deep fireplace,
where a huge backlog was smouldering. Through the cobwebbed window-panes
the mists looked in.

Ike did not speak as he stood on the threshold, but his greedy glance at
the scholars' books enlightened the pedagogue. "Do you want to come to
school?" he asked.

Then the boy's long-cherished grievance burst forth. "They hev tole me
ez how it air agin the law, bein' ez I lives out'n the _dee_stric'."

The teacher elevated his grizzled eyebrows, and Ike said, "I kem hyar
ter ax ye ef that be a true word. I 'lowed ez mebbe my dad tole me that
word jes' ter hender me, an' keep me at the forge. It riles me powerful
ter hev ter be an ignorunt all my days."

To a stranger, this reflection on his "dad" seemed unbecoming. The
teacher's sympathy ebbed. He looked severely at the boy's pale, anxious
face, as he coldly said that he could teach no pupils who resided
outside his school district, except out of regular school hours, and
with a charge for tuition.

Ike Hooden had no money. He nodded suddenly in farewell, the door
closed, and when the schoolmaster, in returning compassion, opened it
after him, and peered out into the impenetrable mist, the boy was
nowhere to be seen. He had taken his despair by the hand, and together
they went down, down into the depths of Poor Valley.

He stood so sorely in need of a little kindness that he felt grateful
for the friendly aspect of his stepbrother, whom he met just before he
reached the shop.

"'Pears like ye air toler'ble late a-gittin' home, Ike," said Jube. "I
done ye the favior ter feed the critters. I 'lowed ez ye would do ez
much fur me some day. I'll feed 'em agin in the mornin', ef ye'll forge
me three lenks ter my trace-chain ter-night, arter dad hev gone home."

Now this broad-faced, sandy-haired, undersized boy, who was two or three
years younger than Ike, and not strong enough for work at the anvil, was
a great tactician. It was his habit, in doing a favor, rigorously to
exact a set-off, and that night when the blacksmith had left the shop,
Jube slouched in.

The flare of the forge-fire illumined with a fitful flicker the dark
interior, showing the rod across the corner with its jingling weight of
horseshoes, a ploughshare on the ground, the barrel of water, the low
window, and casting upon the wall a grotesque shadow of Jube's dodging
figure as he began to ply the bellows.

Presently he left off, the panting roar ceased, the hot iron was laid on
the anvil, and his dodging image on the wall was replaced by an immense
shadow of Ike's big right arm as he raised it. The blows fell fast; the
sparks showered about. All the air was ajar with the resonant clamor of
the hammer, and the anvil sang and sang, shrill and clear. When the iron
was hammered cold, Jube broke the momentary silence.

"I hev got," he droned, as if he were reciting something made familiar
by repetition, "two roosters, 'leven hens, an' three pullets."

There was a long pause, and then he chanted, "One o' the roosters air a
Dominicky."

He walked over to the anvil and struck it with a small bit of metal
which he held concealed in his hand.

"I hev got two shoats, a bag o' dried peaches, two geese, an' I'm
tradin' with mam fur a gayn-der."

He quietly slipped the small bit of shining metal in his pocket.

"I hev got," he droned, waxing very impressive, "a red heifer."

Ike paused meditatively, his hammer in his hand. A new hope was dawning
within him. He knew what was meant by Jube, who often recited the list
of his possessions, seeking to rouse enough envy to induce Ike to
exchange for the "lay out" his interest in a certain gray mare.

Now the mare really belonged to Ike, having come to him from his
paternal grandfather. This was all of value that the old man had left;
for the deserted log hut, rotting on another bleak waste farther down in
Poor Valley, was worth only a sigh for the home that it once
was,--worth, too, perhaps, the thanks of those it sheltered now, the rat
and the owl.

The mare had worked for Pearce Tallam in the plough, under the saddle,
and in the wagon all the years since. But one day, when the boy fell
into a rage,--for he, too, had a difficult temper,--and declared that
he would sell her and go forth from Poor Valley never to return, he was
met by the question, "Hain't the mare lived off'n my fields, an' hain't
I gin ye yer grub, an' clothes, an' the roof that kivers ye?"

Thus Pearce Tallam had disputed his right to sell the mare. But it had
more than once occurred to him that the blacksmith would not object to
Jube's buying her.

Hitherto Ike had not coveted Jube's variegated possessions. But now he
wanted money for schooling. It was true he could hardly turn these into
cash, for in this region farm produce of every description is received
at the country stores in exchange for powder, salt, and similar
necessities, and thus there is little need for money, and very little is
in circulation.

Still, Ike reflected that he might now and then get a small sum at the
store, or perhaps the schoolmaster might barter "l'arnin'" for the
heifer or the shoats.

His hesitation was not lost upon Jube, who offered a culminating
inducement to clinch the trade. He suddenly stood erect, teetered
fantastically on one foot, as if about to begin to dance, and held out a
glittering silver dollar.

The hammer fell from Ike's hands upon the anvil. "'Twar ye ez Grig
Beemy war a-waitin' fur thar on the mounting in the mist!" he cried out,
recognizing the man's odd gesture, which Jube had unconsciously
imitated.

Doubtless the dollar was offered to Jube afterward, exactly as it had
been offered to him. And Jube had taken it. The imitative monkey thrust
it hastily into his pocket, and came down from his fantastic toe, and
stood soberly enough on his two feet.

"Grig Beemy gin ye that thar dollar," said Ike.

Jube sullenly denied it. "He never, now!"

"His critter hev got no call ter be in dad's barn."

"His critter ain't hyar," protested Jube. "This dollar war gin me in
trade ter the settle_mint_."

Ike remembered the queer gesture. How could Jube have repeated it if he
had not seen it? He broke into a sarcastic laugh.

"That's how kem ye war so powerful 'commodatin' ez ter feed the
critters. Ye 'lowed ez I wouldn't see the strange beastis, an' then tell
dad. Foolin' me war a part o' yer trade, I reckon."

Jube made no reply.

"Ef ye war ez big ez me, or bigger, I'd thrash ye out'n yer boots fur
this trick. Ye don't want no lenks ter yer chain. Ye jes' want ter be
sure o' keepin' me out'n the barn. Waal--thar air yer lenks."

He caught up the tongs and held the links in the fire with one hand
while he worked the bellows with the other. Then he laid them red-hot
upon the anvil. His rapid blows crushed them to a shapeless mass. "And
now--thar they ain't."

Jube did not linger long. He was in terror lest Ike should tell his
father. But Ike did not think this was his duty. In fact, neither boy
imagined that the affair involved anything more serious than stabling a
horse without the knowledge of the owner of the shelter.

When Ike was alone a little later, an unaccustomed sound caused him to
glance toward the window.

Something outside was passing it. His position was such that he could
not see the object itself, but upon the perpendicular gray wall of the
crag close at hand, and distinctly defined in the yellow flare that
flickered out through the window from the fire of the forge, the
gigantic shadow of a horse's head glided by.

He understood in an instant that Jube had slipped the animal out of the
barn, and was hiding him in the misty woods, expecting that Ike would
acquaint his father with the facts. He had so managed that these facts
would seem lies, if Pearce Tallam should examine the premises and find
no horse there.

All the next day the white mist clung shroud-like to Poor Valley. The
shadows of evening were sifting through it, when Ike's mother went to
the shop, much perturbed because the cow had not come, and she could not
find Jube to send after her.

"Ike kin go, I reckon," said the blacksmith.

So Ike mounted his mare and set out through the thick white vapor. He
had divined the cause of Jube's absence, and experienced no surprise
when on the summit of the mountain he overtook him, riding the strange
horse, on his way to Beemy's house.

"I s'pose that critter air yourn, an' ye mus' hev bought him fur a pound
o' dried peaches, or sech, up thar ter the settle_mint_," sneered Ike.

Jube was about to reply, but he glanced back into the dense mist with a
changing expression.

"Hesh up!" he said softly. "What's that?"

It was the regular beat of horses' hoofs, coming at a fair pace along
the road on the summit of the mountain. The riders were talking
excitedly.

"I tell ye, ef I could git a glimpse o' the man ez stole that thar
horse, it would go powerful hard with me not to let daylight through
him. I brung this hyar shootin'-iron along o' purpose. Waal, waal,
though, seein' ez ye air the sheriff, I'll hev ter leave it be ez
you-uns say. I wouldn't know the man from Adam; but ye can't miss the
critter,--big chestnut, with a star in his forehead, an'"--

Something strange had happened. At the sound of the voice the horse
pricked up his ears, turned short round in the road, and neighed
joyfully.

The boys looked at each other with white faces. They understood at last.
Jube was mounted on a stolen horse within a hundred yards of the
pursuing owner and the officers of the law. Could explanations--words,
mere words--clear him in the teeth of this fact?

"Drap out'n the saddle, turn the critter loose in the road, an' take ter
the woods," urged Ike.

"They'll sarch an' ketch me," quavered Jube.

He was frantic at the idea of being captured on the horse's back, but if
it should come to a race, he preferred trusting to the chestnut's four
legs rather than to his own two.

Ike hesitated. Jube had brought the difficulty all on himself, and
surely it was not incumbent on Ike to share the danger. But he was
swayed by a sudden uncontrollable impulse.

"Drap off'n the critter, turn him loose, an' I'll lope down the road a
piece, an' they'll foller me, in the mist."

He might have done a wiser thing. But it was a tough problem at best,
and he had only a moment in which to decide.

In that swift, confused second he saw Jube slide from the saddle and
disappear in the mist as if he had been caught up in the clouds. He
heard the horse's hoofs striking against the stones as he trotted off,
whinnying, to meet his master. There was a momentary clamor among the
men, and then with whip and spur they pressed on to capture the supposed
malefactor.


CHAPTER II

All at once it occurred to Ike, as he galloped down the road, that when
they overtook him, they would think that he was the thief, and that he
had been leading the horse. He had been so strong in his own innocence
that the possibility that they might suspect him had not before entered
his mind.

He had intended only to divert the pursuit from Jube, who, although free
from any great wrong-doing, was exposed to the most serious
misconstruction. The knowledge of the pursuers' revolvers had made this
a hard thing to do, but otherwise he had not thought of himself, nor of
what he should say when overtaken.

They would question him; he must answer. Would they believe his story?
Could he support it? Grig Beemy of course would deny it. And Jube--had
he not known how Jube could lie? Would he not fear that the truth might
somehow involve him with the horse-thief?

Ike, with despair in his heart, urged his mare to her utmost speed,
knowing now the danger he was in as a suspected horse-thief. Suddenly,
from among his pursuers, a tiny jet of flame flared out into the dense
gray atmosphere, something whizzed through the branches of the trees
above his head, and a sharp report jarred the mists.

Perhaps the officer fired into the air, merely to intimidate the
supposed criminal and induce him to surrender. But now the boy could not
stop. He had lost control of the mare. Frightened beyond measure by the
report of the pistol, she was in full run.

On she dashed, down sharp declivities, up steep ascents, and then away
and away, with a great burst of speed, along a level sandy stretch.

The black night was falling like a pall upon the white, shrouded day.
Ike knew less where he was than the mare did; he was trusting to her
instinct to carry him to her stable. More than once the low branches of
a tree struck him, almost tearing him from the saddle, but he clung
frantically to the mane of the frightened animal, and on and on she
swept, with the horsemen thundering behind.

He could hear nothing but their heavy, continuous tramp. He could see
nothing, until suddenly a dim, pure light was shining in front of him,
on his own level, it seemed. He stared at it with starting eyeballs. It
cleft the vapors,--they were falling away on either side,--and they
reflected it with an illusive, pearly shimmer.

In another moment he knew that he was nearing the abrupt precipice, for
that was the moon, riding like a silver boat upon a sea of mist, with a
glittering wake behind it, beyond the sharply serrated summit line of
the eastern hills.

He could no longer trust to the mare's instinct. He trusted to
appearances instead. He sawed away with all his might on the bit,
striving to wheel her around in the road.

She resisted, stumbled, then fell upon her knees among a wild confusion
of rotting logs and stones that rolled beneath her, as, snorting and
angry, she struggled again to her feet. Once more Ike pulled her to the
left.

There was a great displacement of earth, a frantic scramble, and
together they went over the cliff.

The descent was not absolutely sheer. At the distance of twelve or
fourteen feet below, a great bulging shelf of rock projected. They fell
upon this. The boy had instantly loosed his hold of the reins, and
slipped away from the prostrate animal. The mare, quieted only for a
moment by the shock, sprang to her feet, the stones slipped beneath her,
and she went headlong over the precipice into the dreary depths of Poor
Valley.

The pursuers heard the heavy thud when she struck the ground far below.
They paused at the verge of the crag, and talked in eager, excited
tones. They did not see the boy, as he sat cowering close to the cliff
on the ledge below.

Ike listened in great trepidation to what they were saying; he
experienced infinite surprise when presently one of them mentioned Grig
Beemy's name.

[Illustration: TOGETHER THEY WENT OVER THE CLIFF]

So they knew who had stolen the horse! It was little consolation to Ike,
with his mare lying dead at the foot of the cliff, to reflect that if he
had had the courage to face the emergency, and rely upon his innocence,
his story would only have confirmed their knowledge of the facts.

Although the master of the horse did not know the thief "from Adam,"
Beemy had been seen with the animal and recognized by others, who,
accompanying the sheriff and the owner, had traced him for two days
through many wily doublings in the mountain fastnesses.

They now concluded to press on to Beemy's house. Ike knew they would
find him there waiting for Jube and the horse. Beemy had feared that he
would be followed, and this was the reason that he had desired to rid
himself of the animal for a day and night, until he could make sure and
feel more secure.

As the horsemen swept round the curve, Ike remembered how close was the
road to the cliff. If he had only given the mare her head, she would
have carried him safely around it. But there she lay dead, way down in
Poor Valley, and he had lost all he owned in the world.

Night had come, and in the dense darkness he did not dare to move. Only
a step away was the edge of the precipice, over which the mare had
slipped, and he could not tell how dangerous was the bluff he must climb
to regain the summit. He felt he must lie here till dawn.

He was badly jarred by his fall. Time dragged by wearily, and his
bruises pained him. He knew at length that all the world slept,--all but
himself and some distant ravening wolf, whose fierce howl ever and anon
set the mists to shivering in Poor Valley where he prowled. This
blood-curdling sound and his bitter thoughts were but sorry company.

After a long time he fell asleep. Fortunately, he did not stir. When he
regained consciousness and a sense of danger, he found still around him
that dense white vapor, through which the pale, drear day was slowly
dawning. Above his head was swinging in the mist a cluster of
fox-grapes, with the rime upon them, and higher still he saw a quivering
red leaf.

It was the leaf of a starveling tree, growing out of a cleft where there
was so little earth that it seemed to draw its sustenance from the rock.
It was a scraggy, stunted thing, but it was well for him that it had
struck root there, for its branches brushed the solid, smooth face of
the cliff, which he could not have surmounted but for them and the
grape-vine that had fallen over from the summit and entangled itself
among them.

As he climbed the tree, he felt it quake over the abysses, which the
mists still veiled. He had a sense of elation and achievement when he
gained the top, and it followed him home. There it suddenly deserted
him.

He found Pearce Tallam in a frenzy of rage at the discovery, which he
had made through Jube's confession, that a stolen horse had been stabled
on his premises. Despite his tyranny and his fierce, rude temper, he
was an honest man and of fair repute. Although he realized that neither
boy knew that the animal had been stolen, he gave Jube a lesson which he
remembered for many a long day, and Ike also came in for his share of
this muscular tuition.

For in the midst of the criminations and recriminations, the violent
blacksmith caught up a horseshoe and flung it across the shop, striking
Ike with a force that almost stunned him. He was a man in strength, and
it was hard for him not to return the blow; but he only walked out of
the shop, declaring that he would stay for no more blows.

"Cl'ar out, then!" called out Pearce Tallam after him. "I don't keer ef
ye goes fur good."

He met, at the door of the dwelling, a plaintive reproach from his
mother. "'Count o' ye not tellin' on Jube, he mought hev been tuk up fur
a horse-thief. I dunno what I'd hev done 'thout him," she added, "'long
o' raisin' the young tur-r-keys, an' goslin's, an' deedies, an' sech; he
hev been a mighty holp ter me. He air more of a son ter me than my own
boy."

She did not mean this, but she had said it once half in jest, half in
reproach, and then it became a formula of complaint whenever Ike
displeased her.

Now he was sore and sensitive. "Take him fur yer son, then!" he cried.
"I'm a-goin' out'n Pore Valley, ef I starves fur it. I shows my face
hyar no more."

As he shouldered his gun and strode out, he noted the light of the
forge-fire quivering on the mist, but he little thought it was the last
fire that Pearce Tallam would ever kindle there.

He glanced back again before the dense vapor shut the house from view.
His mother was standing in the door, with her baby in her arms, looking
after him with a frightened, beseeching face. But his heart was hardened
and he kept on,--kept on, with that deft, even tread of the mountaineer,
who seems never to hurry, almost to loiter, but gets over the ground
with surprising rapidity.

He left the mists and desolation of Poor Valley far behind, but not that
frightened, beseeching face. He thought of it more often when he lay
down under the shelter of a great rock to sleep than he did of the howl
of the wolf which he had heard the night before, not far from here.

Late the next afternoon he came upon the outskirts of a village. He
entered it doubtfully, for it seemed metropolitan to him, unaccustomed
as he was to anything more imposing than the cross-roads store. But the
first sound he heard reassured him. It was the clear, metallic resonance
of an anvil, the clanking of a sledge, and the clinking of a
hand-hammer.

Here, at the forge, he found work. It had been said in Poor Valley that
he was already as good a blacksmith even as Pearce Tallam. He had great
natural aptitude for the work, and considerable experience. But his
wages only sufficed to pay for his food and lodging. Still, there was a
prospect for more, and he was content.

In his leisure he made friends among those of his own age, who took him
about the town and enjoyed his amazement. He examined everything wrought
in metal with such eager interest, and was so outspoken about his
ambition, that they dubbed him Tubal-cain.

He was struck dumb with amazement when, for the first time in his life,
he saw a locomotive gliding along the rails, with a glaring headlight
and a cloud of flying sparks. Once, when it was motionless on the track,
they talked to the engineer, who explained "the workings of the
critter," as Ike called it.

The boy understood so readily that the engineer said, after a time,
"You're a likely feller, for such a derned ignoramus! Where have you
been hid out, all this time?"

"Way down in Pore Valley," said Ike very humbly.

"He's concluded to be a great inventor," said one of his young friends,
with a merry wink.

"He's a mighty artificer in iron," said the wit who had named him
Tubal-cain.

The engineer looked gravely at Ike. "Why, boy," he admonished him, "the
world has got a hundred years the start of you!"

"I kin ketch up," Ike declared sturdily.

"There's something in grit, I reckon," said the engineer. Then his
wonderful locomotive glided away, leaving Ike staring after it in silent
ecstasy, and his companions dying with laughter.

He started out to overtake the world at a night-school, where his mental
quickness contrasted oddly with his slow, stolid demeanor. He worked
hard at the forge all day; but everybody was kind.

Outside of Poor Valley life seemed joyous and hopeful; progress and
activity were on every hand; and the time he spent here was the happiest
he had ever known,--except for the recollection of that frightened,
beseeching face which had looked out after him through the closing
mists.

He wished he had turned back for a word. He wished his mother might know
he was well and happy. He began to feel that he could go no further
without making his peace with her. So one day he left his employer with
the promise to return the following week, "ef the Lord spares me an'
nuthin' happens," as the cautious rural formula has it, and set out for
his home.

The mists had lifted from it, but the snow had fallen deep. Poor Valley
lay white and drear--it seemed to him that he had never before known how
drear--between the grim mountain with its great black crags, its chasms,
its gaunt, naked trees, and the long line of flinty hills, whose stunted
pines bent with the weight of the snow.

There was no smoke from the chimney of the blacksmith's shop. There were
no footprints about the door. An atmosphere charged with calamity seemed
to hang over the dwelling. Somehow he knew that a dreadful thing had
happened even before he opened the door and saw his mother's mournful
white face.

She sprang up at the sight of him with a wild, sobbing cry that was half
grief, half joy. He had only a glimpse of the interior,--of Jube,
looking anxious and unnaturally grave; of the listless children, grouped
about the fire; of the big, burly blacksmith, with a strange, deep
pallor upon his face, and as he shifted his position--why, how was that?

The boy's mother had thrust him out of the door, and closed it behind
her. The jar brought down from the low eaves a few feathery flakes of
snow, which fell upon her hair as she stood there with him.

"Don't say nuthin' 'bout'n it," she implored. "He can't abide ter hear
it spoke of."

"What ails dad's hand?" he asked, bewildered.

"It's gone!" she sobbed. "He war over ter the sawmill the day ye
lef'--somehow 'nuther the saw cotched it--the doctor tuk it off."

"His right hand!" cried Ike, appalled.

The blacksmith would never lift a hammer again. And there the forge
stood, silent and smokeless.

What this portended, Ike realized as he sat with them around the fire.
Their sterile fields in Poor Valley had only served to eke out their
subsistence. This year the corn-crop had failed, and the wheat was
hardly better. The winter had found them without special provision, but
without special anxiety, for the anvil had always amply supplied their
simple needs.

Now that this misfortune had befallen them, who could say what was
before them unless Ike would remain and take his stepfather's place at
the forge? Ike knew that this contingency must have occurred to them as
well as to him. He divined it from the anxious, furtive glances which
they one and all cast upon him from time to time,--even Pearce Tallam,
whose turn it was now to feel that greatest anguish of calamity,
helplessness.

But must he relinquish his hopes, his chance of an education, that
plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a
hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless
clod in Poor Valley?

His mother had the son she had chosen. And surely he owed no duty to
Pearce Tallam. The hand that was gone had been a hard hand to him.

He rose at length. He put on his leather apron. "Waal--I mought ez well
g' long ter the shop, I reckon," he remarked calmly. "'Pears like thar's
time yit fur a toler'ble spot o' work afore dark."

It was a hard-won victory. Even then he experienced a sort of
satisfaction in knowing that Pearce Tallam must feel humiliated and of
small account to be thus utterly dependent for his bread upon the boy
whom he had so persistently maltreated. In his pale face Ike saw
something of the bitterness he had endured, of his broken spirit, of his
humbled pride.

The look smote upon the boy's heart. There was another inward struggle.
Then he said, as if it were a result of deep cogitation,--

"Ye'll hev ter kem over ter the shop, dad, wunst in a while, ter advise
'bout what's doin'. 'Pears ter me like mos' folks would 'low ez a boy
no older 'n me couldn't do reg'lar blacksmithin' 'thout some sperienced
body along fur sense an' showin'."

The man visibly plucked up a little. Was he, indeed, so useless? "That's
a fac', Ike," he said gently. "I reckon ye kin make out
toler'ble--cornsiderin'. But I'll be along ter holp."

After this Ike realized that he had been working with something tougher
than iron, harder than steel,--his own unsubdued nature. He traced an
analogy from the forge; and he saw that those strong forces, the fires
of conscience and the coercion of duty, had wrought the stubborn metal
of his character to a kindly use.

Gradually the relinquishment of his wild, vague ambition began to seem
less bitter to him; for it might be that these were the few things over
which he should be faithful,--his own forge-fire and his own fiery
heart. And so he labors to fulfill his trust.

The spring never comes to Poor Valley. The summer is a cloud of dust.
The autumn shrouds itself in mist. And the winter is snow. But poverty
of soil need not imply poverty of soul. And a noble manhood may nobly
exist "'Way Down in Poor Valley."




A MOUNTAIN STORM


"Ef the filly war bridle-wise"--

"The filly _air_ bridle-wise."

A sullen pause ensued, and the two brothers looked angrily at each
other.

The woods were still; the sunshine was faint and flickering; the low,
guttural notes of a rain-crow broke suddenly on the silence.

Presently Thad, mechanically examining a bridle which he held in his
hand, began again in an appealing tone: "'Pears like ter me ez the filly
air toler'ble well bruk ter the saddle, an' she would holp me powerful
ter git thar quicker ter tell dad 'bout'n that thar word ez war fotched
up the mounting. They 'lowed ez 'twar jes' las' night ez them revenue
men raided a still-house, somewhar down thar in the valley, an' busted
the tubs, an' sp'iled the coppers, an' arrested all the moonshiners ez
war thar. An' ef they war ter find out 'bout'n this hyar still-house
over yander in the gorge, they'd raid it, too. An' thar be dad," he
continued despairingly, "jes' sodden with whiskey an' ez drunk ez a
fraish b'iled ow_el_, an' he wouldn't hev the sense nor the showin' ter
make them off'cers onderstand ez he never hed nothin' ter do with the
moonshiners--'ceptin' ter go ter thar still-house, an' git drunk along
o' them. An' I dunno whether the off'cers would set much store by that
sayin' ennyhow, an' I want ter git dad away from thar afore they kem."

"I don't believe that thar word ez them men air a-raidin' round the
mountings no more 'n _that_!" and Ben kicked away a pebble
contemptuously.

Thad was in a quiver of anxiety. While Ben indulged his doubts, the
paternal "B'iled Ow_el_" might at any moment be arrested on a charge of
aiding and abetting in illicit distilling.

"Ye never b'lieve nothin' till ye see it--ye sateful dunce!" he
exclaimed excitedly.

Thus began a fraternal quarrel which neither forgot for years.

Ben turned scarlet. "Waal, then, jes' leave my filly in the barn whar
she be now; ye kin travel on Shank's mare!"

Thad started off up the steep slope. "Ef ye ain't a-hankerin' fur me ter
ride that thar filly, ez air ez bridle-wise ez ye be, jes' let's see ye
kem on, an'--hender!"

"I hopes she'll fling ye, an' ye'll git yer neck bruk," Ben called out
after him.

"I wish ennything 'ud happen, jes' so be I mought never lay eyes on ye
agin," Thad declared.

As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that his brother was not
following, and when he reached the flimsy little barn, there was nothing
to prevent him from carrying out his resolution.

Nevertheless, he hesitated as he stood with the door in his hand. A
clay-bank filly came instantly to it, but with a sudden impulse he
closed it abruptly, and set out on foot along a narrow, brambly path
that wound down the mountain side.

He had descended almost to its base before the threatening appearance of
the sky caught his attention. A dense black cloud had climbed up from
over the opposite hills, and stretched from their jagged summits to the
zenith. There it hung in mid-air, its sombre shadow falling across the
valley, and reaching high up the craggy slope, where the boy's home was
perched. The whole landscape wore that strange, still, expectant aspect
which precedes the bursting of a storm.

Suddenly a vivid white flash quivered through the sky. The hills,
suffused with its ghastly light, started up in bold relief against the
black clouds; even the faint outlines of distant ranges that had
disappeared with the strong sunlight reasserted themselves in a pale,
illusive fashion, flickering like the unreal mountains of a dream about
the vague horizon. A ball of fire had coursed through the air, striking
with dazzling coruscations the top of a towering oak, and he heard,
amidst the thunder and its clamorous echo, the sharp crash of riving
timber.

All at once he had a sense of falling, a sudden pain shot through him,
darkness descended, and he knew no more.

When he gradually regained consciousness, it seemed that a long time had
elapsed since he was trudging down the mountain side. He could not
imagine where he was now. He put out his hand in the intense darkness
that enveloped him, and felt the damp mould beside him,--above--below.

For one horrible instant he recalled a sickening story of a man who was
negligently buried alive. He had always believed that this was only a
fireside fiction invented in the security of the chimney corner; but was
it to have a strange confirmation in his own fate? He was pierced with
pity for himself, as he heard the despair in his voice when he sent
forth a wild, hoarse cry. What a cavernous echo it had!

Again and again, after his lips were closed, that voice of anguish rang
out, and then was silent, then fitfully sounded once more on another
key. He strove to rise, but the earth on his breast resisted. With a
great effort he finally burst through it; he felt the clods tumbling
about him; he sat upright; he rose to his full height; and still all was
merged in the densest darkness, and, when he stretched up his arms as
high as he could reach, he again felt the damp mould.

The truth had begun vaguely to enter his mind even before, in shifting
his position, he caught sight of a rift in the deep gloom, some fifteen
feet above his head. Then he realized that at the moment of the flash of
lightning, unmindful of his footing, he had strayed aside from the path,
stumbled, fallen, and, as it chanced, was received into one of those
unsuspected apertures in the ground which are common in all cavernous
countries, being sometimes the entrance to extensive caves, and which
are here denominated "sink-holes."

These cavities were exceedingly frequent in the valley, on the boundary
of which Thad lived, and his familiarity with them did away for the
moment with all appreciation of the perplexity and difficulty of the
situation. He laughed aloud triumphantly.

Instantly these underground chambers broke forth with wild, elfish
voices that mimicked his merriment till it died on his lips. He
preferred utter loneliness to the vague sense of companionship given by
these weird echoes. Somehow the strangeness of all that had happened to
him had stirred his imagination, and he could not rid himself of the
idea that there were grimacing creatures here with him, whom he could
not see, who would only speak when he spoke, and scoffingly iterate his
tones.

He was faint, bruised, and exhausted. He had been badly stunned by his
fall; but for the soft, shelving earth through which he had crashed, it
might have been still worse. He could scarcely move as he began to
investigate his precarious plight. Even if he could climb the
perpendicular wall above his head, he could not thence gain the
aperture, for, as his eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, he
discovered that the shape of the roof was like the interior of a roughly
defined dome, about the centre of which was this small opening.

"An' a human can't walk on a ceilin' like a fly," he said
discontentedly.

"Can't!" cried an echo close at hand.

"Fly!" suggested a distant mocker.

Thad closed his mouth and sat down.

He had moved very cautiously, for he knew that these sink-holes are
often the entrance of extensive caverns, and that there might be a deep
abyss on any side. He could do nothing but wait and call out now and
then, and hope that somebody might soon take the short cut through the
woods, and, hearing his voice, come to his relief.

His courage gave way when he reflected that the river would rise with
the heavy rain which he could hear steadily splashing through the
sink-hole, and for a time all prudent men would go by the beaten road
and the ford. No one would care to take the short cut and save three
miles' travel at the risk of swimming his horse, for the river was
particularly deep just here and spanned only by a footbridge, except,
perhaps, some fugitive from justice, or the revenue officers on their
hurried, reckless raids. This reminded him of the still-house and of
"dad" there yet, imbibing whiskey, and sharing the danger of his chosen
cronies, the moonshiners.

Ben, at home, would not have his anxiety roused till midnight, at least,
by his brother's failure to return from the complicated feat of decoying
the drunkard from the distillery. Thad trembled to think what might
happen to himself in the interval. If the volume of water pouring down
through the sink-hole should increase to any considerable extent, he
would be drowned here like a rat. Was he to have his wish, and see his
brother never again?

And poor Ben! How his own cruel, wicked parting words would scourge him
throughout his life,--even when he should grow old!

Thad's eyes filled with tears of prescient pity for his brother's
remorse.

"Ef ennything war ter happen hyar, sure enough, I wish he mought always
know ez I don't keer nothin' now 'bout'n that thar sayin' o' his'n," he
thought wistfully.

He still heard the persistent rain splashing outside. The hollow,
unnatural murmur of a subterranean stream rose drearily. Once he sighed
heavily, and all the cavernous voices echoed his grief.

When that terrible flash of lightning came, Ben was still on the slope
of the mountain where his brother had left him. The next moment he heard
the wild whirl of the gusts as they came surging up the valley. He saw
the frantic commotion of the woods on distant spurs as the wind
advanced, preceded by swirling columns of dust which carried myriads of
leaves, twigs, and even great branches rent from the trees, as evidence
of its force.

Ben turned, and ran like a deer up the steep ascent. "It'll blow
that thar barn spang off'n the bluff, I'm thinkin'--an' the
filly--Cobe--Cobe!" he cried out to her as he neared the shanty.

He stopped short, his eyes distended. The door was open. There was no
hair nor hoof of the filly within. He could have no doubt that his
brother had actually taken his property for this errand against his
will.

"That thar boy air no better 'n a low-down horse-thief!" he declared
bitterly.

The gusts struck the little barn. It careened this way and that, and
finally the flimsy structure came down with a crash, one of the boards
narrowly missing Ben's head as it fell. He had a hard time getting to
the house in the teeth of the wind, but its violence only continued a
few minutes, and when he was safe within doors he looked out of the
window at the silent mists, beginning to steal about the coves and
ravines, and at the rain as it fell in serried columns. Long after dark
it still beat with unabated persistence on the roof of the log cabin,
and splashed and dripped with a chilly, cheerless sound from the low
eaves. Sometimes a drop fell down the wide chimney, and hissed upon the
red-hot coals, for Ben had piled on the logs and made a famous fire. He
could see that his mother now and then paused to listen in the midst of
her preparations for supper. Once as she knelt on the hearth, and
deftly inserted a knife between the edges of a baking corn-cake and the
hoe, she looked up suddenly at Ben without turning the cake. "I hearn
the beastis's huff!" she said.

Ben listened. The fire roared. The rain went moaning down the valley.

"Ye never hearn nothin'," he rejoined.

Nevertheless, she rose and opened the door. The cold air streamed in.
The firelight showed the mists, pressing close in the porch,
shivering, and seeming to jostle and nudge each other as they peered in,
curiously, upon the warm home-scene, and the smoking supper, and the
hilarious children, as if asking of one another how they would like to
be human creatures, instead of a part of inanimate nature, or at best
the elusive spirits of the mountains.

There was nothing to be seen without but the mists.

"Thad tuk the filly, ye say fur true?" she asked, recurring to the
subject when supper was over.

Ben nodded. "I hopes ter conscience she'll break his neck," he declared
cruelly.

His mother took instant alarm. She turned and looked at him with a face
expressive of the keenest anxiety. "'Pears like to me ez the only reason
Thad kin be so late a-gittin' back air jes' 'kase it air a toler'ble
aggervatin' job a-fotchin' of dad home," she said, striving to reassure
herself.

"That air a true word 'bout'n dad, ennyhow," Ben assented bitterly.

His old grandfather suddenly lifted up his voice.

"This night," said the graybeard from out the chimney corner,--"this
night, forty years ago, my brother, Ephraim Grimes, fell dead on this
cabin floor, an' no man sence kin mark the cause."

A pause ensued. The rain fell. The pallid, shuddering mists looked in at
the window.

"Ye ain't a-thinkin'," cried the woman tremulously, "ez the night air
one app'inted fur evil?"

The old man did not answer.

"This night," he croaked, leaning over the glowing fire, and kindling
his long-stemmed cob-pipe by dexterously scooping up with its bowl a
live coal,--"this night, twenty-six years ago, thar war eleven sheep o'
mine--ez war teched in the head, or somehows disabled from good
sense--an' they jumped off'n the bluff, one arter the other, an' fell
haffen way down the mounting, an' bruk thar fool necks 'mongst the
boulders. They war dead. Thar shearin's never kem ter much account
nuther. 'Twar powerful cur'ous, fust an' last."

The woman made a gesture of indifference. "I ain't a-settin' of store by
critters when humans is--is--whar they ain't hearn from."

But Ben was susceptible of a "critter" scare.

"I hope, now," he exclaimed, alarmed, "ez that thar triflin' no-'count
Thad Grimes ain't a-goin' ter let my filly lame herself, nor nothin',
a-travelin' with her this dark night, ez seems ter be a night fur things
ter happen on ennyhow. Oh, shucks! shucks!" he continued impatiently,
"I jes' feels like thar ain't no use o' my tryin' ter live along."

Three of the children who habitually slept in the shed-room had started
off to go to bed. As they opened the connecting door, there suddenly
resounded a wild commotion within. They shrieked with fright, and banged
the door against a strong force which was beginning to push from the
other side.

The old grandfather rose, pale and agitated, his pipe falling from his
nerveless clasp.

"This night," he said, with white lips and mechanical utterance,--"this
night"--

"Satan is in the shed-room!" shouted the three small boys, as they held
fast to the door with a strength far beyond their age and weight.
Nevertheless, they were hardly able to cope with the strength on the
other side of the door, and it was alternately forced slightly ajar, and
then closed with a resounding slam. Once, as the firelight flickered
into the dark shed-room, the ignorant, superstitious mountaineers had a
fleeting glimpse of an object there which convinced them: they beheld
great gleaming, blazing eyes, a burnished hoof, and--yes--a flirting
tail.

"I believe it is Satan himself!" cried Ben, with awe in his voice.

In the wild confusion and bewilderment, Ben was somehow vaguely aware
that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,--in the antechamber
of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and
hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts
which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under
the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of
evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the
inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to wiser people than
poor Ben.

In the midst of the general despair and fright, something suddenly
whinnied. At the sound the three small boys fell in a limp, exhausted
heap on the floor, and, as the door no longer offered resistance, the
unknown visitor pranced in: it was the filly, snorting and tossing her
mane, and once more whinnying shrilly for her supper.

In a moment Ben understood the whole phenomenon. Thad had left the barn
door unfastened, and, when that terrible flash of lightning came and the
wind arose, the frightened animal had instantly fled to the house for
safety. She had doubtless pushed open the back door of the shed-room
easily enough, but it had closed behind her, and she had remained there
a supperless prisoner.

The small boys picked themselves up from among the filly's hoofs, with
disconnected exclamations of "Wa-a-a-l, sir!" while Ben led the animal
out, with a growing impression that he would try to "live along" for a
while, at all events.

He had led Satan out of the moral shed-room, as well. The reappearance
of the filly without Thad had raised a great anxiety about his brother's
continued absence. All at once he began to feel as if those brutal
wishes of his were prophetic,--as if they were endowed with a malignant
power, and could actually pursue poor Thad to some violent end. He did
not understand now how he could have framed the words.

When a fellow really likes his brother,--and most fellows do,--there is
scant use or grace or common-sense in keeping up, from mere
carelessness, or through an irritable habit, a continual bickering, for
these germs of evil are possessed of a marvelous faculty for growth, and
some day their gigantic deformities will confront you in deeds of which
you once believed yourself incapable.

Ben's hands were trembling as he folded a blanket, and laid it on the
animal's back to serve instead of a saddle.

"I'm a-goin' ter the still-house ter see ef Thad ever got thar," he
said, when his mother appeared at the door.

He added, "I'm a-gittin' sorter skeered ez su'thin' mought hev happened
ter him."

His grandfather hobbled out into the little porch. "Them roads air
turrible rough fur that thar filly, ez ain't fairly broke good yit, nor
used ter travel," he suggested.

"I'd gin four hunderd fillies, ef I hed 'em, jes' ter know that thar boy
air safe an' sound," Ben declared, as he mounted.

He took the short cut, judging that, at the point where it crossed the
river, the stream was still fordable. When he heard his brother's
piteous cries for help, he quaked to think what might have happened to
Thad if he had not recognized the presence of Satan in the moral
shed-room, and summarily ejected him. The rainfall had been sufficient
to aggregate considerable water in the gullies about the sink-hole, and
these, emptying into the cavity and sending a continuous stream over the
boy, had served to chill him through and through, and he had a pretty
fair chance of being drowned, or dying from cold and exhaustion. Ben
pressed on to the still-house at the best speed he could make, and such
of the moonshiners as were half sober came out with ropes and a barrel,
which they lowered into the cavity. Thad managed to crawl into the
barrel, and, after several ineffectual attempts, he was drawn up through
the sink-hole.

There was no formal reconciliation between the two boys. It was enough
for Ben to feel Thad's reluctance to unloose his eager clutch upon his
brother's arms, even after he had been lifted out upon the firm ground.
And Thad knew that that complicated sound in Ben's throat was a sob,
although, for the sake of the men who stood by, he strove to seem to be
coughing.

"Right smart of an idjit, now, ain't ye?" demanded Ben, hustling back,
so to speak, the tears that sought to rise in his eyes.

"Waal, stranger, how's yer filly?" retorted Thad, laughing in a gaspy
fashion.

There was a tone of forgiveness in the inquiry. The answer caught the
same spirit.

"Middlin',--thanky,--jes' middlin'," said Ben.

And then they and "dad" fared home together by the light of the
moonshiners' lantern.




BORROWING A HAMMER


On a certain bold crag that juts far over a steep wooded mountain slope
a red light was seen one moonless night in June. Sometimes it glowed
intensely among the gray mists which hovered above the deep and sombre
valley; sometimes it faded. Its life was the breath of the bellows, for
a blacksmith's shop stands close beside the road that rambles along the
brink of the mountain. Generally after sunset the forge is dark and
silent. So when three small boys, approaching the log hut through the
gloomy woods, heard the clink! clank! clink! clank! of the hammers, and
the metallic echo among the cliffs, they stopped short in astonishment.

"Thar now!" exclaimed Abner Ryder desperately; "dad's at it fur true!"

"Mebbe he'll go away arter a while, Ab," suggested Jim Gryce, another
of the small boys. "Then that'll gin us our chance."

"Waal, I reckon we kin stiffen up our hearts ter wait," said Ab
resignedly.

All three sat down on a log a short distance from the shop, and
presently they became so engrossed in their talk that they did not
notice when the blacksmith, in the pauses of his work, came to the door
for a breath of air. They failed to discreetly lower their voices, and
thus they had a listener on whose attention they had not counted.

"Ye see," observed Ab in a high, shrill pipe, "dad sets a heap o' store
by his tools. But dad, ye know, air a mighty slack-twisted man. He gits
his tools lost" (reprehensively), "he wastes his nails, an' then he
'lows ez how it war _me_ ez done it."

He paused impressively in virtuous indignation. A murmur of surprise and
sympathy rose from his companions. Then he recommenced.

"Dad air the crankiest man on this hyar mounting! He won't lend me none
o' his tools nowadays,--not even that thar leetle hammer o' his'n. An'
I'm obleeged ter hev that thar leetle hammer an' some nails ter fix a
box fur them young squir'ls what we cotched. So we'll jes' hev ter go
ter his shop of a night when he is away, an'--an'--an' borry it!"

The blacksmith, a tall, powerfully built man, of an aspect far from
jocular, leaned slightly out of the door, peering in the direction where
the three tow-headed urchins waited. Then he glanced within at a leather
strap, as if he appreciated the appropriateness of an intimate relation
between these objects. But there was no time for pleasure now. He was
back in his shop in a moment.

His next respite was thus entertained:--

"What makes him work so of a night?" asked Jim Gryce.

"Waal," explained Ab in his usual high key, "he rid ter the settle_mint_
this mornin'; he hev been a-foolin' round thar all day, an' the crap air
jes' a-sufferin' fur work! So him an' Uncle Tobe air layin' thar ploughs
in the shop now, kase they air goin' ter run around the corn
ter-morrer. Workin', though, goes powerful hard with dad enny time. I
tole old Bob Peachin that, when I war ter the mill this evenin'. Him an'
the t'other men thar laffed mightily at dad. An' I laffed too!"

There was an angry gleam in Stephen Ryder's stern black eyes as he
turned within, seized the tongs, and thrust a piece of iron among the
coals, while Tobe, who had been asleep in the window at the back of the
shop, rose reluctantly and plied the bellows. The heavy panting broke
forth simultaneously with the red flare that quivered out into the dark
night. Presently it faded; the hot iron was whisked upon the anvil,
fiery sparks showered about as the rapid blows fell, and the echoing
crags kept time with rhythmic beats to the clanking of the sledge and
the clinking of the hand-hammer. The stars, high above the
far-stretching mountains, seemed to throb in unison, until suddenly the
blacksmith dealt a sharp blow on the face of the anvil as a signal to
his striker to cease, and the forge was silent.

As he leaned against the jamb of the door, mechanically adjusting his
leather apron, he heard Ab's voice again.

"Old Bob say he ain't no 'count sca'cely. He 'lowed ez he had knowed him
many a year, an' fund him a sneakin', deceivin' critter."

The blacksmith was erect in a moment, every fibre tense.

"That ain't the wust," Ab gabbled on. "Old Bob say, though't ain't known
ginerally, ez he air gin ter thievin'. Old Bob 'lowed ter them men,
hangin' round the mill, ez he air the biggest thief on the mounting!"

The strong man trembled. His blood rushed tumultuously to his head, then
seemed to ebb swiftly away. That this should be said of him to the
loafers at the mill! These constituted his little world. And he valued
his character as only an honest man can. He was amazed at the boldness
of the lie. It had been openly spoken in the presence of his son. One
might have thought the boy would come directly to him. But there he sat,
glibly retailing it to his small comrades! It seemed all so strange
that Stephen Ryder fancied there was surely some mistake. In the next
moment, however, he was convinced that they had been talking of him, and
of no one else.

"I tole old Bob ez how I thought they oughtn't ter be so hard on him, ez
he warn't thar to speak for hisself."

All three boys giggled weakly, as if this were witty.

"But old Bob 'lowed ez ennybody mought know him by his name. An' then he
told me that old sayin':--

  'Stephen, Stephen, so deceivin',
  That old Satan can't believe him!'"

Here Ben Gryce broke in, begging the others to go home, and come to
"borry" the hammer next night. Ab agreed to the latter proposition, but
still sat on the log and talked. "Old Bob say," he remarked cheerfully,
"that when he do git 'em, he shakes 'em--shakes the life out'n 'em!"

This was inexplicable. Stephen Ryder pondered vainly on it for an
instant. But the oft-reiterated formula, "Old Bob say," caught his
ears, and he was absorbed anew in Ab's discourse.

"Old Bob say ez my mother air one of the best women in this world. But
she air so gin ter humoring every critter a-nigh her, an' tends ter 'em
so much, an' feeds 'em so high an' hearty, ez they jes' gits good fur
nothin' in this world. That's how kem she air eat out'n house an' home
now. Old Bob say ez how he air the hongriest critter! Say he jes'
despise ter see him comin' round of meal times. Old Bob say ef he hev
got enny good lef' in him, my mother will kill it out yit with
kindness."

The blacksmith felt, as he turned back into the shop and roused the
sleepy-headed striker, that within the hour all the world had changed
for him. These coarse taunts were enough to show in what estimation he
was held. And he had fancied himself, in countrified phrase, "respected
by all," and had been proud of his standing.

So the bellows began to sigh and pant once more, and kept the red light
flaring athwart the darkness. The people down in the valley looked up at
it, glowing like a star that had slipped out of the sky and lodged
somehow on the mountain, and wondered what Stephen Ryder could be about
so late at night. When he left the shop there was no sign of the boys
who had ornamented the log earlier in the evening. He walked up the road
to his house, and found his wife sitting alone in the rickety little
porch.

"Hev that thar boy gone ter bed?" he asked.

"Waal," she slowly drawled, in a soft, placid voice, "he kem hyar
'bout'n haffen hour ago so nigh crazed ter go ter stay all night with
Jim an' Benny Gryce ez I hed ter let him. Old man Gryce rid by hyar in
his wagon on his way home from the settle_mint_. So Ab went off with the
Gryce boys an' thar gran'dad."

Thus the blacksmith concluded his tools were not liable to be "borrowed"
that night. He had a scheme to insure their safety for the future, but
in order to avoid his wife's remonstrances on Ab's behalf, he told her
nothing of it, nor of what he had overheard.

Early the next morning he set out for the mill, intending to confront
"old Bob" and demand retraction. The road down the deep, wild ravine was
rugged, and he jogged along slowly until at last he came within sight of
the crazy, weather-beaten old building tottering precariously on the
brink of the impetuous torrent which gashed the mountain side. Crags
towered above it; vines and mosses clung to its walls; it was a dank,
cool, shady place, but noisy enough with the turmoil of its primitive
machinery and the loud, hoarse voices of the loungers striving to make
themselves heard above the uproar. There were several of these idle
mountaineers aimlessly strolling among the bags of corn and wheat that
were piled about. Long, dusty cobwebs hung from the rafters. Sometimes a
rat, powdered white with flour and rendered reckless by high living,
raced boldly across the floor. The golden grain poured ceaselessly
through the hopper, and leaning against it was the miller, a tall,
stoop-shouldered man about forty years of age, with a floury smile
lurking in his beard and a twinkle in his good-humored eyes overhung by
heavy, mealy eyebrows.

"Waal, Steve," yelled the miller, shambling forward as the blacksmith
appeared in the doorway. "Come 'long in. Whar's yer grist?"

"I hev got no grist!" thundered Steve, sternly.

"Waal--ye're jes' ez welcome," said the miller, not noticing the rigid
lines of the blacksmith's face, accented here and there by cinders, nor
the fierceness of the intent dark eyes.

"I reckon I'm powerful welcome!" sneered Stephen Ryder.

The tone attracted "old Bob's" attention. "What ails ye, Steve?" he
asked, surprised.

"I'm a deceivin', sneakin' critter--hey," shouted the visitor, shaking
his big fist; he had intended to be calm, but his long-repressed fury
had found vent at last.

The miller drew back hastily, astonishment and fear mingled in a pallid
paste, as it were, with the flour on his face.

The six startled on-lookers stood as if petrified.

"Ye say I'm a thief!--a thief!--a thief!"

With the odious word Ryder made a frantic lunge at the miller, who
dodged his strong right arm at the moment when his foot struck against a
bag of corn lying on the floor and he stumbled. He recovered his
equilibrium instantly. But the six bystanders had seized him.

"Hold him hard, folkses!" cried honest Bob Peachin. "Hold hard! I'll
tell ye what ails him--though ye mustn't let on ter him--he air teched
in the head!"

He winked at them with a confidential intention as he roared this out,
forgetting in his excitement that mental infirmity does not impair the
sense of hearing. This folly on his part was a salutary thing for
Stephen Ryder. It calmed him instantly. He felt that he had need for
caution. A fearful vista of possibilities opened before him. He
remembered having seen in his childhood a man reputed to be suddenly
bereft of reason, but who he believed was entirely sane, bound hand and
foot, and every word, every groan, every effort to free himself,
accounted the demonstration of a maniac. This fate was imminent for him.
They were seven to one. He trembled as he felt their hands pressing upon
the swelling muscles of his arms. With an abrupt realization of his
great strength, he waited for a momentary relaxation of their clutch,
then with a mighty wrench he burst loose from them, flung himself upon
his mare, and dashed off at full speed.

He did no work that afternoon, although the corn was "suffering." He sat
after dinner smoking his pipe on the porch of his log cabin, while he
moodily watched the big shadow of the mountain creeping silently over
the wooded valley as the sun got on the down grade. Deep glooms began to
lurk among the ravines of the great ridge opposite. The shimmering blue
summits in the distance were purpling. A redbird, alert, crested, and
with a brilliant eye, perched idly on the vines about the porch, having
relinquished for the day the job of teaching a small, stubby imitation
of himself to fly. The shocks of wheat in the bare field close by had
turned a rich red gold in the lengthening rays before Stephen Ryder
realized that night was close at hand.

All at once he heard a discordant noise which he knew that Ab Ryder
called "singing," and presently the boy appeared in the distance, his
mouth stretched, his tattered hat stuck on the back of his tow-head, his
bare feet dusty, his homespun cotton trousers rolled up airily about his
knees, his single suspender supporting the structure. His father laughed
a little at sight of him, rather sardonically it must be confessed, and
saying to his wife that he intended to go to the shop for a while, he
rose and strolled off down the road.

When supper was over, however, Ab was immensely relieved to see that
his father had no idea of continuing his work. Consequently the usual
routine was to be expected. Generally, when summoned to the evening
meal, the blacksmith hastily plunged his head in the barrel of water
used to temper steel, thrust off his leather apron, and went up to the
house without more ado. He smoked afterward, and lounged about, enjoying
the relaxation after his heavy work. He did not go down to lock the shop
until bed-time, when he was shutting up the house, the barn, and the
corn-crib for the night. In the interval the shop stood deserted and
open, and this fact was the basis of Ab's opportunity. To-night there
seemed to be no deviation from this custom. He ascertained that his
father was smoking his pipe on the porch. Then he went down the road and
sat on the log near the shop to wait for the other boys who were to
share the risks and profits of borrowing the hammer.

All was still--so still! He fancied that he could hear the tumult of the
torrent far away as it dashed over the rocks. A dog suddenly began to
bark in the black, black valley--then ceased. He was vaguely over-awed
with the "big mountings" for company and the distant stars. He listened
eagerly for the first cracking of brush which told him that the other
boys were near at hand. Then all three crept along cautiously among the
huge boles of the trees, feeling very mysterious and important. When
they reached the rude window, Ab sat for a moment on the sill, peering
into the intense blackness within.

"It air dark thar, fur true, Ab," said Jim Gryce, growing faint-hearted.
"Let's go back."

"Naw, sir! Naw, sir!" protested Ab resolutely. "I'm on the borry!"

"How kin we find that thar leetle hammer in sech a dark place?" urged
Jim.

"Waal," explained Ab, in his high key, "dad air mightily welded ter his
cranky notions. An' he always leaves every tool in the same place
edzactly every night. Bound fur me!" he continued in shrill exultation
as he slapped his lean leg, "I know whar that thar leetle hammer air
sot ter roost!"

He jumped down from the window inside the shop, and cut a wiry caper.

"I'm a man o' bone and muscle!" he bragged. "Kin do ennything."

The other boys followed more quietly. But they had only groped a little
distance when Jim Gryce set up a sharp yelp of pain.

"Shet yer mouth--ye pop-eyed catamount!" Ab admonished him. "Dad will
hear an'--ah-h-h!" His own words ended in a shriek. "Oh, my!"
vociferated the "man of bone and muscle," who was certainly, too, a man
of extraordinary lung-power. "Oh, my! The ground is hot--hot ez iron!
They always tole me that Satan would ketch me--an' oh, my! now he hev
done it!"

He joined the "pop-eyed catamount" in a lively dance with their bare
feet on the hot iron bars which were scattered about the ground in every
direction. These were heated artistically, so that they might not really
scorch the flesh, but would touch the feelings, and perhaps the
conscience. As the third boy's scream rent the air, and told that he,
too, had encountered a torrid experience, Ab Ryder became suddenly aware
that there was some one besides themselves in the shop. He could see
nothing; he was only vaguely conscious of an unexpected presence, and he
fancied that it was in the corner by the barrel of water.

All at once a gruff voice broke forth. "I'm on the borry!" it remarked
with fierce facetiousness. "I want ter borry a boy--no! a man o' bone
an' muscle--fur 'bout a minit and a quarter!" A strong arm seized Ab by
his collar. He felt himself swept through the air, soused head foremost
into the barrel of water, then thrust into a corner, where he was
thankful to find there was no more hot iron.

"I want to borry another boy!" said the gruff voice. And the "pop-eyed
catamount" was duly ducked.

"'Twould pleasure me some ter borry another!" the voice declared with
grim humor. But Ben was the youngest and smallest, and only led into
mischief by the others. They never knew that the blacksmith relented
when his turn came, and that he got a mere sprinkle in comparison with
their total immersion.

Then Stephen Ryder set out for home, followed by a dripping procession.
"I'll l'arn ye ter 'borry' my tools 'thout leave!" he vociferated as he
went along.

When they had reached the house, he faced round sternly on Ab. "Whyn't
ye kem an' tell me ez how the miller say I war a sneakin', deceivin'
critter, an'--an'--an' a thief!"

His wife dropped the dish she was washing, and it broke unheeded upon
the hearth. Ab stretched his eyes and mouth in amazement.

"Old Bob Peachin never tole me no sech word sence I been born!" he
declared flatly.

"Then what ailed ye ter go an' tell sech a lie ter Gryce's boys las'
night jes' down thar outside o' the shop?" Stephen Ryder demanded.

Ab stared at him, evidently bewildered.

"Ye tole 'em," continued the blacksmith, striving to refresh his memory,
"ez Bob Peachin say ez how ye mought know I war deceivin' by my bein'
named Stephen--an' that I war the hongriest critter--an'"--

"'Twar the t-a-a-a-rrier!" shouted Ab, "the little rat tarrier ez we war
a-talkin' 'bout. He hev been named Steve these six year, old Bob say. He
gimme the dog yestiddy, 'kase I 'lowed ez the rats war eatin' us out'n
house an' home, an' my mother hed fed up that old cat o' our'n till he
won't look at a mice. Old Bob warned me, though, ez Steve, _the
tarrier_, air a mighty thief an' deceivin' ginerally. Old Bob say he
reckons my mother will spile the dog with feedin' him, an' kill out what
little good he hev got lef' in him with kindness. But I tuk him, an'
brung him home ennyhow. An' las' night arter we hed got through talkin'
'bout borryin' (he looked embarrassed) the leetle hammer, we tuk to
talkin' 'bout the tarrier. An' yander he is now, asleep on the
chil'ren's bed!"

A long pause ensued.

"M'ria," said the blacksmith meekly to his wife, "hev ye tuk notice how
the gyarden truck air a-thrivin'? 'Pears like ter me ez the peas air
a-fullin' up consider'ble."

And so the subject changed.

He had it on his conscience, however, to explain the matter to the
miller. For the second time old Bob Peachin, and the men at the mill,
"laffed mightily at dad." And when Ab had recovered sufficiently from
the exhaustion attendant upon borrowing a hammer, he "laffed too."




THE CONSCRIPTS' HOLLOW


CHAPTER I

"I'm a-goin' ter climb down ter that thar ledge, an' slip round ter the
hollow whar them conscripts built thar fire in the old war times."

Nicholas Gregory paused on the verge of the great cliff and cast a
sidelong glance at Barney Pratt, who was beating about among the red
sumach bushes in the woods close at hand, and now and then stooping to
search the heaps of pine needles and dead leaves where they had been
blown together on the ground.

"Conscripts!" Barney ejaculated, with a chuckle. "That's precisely what
them men war determinated _not_ ter be! They war a-hidin' in the
mountings ter git shet o' the conscription."

"Waal, I don't keer ef _ye_ names 'em 'conscripts' or no," Nicholas
retorted loftily. "That's what other folks calls 'em. I'm goin' down ter
the hollow, whar they built thar fire, ter see ef that old missin'
tur-r-key-hen o' our'n hain't hid her nest off 'mongst them dead chunks,
an' sech."

"A tur-r-key ain't sech a powerful fool ez that," said Barney, coming to
the edge of the precipice and looking over at the ledge, which ran along
the face of the cliff twenty feet below. "How'd she make out ter fotch
the little tur-r-keys up hyar, when they war hatched? They'd fall off'n
the bluff."

"A tur-r-key what hev stole her nest away from the folks air fool enough
fur ennything," Nicholas declared.

Perhaps he did not really expect to find the missing fowl in such an
out-of-the-way place as this, but being an adventurous fellow, the sight
of the crag was a temptation. He had often before clambered down to the
ledge, which led to a great niche in the solid rock, where one night
during the war some men who were hiding from the conscription had
kindled their fire and cooked their scanty food. The charred remnants of
logs were still here, but no one ever thought about them now, except the
two boys, who regarded them as a sort of curiosity.

Sometimes they came and stared at them, and speculated about them, and
declared to each other that _they_ would not consider it a hardship to
go a-soldiering.

Then Nick would tell Barney of a wonderful day when he had driven to the
county town in his uncle's wagon. There was a parade of militia there,
and how grand the drum had sounded! And as he told it he would shoulder
a smoke-blackened stick, and stride about in the Conscripts' Hollow, and
feel very brave.

He had no idea in those days how close at hand was the time when his own
courage should be tried.

"Kem on, Barney!" he urged. "Let's go down an' sarch fur the tur-r-key."

But Barney had thrown himself down upon the crag with a long-drawn sigh
of fatigue.

"Waal," he replied, in a drowsy tone, "I dunno 'bout'n that. I'm sorter
banged out, 'kase I hev had a powerful hard day's work a-bilin' sorghum
at our house. I b'lieves I'll rest my bones hyar, an' wait fur ye."

As he spoke, he rolled up one of the coats which they had both thrown
off, during their search for the nest on the summit of the cliff, and
slipped it under his head. He was far the brighter boy of the two, but
his sharp wits seemed to thrive at the expense of his body. He was small
and puny, and he was easily fatigued in comparison with big burly Nick,
who rarely knew such a sensation, and prided himself upon his toughness.

"Waal, Barney, surely ye air the porest little shoat on G'liath
Mounting!" he exclaimed scornfully, as he had often done before. But he
made no further attempt to persuade Barney, and began the descent alone.

It was not so difficult a matter for a sure-footed mountaineer like
Nick to make his way down to the ledge as one might imagine, for in a
certain place the face of the cliff presented a series of jagged edges
and projections which afforded him foothold. As he went along, too, he
kept a strong grasp upon overhanging vines and bushes that grew out
from earth-filled crevices.

He had gone down only a short distance when he paused thoughtfully.
"This hyar wind air blowin' powerful brief," he said. "I mought get
chilled an' lose my footin'."

He hardly liked to give up the expedition, but he was afraid to continue
on his way in the teeth of the mountain wind, cold and strong in the
October afternoon. If only he had his heavy jeans coat with him!

"Barney!" he called out, intending to ask his friend to throw it over to
him.

There was no answer.

"That thar Barney hev drapped off ter sleep a'ready!" he exclaimed
indignantly.

He chanced to glance upward as he was about to call again. There he saw
a coat lying on the edge of the cliff, the dangling sleeve fluttering
just within his reach. When he dragged it down and discovered that it
was Barney's instead of his own, he was slightly vexed, but it
certainly did not seem a matter of great importance.

"That boy hev got _my_ coat, an' this is his'n. But law! I'd ruther
squeeze myself small enough ter git inter his'n, than ter hev ter yell
like a catamount fur an hour an' better ter wake him up, an' make him
gimme mine."

He seated himself on a narrow projection of the crag, and began to
cautiously put on his friend's coat. He had need to be careful, for a
precarious perch like this, with an unmeasured abyss beneath, the far
blue sky above, the almost inaccessible face of a cliff on one side, and
on the other a distant stretch of mountains, is not exactly the kind of
place in which one would prefer to make a toilet. Besides the dangers of
his position, he was anxious to do no damage to the coat, which although
loose and baggy on Barney, was rather a close fit for Nick.

"I ain't used ter climbin' with a coat on, nohow, an' I mus' be mighty
keerful not ter bust Barney's, 'kase it air all the one he hev got," he
said to himself as he clambered nimbly down to the ledge.

Then he walked deftly along the narrow shelf, and as he turned abruptly
into the immense niche in the cliff called the Conscripts' Hollow, he
started back in sudden bewilderment. His heart gave a bound, and then it
seemed to stand still.

He hardly recognized the familiar place. There, to be sure, were the
walls and the dome-like roof, but upon the dusty sandstone floor were
scattered quantities of household articles, such as pots and pails and
pans and kettles. There was a great array of brogans, too, and piles of
blankets, and bolts of coarse unbleached cotton and jeans cloth.

"Waal, sir!" he exclaimed, as he gazed at them with wild,
uncomprehending eyes.

Then the truth flashed upon him. A story had reached Goliath Mountain
some weeks before, to the effect that a cross-roads store, some miles
down the valley, had been robbed. The thieves had escaped with the
stolen goods, leaving no clue by which they might be identified and
brought to justice.

Nick saw that he had made a discovery. Here it was that the robbers had
contrived to conceal their plunder, doubtless intending to wait until
suspicion lulled, when they could carry it to some distant place, where
it could safely be sold.

Suddenly a thought struck him that sent a shiver through every fibre of
his body. This store was robbed in a singular manner. No bolt was
broken,--no door burst open. There was a window, however, that lacked
one pane of glass. The aperture would not admit a man's body. It was
believed that the burglars had passed a boy through it, who had handed
out the stolen goods.

And now, Nick foolishly argued, if any one should discover that _he_
knew where the plunder was hidden, they would believe that _he_ was that
boy who had robbed the store!

He began to resolve that he would say nothing about what he had
seen,--not even to Barney. He thought his safety lay in his silence.
Still, he did not want his silence to be to the advantage of wicked men,
so he tried to persuade himself that the burglars would soon be traced
and captured without the information which he knew it was his duty to
give. "Ter be sartain, the officers will kem on this place arter a
while," he said meditatively.

Then he shook his head doubtfully. The crag was far from any house, and
except the dwellers on Goliath Mountain, few people knew of this great
niche in it. "They war sly foxes what stowed away thar plunder hyar!" he
exclaimed in despair.

Often, when Nick had before stood in the Conscripts' Hollow, he had
imagined that he would make a good soldier. But his idea of a soldier
was a fine uniform, and the ra-ta-ta of martial music. He had no
conception of that high sense of duty which nerves a man to face danger;
even now he did not know that he was a coward as he faltered and feared
in the cause of right to encounter suspicion.

Courage!--Nick thought that meant to crack away at a bear, if you were
lucky enough to have the chance; or to kill a rattlesnake, if you had a
big heavy stone close at hand; or to scramble about among crags and
precipices, if you felt certain of the steadiness of your head and the
strength of your muscles. But he did not realize that "courage" could
mean the nerve to speak one little word for duty's sake.

He would not speak the word,--he had determined on that,--for might they
not think that _he_ was the boy who had robbed the store?

He was quivering with excitement when he turned and began to walk along
the ledge toward those roughly hewn natural steps by which he had
descended. He knew that his agitation rendered his footing insecure. He
was afraid of falling into the depths beneath, and he pressed close
against the cliff.

On the narrow ledge, hardly two yards distant from the Conscripts'
Hollow, a clump of blackberry bushes was growing from a crevice in the
rock. They had never before given him trouble; but now, as he brushed
hastily past, they seemed to clutch at him with their thorny branches.

As he tore away from them roughly, he did not observe that he had left a
fragment of his brown jeans clothing hanging upon the thorns, as a
witness to his presence here close to the Conscripts' Hollow, where the
stolen goods lay hidden. There was a coarse, dark-colored horn button
attached to the bit of brown jeans, which was a three-cornered scrap of
his coat. No! of _Barney's_ coat. And was it to be a witness against
poor Barney, who had not gone near the Conscripts' Hollow, but was lying
asleep on the summit of the crag, supposing he had his own coat under
his own head?

He did not discover his mistake until some time afterward, for when Nick
had slowly and laboriously climbed up the steep face of the cliff, he
stripped off his friend's torn coat before he roused him. Barney was
awakened by having his pillow dragged rudely from under his head, and
when at last he reluctantly opened his eyes on the hazy yellow
sunlight, and saw Nick standing near on the great gray crag, he had no
idea that this moment was an important crisis in his life.

The wind was coming up the gorge fresh and free; the autumnal foliage,
swaying in it, was like the flaunting splendors of red and gold banners;
the western ranges had changed from blue to purple, for the sun was
sinking.

"It's gittin' toler'ble late, Barney," said Nick. "Let's go." He had on
his own coat now, and he was impatient to be off.

"Did ye find the tur-r-key's nest in the Conscripts' Hollow?" asked
Barney, with a lazy yawn, and still flat on his back.

"No," said Nick curtly.

Then it occurred to him that it would be safer if his friend should
think he had not been in the Hollow. "No," he reiterated, after a pause,
"I didn't go down ter the ledge arter all."

He had begun to lie,--where would it end?

"Whyn't you-uns go?" demanded Barney, surprised.

"The wind war blowin' so powerful brief," Nick replied without a qualm.
"So I jes' s'arched fur a while in the woods back thar a piece."

In a moment more, Barney rose to his feet, picked up his coat, and put
it on. He did not notice the torn place, for the garment was old and
worn, and had many ragged edges. It lacked, however, but one button, and
that missing button was attached to the triangular bit of brown jeans
that fluttered on the thorny bush close to the Conscripts' Hollow.

All unconscious of his loss, he went away in the rich autumnal sunset,
leaving it there as a witness against him.


CHAPTER II

After this, Nicholas Gregory was very steady at his work for a while. He
kept out of the woods as much as possible, and felt that he knew more
already than was good for him. Above all, he avoided that big sandstone
cliff and the Conscripts' Hollow, where the goods lay hidden.

He heard no more of the search that had been made for the burglars and
their booty, and he congratulated himself on his caution in keeping
silent about what he had found.

"Now, ef it hed been that thar wide-mouthed Barney, stid o' me, he'd hev
blabbed fust thing, an' they'd all hev thunk ez he war the boy what them
scoundrels put through the winder ter steal the folkses' truck. They'd
hev jailed him, I reckon."

He had begun to forget his own part in the wrong-doing,--that his
silence was helping to screen "them scoundrels" from the law.

This state of mind continued for a week, perhaps. Then he fell to
speculating about the stolen goods. He wondered whether they were all
there yet, or whether the burglars had managed to carry them away. His
curiosity grew so great that several times he was almost at the point of
going to see for himself; but one morning, early, when an opportunity
to do so was suddenly presented, his courage failed him.

His mother had just come into the log cabin from the hen-house with a
woe-begone face.

"I do declar'!" she exclaimed solemnly, "that I'm surely the
afflictedest 'oman on G'liath Mounting! An' them young fall tur-r-keys
air so spindlin' an' delikit they'll be the death o' me yit!"

They were so spindling and delicate that they were the death of
themselves. She had just buried three, and her heart and her larder were
alike an aching void.

"Three died ter-day, an' two las' Wednesday!" As she counted them on her
fingers she honored each with a shake of the head, so mournful that it
might be accounted an obituary in dumb show. "I hev had no sort'n luck
with this tur-r-key's brood, an' the t'other hev stole her nest away,
an' I hev got sech a mean no-'count set o' chillen they can't find her.
Waal! waal! waal! this comin' winter the Lord'll be _obleeged_ ter
pervide."

This was washing-day, and as she began to scrub away on the noisy
washboard, a sudden thought struck her. "Ye told me two weeks ago an'
better, Nick, that ye hed laid off ter sarch the Conscripts' Hollow; ye
'lowed ye hed been everywhar else. Did ye go thar fur the tur-r-key?"

She faced him with her dripping arms akimbo.

Nick's face turned red as he answered, "That thar tur-r-key ain't a-nigh
thar."

"What ails ye, Nick? thar's su'thin' wrong. I kin tell it by yer looks.
Ye never hed the grit ter sarch thar, I'll be bound; did ye, now?"

Nick could not bring himself to admit having been near the place.

"No," he faltered, "I never sarched thar."

"Ye'll do it now, though!" his mother declared triumphantly. "I'm afeard
ter send Jacob on sech a yerrand down the bluffs, kase he air so little
he mought fall; but he air big enough ter go 'long an' watch ye go down
ter the Hollow--else ye'll kem back an' say ye hev sarched thar, when
ye ain't been a-nigh the bluff."

There seemed for a moment no escape for Nick. His mother was looking
resolutely at him, and Jacob had gotten up briskly from his seat in the
chimney-corner. He was a small tow-headed boy with big owlish eyes, and
Nick knew from experience that they were very likely to see anything he
did _not_ do. He must go; and then if at any time the stolen goods
should be discovered, Jacob and his mother, and who could say how many
besides, would know that he had been to the Conscripts' Hollow, and must
have seen what was hidden there.

In that case his silence on the subject would be very suspicious. It
would seem as if he had some connection with the burglars, and for that
reason tried to conceal the plunder.

He was saying to himself that he would not go--and he must! How could he
avoid it? As he glanced uneasily around the room, his eyes chanced to
fall on a little object lying on the edge of the shelf just above the
washtub. He made the most of the opportunity. As he slung his hat upon
his head with an impatient gesture, he managed to brush the shelf with
it and knock the small object into the foaming suds below.

His mother sank into a chair with uplifted hands and eyes.

"The las' cake o' hop yeast!" she cried. "An' how air the bread ter be
raised?"

To witness her despair, one would think only jack-screws could do it.

"Surely I _am_ the afflictedest 'oman on G'liath Mounting! An'
ter-morrer Brother Pete's wife an' his gals air a-comin', and I hed laid
off ter hev raised bread."

For "raised bread" is a great rarity and luxury in these parts, the
nimble "dodgers" being the staff of life.

"I never went ter do it," muttered Nick.

"Waal, ye kin jes' kerry yer bones down the mounting ter Sister
Mirandy's house, an' ax her ter fotch me a cake o' her yeast when she
kems up hyar ter-day ter holp me sizin' yarn. Arter that I don't keer
what ye does with yerself. Ef ye stays hyar along o' we-uns, ye'll haul
the roof down nex', I reckon. 'Pears like ter me ez boys an' men-folks
air powerful awk'ard, useless critters ter keep in a house; they oughter
hev pens outside, I'm a-thinkin'."

She had forgotten about the turkey, and Nick was glad enough to escape
on these terms.

It was not until after he had finished his errand at Aunt Mirandy's
house that he chanced to think again of the Conscripts' Hollow. As he
was slowly lounging back up the mountain, he paused occasionally on the
steep slope and looked up at the crags high on the summit, which he
could see, now and then, diagonally across a deep cove.

When he came in sight of the one which he had such good reason to
remember, he stopped and stood gazing fixedly at it for a long time,
wondering again whether the robbers had yet carried off their plunder
from its hiding-place.

He was not too distant to distinguish the Conscripts' Hollow, but from
his standpoint, he could not at first determine where was the ledge. He
thought he recognized it presently in a black line that seemed drawn
across the massive cliff.

But what was that upon it? A moving figure! He gazed at it spell-bound
for a moment, as it slowly made its way along toward the Hollow. Then he
wanted to see no more; he wanted to know no more. He turned and fled at
full speed along the narrow cow-path among the bushes.

Suddenly there was a rustle among them. Something had sprung out into
the path with a light bound, and as he ran, he heard a swift step behind
him. It seemed a pursuing step, for, as he quickened his pace, it came
faster too. It was a longer stride than his; it was gaining upon him. A
hand with a grip like a vise fell upon his shoulder, and as he was
whirled around and brought face to face with his pursuer, he glanced up
and recognized the constable of the district.

This was a tall, muscular man, dressed in brown jeans, and with a bushy
red beard. He knew Nick well, for he, too, was a mountaineer.

"Ye war a-dustin' along toler'ble fast, Nicholas Gregory," he exclaimed;
"but nothin' on G'liath Mounting kin beat me a-runnin' 'thout it air a
deer. Ye'll kem along with me now, and stir yer stumps powerful lively,
too, kase I hain't got no time ter lose."

"What am I tuk up fur?" gasped Nick.

"S'picious conduc'," replied the man curtly.

Nick knew no more now than he did before. The officer's next words made
matters plainer. "Things look mightily like ye war set hyar ter watch
that thar ledge. Ez soon ez ye seen our men a-goin' ter the Conscripts'
Hollow ter sarch fur that thar stole truck, ye war a-goin' ter scuttle
off an' gin the alarm ter them rascally no-'count burglars. I saw ye and
yer looks, and I suspicioned some sech game. Ye don't cheat the law in
_this_ deestrick--not often! Ye air the very boy, I reckon, what
holped ter rob Blenkins's store. Whar's the other burglars? Ye'd better
tell!"

"I dunno!" cried Nick tremulously. "I never had nothin' ter do with
'em."

"Ye hev told on yerself," the man retorted. "Why did ye stand a-gapin'
at the Conscripts' Hollow, ef ye didn't know thar was suthin special
thar?"

Nick, in his confusion, could invent no reply, and he was afraid to tell
the truth. He looked mutely at the officer, who held his arm and looked
down sternly at him.

"Ye air a bad egg,--that's plain. I'll take ye along whether I ketches
the other burglars or no."

They toiled up the steep ascent in silence, and before very long were on
the summit of the mountain, and within view of the crag.

There on the great gray cliff, in the midst of the lonely woods, were
several men whom Nick had never before seen. Their busy figures were
darkly defined against the hazy azure of the distant ranges, and as they
moved about, their shadows on the ground seemed very busy too, and
blotted continually the golden sunshine that everywhere penetrated the
thinning masses of red and bronze autumn foliage.

A wagon, close at hand, was already half full of the stolen goods, and a
number of men were going cautiously up and down the face of the cliff,
bringing articles, or passing them from one to another.

"Well, this _is_ a tedious job!" exclaimed the sheriff, John Stebbins by
name. He was a quick-witted, good-natured man, but being active in
temperament, he was exceedingly impatient of delay. "How long did it
take 'em to get all those heavy things down into the Conscripts'
Hollow,--hey, bub?" he added, appealing to Nick, who had been brought to
his notice by the constable. It was terrible to Nick that they should
all speak to him as if he were one of the criminals. He broke out with
wild protestations of his innocence, denying, too, that he had had any
knowledge of what was hidden in the Conscripts' Hollow.

"Then what made ye run, yander on the slope, when ye seen thar war
somebody on the ledge?" demanded the constable.

Nick had a sudden inspiration. "Waal," he faltered, with an explanatory
sob, which was at once ludicrous and pathetic, "I war too fur off ter
make out fur sure what 'twar on the ledge. 'Twar black-lookin', an' I
'lowed 'twar a b'ar."

All the men laughed at this.

"I sot out ter run ter Aunt Mirandy's house ter borry Job's gun ter kem
up hyar, an' mebbe git a crack at him," continued Nick.

"That doesn't seem unnatural," said the sheriff. Then he turned to the
constable. "This ain't enough to justify us in holding on to the boy,
Jim, unless we can fix that scrap with the button on him. Where is it?"

"D'ye know whose coat this kem off'n?" asked the constable, producing a
bit of brown jeans, with a dark-colored horn button attached to it.
"How'd it happen ter be stickin' ter them blackberry-bushes on the
ledge?"

Nick recognized it in an instant. It was Barney Pratt's button, and a
bit of Barney Pratt's coat. But he knew well enough that he himself must
have torn it when he wore it down to the Conscripts' Hollow.

He realized that he should have at once told the whole truth of what he
knew about the stolen goods. He was well aware that he ought not to
suffer the suspicion which had unjustly fallen upon him to be unjustly
transferred to Barney, who he knew was innocent.

But he was terribly frightened, and foolishly cautious, and he did not
care for justice, nor truth, nor friendship, now. His only anxiety was
to save himself.

"That thar piece o' brown jeans an' that button kem off'n Barney Pratt's
coat. I'd know 'em anywhar," he answered, more firmly than before. He
noted the fact that the searching eyes of both officers were fixed upon
his own coat, which was good and whole, and lacked no buttons. He had
not even a twinge of conscience just now. In his meanness and cowardice
his heart exulted, as he saw that suspicion was gradually lifting its
dark shadow from him. He cared not where it might fall next.

"We'll have to let you slide, I reckon," said the sheriff. "But what
size is this Barney Pratt?"

"He air a lean, stringy little chap," said Nick.

"Is that so?" said the sheriff. "Well, this is a bit of his coat and his
button; and they were found on the ledge, close to the Conscripts'
Hollow where the plunder was hid; and he's a small fellow, that maybe
could slip through a window-pane. That makes a pretty strong showing
against him. We'll go for Barney Pratt!"


CHAPTER III

Barney Pratt expected this day to be a holiday. Very early in the
morning his father and mother had jolted off in the wagon to attend the
wedding of a cousin, who lived ten miles distant on a neighboring
mountain, and they had left him no harder task than to keep the
children far enough from the fire, and his paralytic grandmother close
enough to it.

This old woman was of benevolent intentions, although she had a stick
with which she usually made her wants known by pointing, and in her
convulsive clutch the stick often whirled around and around like the
sails of a windmill, so that if Barney chanced to come within the circle
it described, he got as hard knocks from her feeble arm as he could have
had in a tussle with big Nick Gregory.

He was used to dodging it, and so were the smaller children. Without any
fear of it they were all sitting on the hearth at the old woman's
feet,--Ben and Melissa popping corn in the ashes, and Tom and Andy
watching Barney's deft fingers as he made a cornstalk fiddle for them.

Suddenly Barney glanced up and saw his grandmother's stick whirling over
his head. Her eyes were fastened eagerly upon the window, and her lips
trembled as she strove to speak.

"What d'ye want, granny?" he asked.

Then at last it came out, quick and sharp, and in a convulsive
gasp,--"Who air all that gang o'folks a-comin' yander down the road?"

Barney jumped up, threw down the fiddle, and ran to the door with the
children at his heels. There was a quiver of curiosity among them, for
it was a strange thing that a "gang o'folks" should be coming down this
lonely mountain road.

They went outside of the log cabin and stood among the red sumach bushes
that clustered about the door, while the old woman tottered after them
to the threshold, and peered at the crowd from under her shaking hand as
she shaded her eyes from the sunlight.

Presently a wagon came up with eight or ten men walking behind it, or
riding in it in the midst of a quantity of miscellaneous articles of
which Barney took no particular notice. As he went forward, smiling in
a frank, fearless way, he recognized a familiar face among the crowd. It
was Nick Gregory's, and Barney's smile broadened into a grin of pleasure
and welcome.

Then it was that Nick's conscience began to wake up, and to lay hold
upon him.

As the sheriff looked at Barney he hesitated. He balanced himself
heavily on the wheel, instead of leaping quickly down as he might have
done easily enough, for he was a spare man and light on his feet. Nick
overheard him speak in a low voice to the constable, who stood just
below.

"_That_ ain't the fellow, is it, Jim?"

"That's him, percisely," responded Jim Dow.

"He don't _look_ like it," said Stebbins, jumping down at last, but
still speaking under his breath.

"Waal, thar ain't no countin' on boys by the _outside_ on 'em," returned
the constable emphatically; he had an unruly son of his own.

The sheriff walked up to Barney.

"You're Barney Pratt, are you? Well, youngster, you'll come along with
us."

There was silence for a moment. Barney stared at him in amaze. Not until
he had caught sight of the constable, whom he knew in his official
character, did he understand the full meaning of what had been said. He
was under arrest!

As he realized it, everything began to whirl before him. The yellow
sunshine, the gorgeously tinted woods, the blue sky, and the silvery
mists hovering about the distant mountains, were all confusedly mingled
in his failing vision.

He looked as if he were about to faint. But in a few minutes he had
partially recovered himself.

"I dunno what this air done ter me fur," he said tremulously, glancing
up at the officer whose hand was on his shoulder.

"Hain't ye been doin' nothin' mean lately?" demanded Jim Dow sternly.

Barney shook his head.

"Let's see ef this won't remind ye," said the constable, producing the
bit of jeans and the button.

As Nick watched Barney turning the piece of cloth in his hand and
examining the button, he felt a terrible pang of remorse. But he was
none the less resolved to keep the freedom from danger which he had
secured at the expense of his friend. To explain would be merely to
exchange places with Barney, and he was silent.

"This hyar looks like a scrap o' my coat," said Barney, utterly unaware
of the significance of his words. As he fitted it into the jagged edges
of the garment, the officers watched the proceeding closely. "'Pears
like ter me ez it war jerked right out thar--yes--kase hyar air the
missin' button, too."

His air of unconsciousness puzzled the sheriff. "Do you know where you
lost this scrap?" he asked.

"Somewhars 'mongst the briers in the woods, I reckon," replied Barney.

"No; you tore it on a blackberry bush on the ledge of a bluff; it was
close to the Conscripts' Hollow, where some burglars have hidden stolen
plunder. I found the scrap and the button there myself."

Barney felt as if he were dreaming. How should his coat be torn on that
ledge, where he had not been since the cloth was woven!

The next words almost stunned him.

"Ye see, sonny," said the constable, "we believes ye're the boy what
holped to rob Blenkins's store by gittin' through a winder-pane an'
handin' out the stole truck ter the t'other burglars. Ye hev holped
about that thar plunder somehows,--else this hyar thing air a liar!" and
he shook the bit of cloth significantly.

"We'd better set out, Jim," said Stebbins, turning toward the wagon.
"We'll pass Blenkins's on the way, and we'll stop and see if this chap
can slip through the window-pane. If he can't, it's a point in his
favor, and if he can, it's a point against him. As we go, we can try to
get him to tell who the other burglars are."

"Kem on, bubby; we can't stand hyar no longer, a-wastin' the time an'
a-burnin' of daylight," said the constable.

Barney seemed to have lost control of his rigid limbs, and he was
half-dragged, half-lifted into the wagon by the two officers. The crowd
began to fall back and disperse, and he could see the group of
"home-folks" at the door. But he gave only one glance at the little log
cabin, and then turned his head away. It was a poor home, but if it had
been a palace, the pang he felt as he was torn from it could not have
been sharper.

In that instant he saw granny as she stood in the doorway, her head
shaking nervously and her stick whirling in her uncertain grasp. He knew
that she was struggling to say something for his comfort, and he had a
terrible moment of fear lest the wagon should begin to move and her
feeble voice be lost in the clatter of the wheels. But presently her
shrill tones rang out, "No harm kin kem, sonny, ter them ez hev done no
harm. All that happens works tergether fur good, an' the will o' God."

Little breath as she had left, it had done good service to-day,--it had
brought a drop of balm to the poor boy's heart. He did not look at her
again, but he knew that she was still standing in the doorway among the
clustering red leaves, whirling her stick, and shaking with the palsy,
but determined to see the last of him.

And now the wagon was rolling off, and a piteous wail went up from the
children, who understood nothing except that Barney was being carried
away against his will. Little four-year-old Melissa--she always seemed a
beauty to Barney, with her yellow hair, and her blue-checked cotton
dress, and her dimpled white bare feet--ran after the wagon until the
tears blinded her, and she fell in the road, and lay there in the dust,
sobbing.

Then Barney found his voice. His father and mother would not return
until to-morrow, and the thought of what might happen at home, with
nobody there but the helpless old grandmother and the little children,
made him forget his own troubles for the time.

"Take good keer o' the t'other chillen, Andy!" he shouted out to the
next oldest boy, thus making him a deputy-guardian of the family, "an'
pick Melissy up out'n the dust, an' be sure ye keeps granny's cheer
close enough ter the fire!"

Then he turned back again. He could still hear Melissa sobbing. He
wondered why the two men in the wagon looked persistently in the
opposite direction, and why they were both so silent.

The children stood in the road, watching the wagon as long as they could
see it, but Nick had slunk away into the woods. He could not bear the
sight of their grief. He walked on, hardly knowing where he went. He
felt as if he were trying to get rid of himself. He appreciated fully
now the consequences of what he had done. Barney, innocent Barney, would
be thrust into jail.

He began to see that the most terrible phase of moral cowardice is its
capacity to injure others, and he could not endure the thought of what
he had brought upon his friend. Soon he was saying to himself that
something was sure to happen to prevent them from putting Barney in
prison,--he shouldn't be surprised if it were to happen before the wagon
could reach the foot of the mountain.

In his despair, he had flung himself at length upon the rugged, stony
ground at the base of a great crag. When this comforting thought of
Barney's release came upon him, he took his hands from his face, and
looked about him. From certain ledges of the cliff above, the road which
led down the valley was visible at intervals for some distance. There he
could watch the progress of the wagon, and see for a time longer what
was happening to Barney.

There was a broad gulf between the wall of the mountain and the crag,
which, from its detached position and its shape, was known far and wide
as the "Old Man's Chimney."

It loomed up like a great stone column, a hundred feet above the wooded
slope where Nick stood, and its height could only be ascended by
dexterous climbing.

He went at it like a cat. Sometimes he helped himself up by sharp
projections of the rock, sometimes by slipping his feet and hands into
crevices, and sometimes he caught hold of a strong bush here and there,
and gave himself a lift. When he was about forty feet from the base, he
sat down on one of the ledges, and turning, looked anxiously along the
red clay road which he could see winding among the trees down the
mountain's side.

No wagon was there.

His eyes followed the road further and further toward the foot of the
range, and then along the valley beyond. There, at least two miles
distant, was a small moving black object, plainly defined upon the red
clay of the road.

Barney was gone! There was no mistake about it. They had taken him away
from Goliath Mountain! He was innocent, and Nick knew it, and Nick had
made him seem guilty. There was no one near him now to speak a good word
for him, not even his palsied old grandmother.

It all came back upon Nick with a rush. His eyes were blurred with
rising tears. Unconsciously, in his grief, he made a movement forward,
and suddenly clutched convulsively at the ledge.

He had lost his balance. There was a swift, fantastic whirl of vague
objects before him, then a great light seemed flashing through his very
brain, and he knew that he was falling.

He knew nothing else for some time. He wondered where he was when he
first opened his eyes and saw the great stone shaft towering high above,
and the tops of the sun-gilded maples waving about him.

Then he remembered and understood. He had fallen from that narrow ledge,
hardly ten feet above his head, and had been caught in his descent by
the far broader one upon which he lay.

"It knocked the senses out'n me fur a while, I reckon," he said to
himself. "But I hev toler'ble luck now, sure ez shootin', kase I mought
hev drapped over this ledge, an' then I'd hev been gone fur sartain
sure!"

His exultation was short-lived. What was this limp thing hanging to his
shoulder? and what was this thrill of pain darting through it?

He looked at it in amazement. It was his strong right
arm--broken--helpless.

And here he was, perched thirty feet above the earth, weakened by his
long faint, sore and bruised and unnerved by his fall, and with only his
left arm to aid him in making that perilous descent.

It was impossible. He glanced down at the sheer walls of the column
below, shook his head, and lay back on the ledge. Reckless as he was, he
realized that the attempt would be fatal.

Then came a thought that filled him with dismay,--how long was this to
last?--who would rescue him?

He knew that a prolonged absence from home would create no surprise. His
mother would only fancy that he had slipped off, as he had often done,
to go on a camp-hunt with some other boys. She would not grow uneasy for
a week, at least.

He was deep in the heart of the forest, distant from any dwelling. No
one, as far as he knew, came to this spot, except himself and Barney,
and their errand here was for the sake of the exhilaration and the
hazard of climbing the crag. It was so lonely that on the Old Man's
Chimney the eagles built instead of the swallows. His hope--his only
hope--was that some hunter might chance to pass before he should die of
hunger.

The shadow of the great obelisk shifted as the day wore on, and left him
in the broad, hot glare of the sun. His broken arm was fevered and gave
him great pain. Now and then he raised himself on the other, and looked
down wistfully at the cool, dusky depths of the woods. He heard
continually the impetuous rushing of a mountain torrent near at hand;
sometimes, when the wind stirred the foliage, he caught a glimpse of the
water, rioting from rock to rock, and he was oppressed by an intolerable
thirst.

Thus the hours lagged wearily on.


CHAPTER IV

When the wagon was rolling along the road in the valley, Barney at first
kept his eyes persistently fastened upon the craggy heights and the red
and gold autumnal woods of Goliath Mountain, as the mighty range
stretched across the plain.

But presently the two men began to talk to him, and he turned around in
order to face them. They were urging him to confess his own guilt and
tell who were the other burglars, and where they were. But Barney had
nothing to tell. He could only protest again and again his innocence.
The men, however, shook their heads incredulously, and after a while
they left him to himself and smoked their pipes in silence.

When Barney looked back at the mountains once more, a startling change
seemed to have been wrought in the landscape. Instead of the frowning
sandstone cliffs he loved so well, and the gloomy recesses of the woods,
there was only a succession of lines of a delicate blue color drawn
along the horizon. This was the way the distant ranges looked from the
crags of his own home; he knew that they were the mountains, but which
was Goliath?

Suddenly he struck his hands together, and broke out with a bitter cry.

"I hev los' G'liath!" he exclaimed. "I dunno whar I live! An' whar _is_
Melissy?"

A difficult undertaking, certainly, to determine where among all those
great spurs and outliers, stretching so far on either hand, was that
little atom of dimpled pink-and-white humanity known as "Melissy."

The constable, being a native of these hills himself, knew something by
experience of the homesickness of an exiled mountaineer,--far more
terrible than the homesickness of low-landers; he took his pipe
promptly from between his lips, and told the boy that the second blue
ridge, counting down from the sky, was "G'liath Mounting," and that
"Melissy war right thar somewhar."

Barney looked back at it with unrecognizing eyes,--this gentle, misty,
blue vagueness was not the solemn, sombre mountain that he knew. He
gazed at it only for a moment longer; then his heart swelled and he
burst into tears.

On and on they went through the flat country. The boy felt that he could
scarcely breathe. Even tourists, coming down from these mountains to the
valley below, struggle with a sense of suffocation and oppression; how
must it have been then with this half-wild creature, born and bred on
those breezy heights!

The stout mules did their duty well, and it was not long before they
were in sight of the cross-roads store that had been robbed. It was a
part of a small frame dwelling-house, set in the midst of the yellow
sunlight that brooded over the plain. All the world around it seemed to
the young backwoodsman to be a big cornfield; but there was a garden
close at hand, and tall sunflowers looked over the fence and seemed to
nod knowingly at Barney, as much as to say they had always suspected
him of being one of the burglars, and were gratified that he had been
caught at last.

Poor fellow! he saw so much suspicion expressed in the faces of a crowd
of men congregating about the store, that it was no wonder he fancied he
detected it too in inanimate objects.

Of all the group only one seemed to doubt his guilt. He overheard
Blenkins, the merchant, say to Jim Dow,--

"It's mighty hard to b'lieve this story on this 'ere boy; he's a manly
looking, straight-for'ard little chap, an' he's got honest eyes in his
head, too."

"He'd a deal better hev an honest heart in his body," drawled Jim Dow,
who was convinced that Barney had aided in the burglary.

When they had gone around to the window with the broken pane, Barney
looked up at it in great anxiety. If only it should prove too small for
him to slip through! Certainly it seemed very small.

He had pulled off his coat and stood ready to jump.

"Up with you!" said Stebbins.

The boy laid both hands on the sill, gave a light spring, and went
through the pane like an eel.

"That settles it!" he heard Stebbins saying outside. And all the idlers
were laughing because it was done so nimbly.

"That boy's right smart of a fool," said one of the lookers-on. "Now, if
that had been me, I'd hev made out to git stuck somehows in that winder;
I'd have scotched my wheel somewhere."

"Ef ye hed, I'd have dragged ye through ennyhow," declared Jim Dow, who
had no toleration of a joke on a serious subject. "This hyar boy air a
deal too peart ter try enny sech fool tricks on _Me_!"

Barney hardly knew how he got back into the wagon; he only knew that
they were presently jolting along once more in the midst of the yellow
glare of sunlight. It had begun to seem that there was no chance for
him. Like Nick, he too had madly believed, in spite of everything, that
something would happen to help him. He could not think that, innocent as
he was, he would be imprisoned. Now, however, this fate evidently was
very close upon him.

Suddenly Jim Dow spoke. "I s'pose ye war powerful disapp'inted kase ye
couldn't git yerself hitched in that thar winder; ye air too well used
to it,--ye hev been through it afore."

"I hev never been through it afore!" cried Barney indignantly.

"Well, well," said Stebbins pacifically, "it wouldn't have done you any
good if you hadn't gone through the pane just now. I'd have only thought
you were one of those who stood on the outside. You see, the _main_
point against you is that scrap of your coat and your button found right
there by the Conscripts' Hollow,--though, of course, your going through
the window-pane so easy makes it more complete."

Barney's tired brain began to fumble at this problem,--how did it
happen?

He had not been on the ledge nor at the Conscripts' Hollow for six
months at least. Yet there was that bit of his coat and his button found
on the bush close at hand only to-day.

Was it possible that he could have exchanged coats by mistake with Nick
the last afternoon that they were on the crag together?

"Did Nick wear _my_ coat down on the ledge, I wonder, an' git it tored?
Did Nick see the plunder in the Conscripts' Hollow, an' git skeered, an'
then sot out ter lyin' ter git shet o' the blame?"

As he asked himself these questions, he began to remember, vaguely,
having seen, just as he was falling asleep, his friend's head slowly
disappearing beneath the verge of the crag.

"Nick started down ter the ledge, anyhow," he argued.

Did he dream it, or was it true, that when Nick came back he seemed at
first strangely agitated?

All at once Barney exclaimed aloud,--

"This hyar air a powerful cur'ous thing 'bout'n that thar piece what war
tored out'n my coat!"

"What's curious about it?" asked Stebbins quickly.

Jim Dow took his pipe from his mouth, and looked sharply at the boy.

Barney struggled for a moment with a strong temptation. Then a nobler
impulse asserted itself. He would not even attempt to shield himself
behind the friend who had done him so grievous an injury.

He _knew_ nothing positively; he must not put his suspicions and his
vague, half-sleeping impressions into words, and thus possibly criminate
Nick.

He himself felt certain now how the matter really stood,--that Nick had
no connection whatever with the robbery, but having accidentally
stumbled upon the stolen goods, he had become panic-stricken, had lied
about it, and finally had saved himself at the expense of an innocent
friend.

Still, Barney had no _proof_ of this, and he felt he would rather suffer
unjustly himself than unjustly throw blame on another.

"Nothin', nothin'," he said absently. "I war jes' a-studyin' 'bout'n it
all."

"Well, I wouldn't think about it any more just now," said good-natured
Stebbins. "You look like you had been dragged through a keyhole instead
of a window-pane. This town we're coming to is the biggest town you ever
saw."

Barney could not respond to this attempt to divert his attention. He
could only brood upon the fact that he was innocent, and would be
punished as if he were guilty, and that it was Nick Gregory, his chosen
friend, who had brought him to this pass.

He would not be unmanly, and injure Nick with a possibly unfounded
suspicion, but his heart burned with indignation and contempt when he
thought of him. He felt that he would go through fire and water to be
justly revenged upon him.

He determined that, if ever he should see Nick again, even though years
might intervene, he would tax him with the injury he had wrought, and
make him answer for it.

Barney clenched his fists as he looked back at the ethereal blue shadows
that they said were the solid old hills.

Perhaps, however, if he had known where, in the misty uncertainty that
enveloped Goliath Mountain, Nick Gregory was at this moment,--far away
in the lonely woods, helpless with his broken arm, perched high up on
the "Old Man's Chimney,"--Barney might have thought himself the more
fortunately placed of the two.

Before he was well aware of it, the wagon was jolting into the town. He
took no notice of how much larger the little village was than any he had
ever seen before. His attention was riveted by the faces of the people
who ran to the doors and windows, upon recognizing the officers, to
stare at him as one of the burglars.

When the wagon reached the public square, a number of men came up and
stopped it.

Barney was surprised that they took so little notice of him. They were
talking loudly and excitedly to the officers, who grew at once loud and
excited, too.

The boy roused himself, and began to listen to the conversation. The
burglars had been captured!--yes, that was what they were saying. The
deputy-sheriff had nabbed the whole gang in a western district of the
county this morning early, and they were lodged at this moment in jail.
Barney's heart sank. Would he be put among the guilty creatures? He
flinched from the very idea.

Suddenly, here was the deputy-sheriff himself, a young man, dusty and
tired with his long, hard ride, but with an air of great satisfaction in
his success. He talked with many quick gestures that were very
expressive. Sometimes he would leave a sentence unfinished except by a
brisk nod, but all the crowd caught its meaning instantly. This
peculiarity gave him a very animated manner, and he seemed to Barney to
enjoy being in a position of authority.

He pressed his foaming horse close to the wagon, and leaning over,
looked searchingly into Barney's face.

The poor boy looked up deprecatingly from under his limp and drooping
hat-brim.

All the crowd stood in silence, watching them. After a moment of this
keen scrutiny, the deputy turned to the constable with an interrogative
wave of the hand.

"This hyar's the boy what war put through the winder-pane ter thieve
from Blenkins," said Jim Dow. "Thar's consider'ble fac's agin him."

"You mean well, Jim," said the deputy, with a short, scornful laugh.
"But your performance ain't always equal to your intentions."

He lifted his eyebrows and nodded in a significant way that the crowd
understood, for there was a stir of excitement in its midst; but poor
Barney failed to catch his meaning. He hung upon every tone and gesture
with the intensest interest. All the talk was about him, and he could
comprehend no more than if the man spoke in a foreign language.

Still, he gathered something of the drift of the speech from the
constable's reply.

"That thar boy's looks hev bamboozled more'n one man ter-day, jes' at
fust," Jim Dow drawled. "_Looks_ ain't nothin'."

"I'd believe 'most anything a boy with a face on him like that would
tell me," said the deputy. "And besides, you see, one of those scamps,"
with a quick nod toward the jail, "has turned State's evidence."

Barney's heart was in a great tumult. It seemed bursting. There was a
hot rush of blood to his head. He was dizzy--and he could not
understand!

State's evidence,--what was that? and what would that do to him?


CHAPTER V

Barney observed that these words produced a marked sensation. The crowd
began to press more closely around the deputy-sheriff's foaming horse.

"Who hev done turned State's evidence?" asked Jim Dow.

"Little Jeff Carew,--you've seen that puny little man a-many a
time--haven't you, Jim? He'd go into your pocket."

"He would, I know, powerful quick, ef he thunk I hed ennything in it,"
said Jim, with a gruff laugh.

"I didn't mean that, though it's true enough. I only went ter say that
he's small enough to go into any ordinary-sized fellow's pocket. Some of
the rest of them wanted to turn State's evidence, but they weren't
allowed. They were harder customers even than Jeff Carew,--regular old
jail-birds."

Barney began to vaguely understand that when a prisoner confesses the
crime he has committed, and gives testimony which will convict his
partners in it, this is called turning "State's evidence."

But how was it to concern Barney?

An old white-haired man had pushed up to the wagon; he polished his
spectacles on his coat-tail, then put them on his nose, and focused them
on Barney. Those green spectacles seemed to the boy to have a solemnly
accusing expression on their broad and sombre lenses. He shrank as the
old man spoke,--

"And is this the boy who was slipped through the window to steal from
Blenkins?"

"No," said the deputy, "this ain't the boy."

Barney could hardly believe his senses.

"Fact is," continued the deputy, with a brisk wave of his hand, "there
wasn't any boy with 'em,--so little Jeff Carew says. _He_ jumped through
the window-pane _himself_. We wouldn't believe that until we measured
one there at the jail of the same size as Blenkins's window-glass, and
he went through it without a wriggle."

Barney sprang to his feet.

"Oh, tell it ter me, folkses!" he cried wildly; "tell it ter me,
somebody! Will they keep me hyar all the same? An' when will I see
G'liath Mounting agin, an' be whar Melissy air?"

He had burst into tears, and there was a murmur of sympathy in the
crowd.

"Oh, that lets you out, I reckon, youngster," said Stebbins. "I'm glad
enough of it for one."

The old man turned his solemnly accusing green spectacles on Stebbins,
and it seemed to Barney that he spoke with no less solemnly accusing a
voice.

"He ought never to have been let in."

Stebbins replied, rather eagerly, Barney thought, "Why, there was enough
against that boy to have clapped him in jail, and maybe convicted him,
if this man hadn't turned State's evidence."

"We hed the fac's agin him,--dead agin him," chimed in Jim Dow.

"That just shows how much danger an innocent boy was in; it seems to me
that somebody ought to have been more careful," the old man protested.

"That's so!" came in half a dozen voices from the crowd.

Barney was surprised to see how many friends he had now, when a moment
before he had had none. But he ought to have realized that there is a
great difference between _being_ a young martyr, and _seeming_ a young
thief.

"I want to see the little fellow out of this," said the old man with the
terrible spectacles.

He saw him out of it in a short while.

There was an examination before a magistrate, in which Barney was
discharged on the testimony of Jeff Carew, who was produced and swore
that he had never before seen the boy, that he was not among the gang of
burglars who had robbed Blenkins's store and dwelling-house, and that he
had had no part in helping to conceal the plunder. In opposition to
this, the mere finding of a scrap of Barney's coat close to the
Conscripts' Hollow seemed now of slight consequence, although it could
not be accounted for.

When the trial was over, the old man with the green spectacles took
Barney to his house, gave him something to eat, and saw him start out
homeward.

As Barney plodded along toward the blue mountains his heart was very
bitter against Nick Gregory, who had lied and thrown suspicion upon him
and brought him into danger. Whenever he thought of it he raised his
clenched fist and shook it. He was a little fellow, but he felt that
with the strength of this grievance he was more than a match for big
Nick Gregory. He would force him to confess the lies that he had told
and his cowardice, and all Goliath Mountain should know it and despise
him for it.

"I'll fetch an' kerry that word to an' fro fur a thousand mile!" Barney
declared between his set teeth.

Now and then a wagoner overtook him and gave him a ride, thus greatly
helping him on his way. As he went, there was a gradual change in the
blue and misty range that seemed to encircle the west, and which he
knew, by one deep indentation in the horizontal line of its summit, was
Goliath Mountain. It became first an intenser blue. As he drew nearer
still, it turned a bronzed green. It had purpled with the sunset before
he could distinguish the crimson and gold of its foliage and its
beetling crags. Night had fallen when he reached the base of the
mountain.

There was no moon; heavy clouds were rolling up from the horizon, and
they hid the stars. Nick Gregory, lying on the ledge of the "Old Man's
Chimney," thirty feet above the black earth, could not see his hand
before his face. The darkness was dreadful to him. It had closed upon a
dreadful day. The seconds were measured by the throbs and dartings of
pain in his arm. He was almost exhausted by hunger and thirst. He
thought, however, that he could have borne it all cheerfully, but for
the sharp remorse that tortured him for the wrong he had done to his
friend, and his wild anxiety about Barney's fate. Nick felt that he,
himself, was on trial here, imprisoned on this tower of stone, cut off
from the world, from everything but his sternly accusing conscience and
his guilty heart.

For hours he had heard nothing but the monotonous rushing of the water
close at hand, or now and then the shrill, quavering cry of a distant
screech-owl, or the almost noiseless flapping of a bat's wings as they
swept by him.

He had hardly a hope of deliverance, when suddenly there came a new
sound, vague and indistinguishable. He lifted himself upon his left
elbow and listened again. He could hear nothing for a moment except his
own panting breath and the loud beating of his heart. But there--the
sound came once more. What was it? a dropping leaf? the falling of a
fragment of stone from the "Chimney"? a distant step?

It grew more distinct as it drew nearer; presently he recognized
it,--the regular footfall of some man or boy plodding along the path.
That path!--a recollection flashed through his mind. No one knew that
short cut up the mountain but him and Barney; they had worn the path
with their trampings back and forth from the "Old Man's Chimney."

He thought he must be dreaming, or that he had lost his reason; still he
shouted out, "Hold on, thar! air it ye, Barney?"

The step paused. Then a reply came in a voice that he hardly recognized
as Barney's; it was so fierce, and so full of half-repressed anger.

"Yes, it air Barney,--ef _ye_ hev any call ter know."

"How did ye git away, Barney?--how did ye git away?" exclaimed Nick,
with a joyous sense of relief.

"A _thief's_ word cl'ared me!"

This bitter cry came up to Nick, sharp and distinct, through the dark
stillness. He said nothing at the moment, and presently he heard Barney
speak again, as he stood invisible, and enveloped in the gloom of the
night, at the foot of the mighty column.

"'Twar my bes' frien' ez sunk me deep in trouble. But the _thief_, he
fished me up. He 'lowed ter the jestice ez I never holped him ter steal
nothin' nor ter hide it arterward, nuther."

Nick said not a word. The hot tears came into his eyes. Barney, he
thought, could feel no more bitterly toward him than he felt toward
himself.

"How kem my coat ter be tored down thar on the ledge, close ter the
Conscripts' Hollow, whar I hain't been sence the cloth war wove?"

There was a long pause.

"I wore it thar, Barney, 'stid o' mine," Nick replied at last. "I never
knowed, at fust, ez I hed tored it. I was so skeered when I seen the
stole truck, I never knowed nothin'."

"An' then ye spoke a lie! An' arterward, ye let the folks think ez 'twar
me ez hed tored that coat close by the Conscripts' Hollow!"

"I was skeered haffen ter death, Barney!"

Nick was very contemptible in his falsehood and cowardice,--even in his
repentance and shame and sorrow. At least, so the boy thought who stood
in the darkness at the foot of the great column. Suddenly it occurred to
Barney that this was a strange place for Nick to be at this hour of the
night. His indignation gave way for a moment to some natural curiosity.

"What air ye a-doin' of up thar on the Old Man's Chimney?" he asked.

"I kem up hyar this mornin' early, ter watch the wagon a-takin' ye off.
Then I fell and bruk my arm, an' I can't git down 'thout bein' holped a
little."

There was another silence, so intense that it seemed to Nick as if he
were all alone again in the immensity of the mountains, and the black
night, and the endless forests. He had expected an immediate proffer of
assistance from Barney. He had thought that his injured friend would
relent in his severity when he knew that he had suffered too; that he
was in great pain even at this moment.

But not a word came from Barney.

"I hed laid off ter ax ye ter holp me a little," Nick faltered meekly,
making his appeal direct.

There was no answer.

It was so still that the boy, high up on the sandstone pillar, could
hear the wind rising among the far spurs west of Goliath. The foliage
near at hand was ominously quiet in the sultry air. Once there was a
flash of lightning from the black clouds, followed by a low muttering
of thunder. Then all was still again,--so still!

Nick raised himself upon his left arm, and leaned cautiously over the
verge of the ledge, peering, with starting eyes, into the darkness, and
hoping for another flash of lightning that he might see below for an
instant. A terrible suspicion had come to him. Could Barney have slipped
quietly away, leaving him to his fate?

He could see nothing in the impenetrable gloom; he could hear nothing in
the dark stillness.

Barney had not yet gone, but he was saying to himself, as he stood at
the foot of the great obelisk, that here was his revenge, far more
complete than he had dared even to hope.

He could measure out his false friend's punishment in any degree he
thought fit. He could leave him there with his broken arm and his pangs
of hunger for another day. He deserved it,--he deserved it richly. The
recollection was still very bitter to Barney of the hardships he had
endured at the hands of this boy, who asked him now for help. Why did he
not refuse it? Why should he not take the revenge he had promised
himself?

And then he knew there was danger in now trying to climb the jagged
edges of the Old Man's Chimney. His nerves were shaken by the
excitements of the day; he was fagged out by his long tramp; the wind
was beginning to surge among the trees; it might blow him from his
uncertain foothold. But when it gained more strength, might it not drive
Nick, helpless with his broken arm, from that high ledge?

As this thought crossed his mind, he tore off his hat, coat, and shoes,
and desperately began the ascent. He thought he knew every projection
and crevice and bush so well that he might have found his way
blindfolded, and guided by the sense of touch alone. But he did not lack
for light. Before he was six feet up from the ground, the clouds were
rent by a vivid flash, and an instantaneous peal of thunder woke all
the echoes. This was the breaking of the storm; afterward, there was a
continuous pale flickering over all the sky, and at close intervals,
dazzling gleams of lightning darted through the rain, which was now
falling heavily.

"I'm a-comin', Nick!" shouted Barney, through the din of the elements.

Somehow, as he climbed, he felt light-hearted again. It seemed to him
that he had left a great weight at the foot of the gigantic sandstone
column. Could it be that bitter revenge he had promised himself? He had
thought only of Nick's safety, but he seemed to have done himself a
kindness in forgiving his friend,--the burden of revenge is so heavy!
His troubles were already growing faint in his memory,--it was so good
to feel the rain splashing in his face, and his rude playfellow, the
mountain wind, rioting around him once more. He was laughing when at
last he pulled himself up, wet through and through, on the ledge beside
Nick.

"It's airish up hyar, ain't it?" he cried.

"Barney," said Nick miserably, "I dunno how I kin ever look at ye agin,
squar' in the face, while I lives."

"Shet that up!" Barney returned good-humoredly. "I don't want ter ever
hear 'bout'n it no more. I'll always know, arter this, that I can't
place no dependence in ye; but, law, ye air jes' like that old gun o'
mine; sometimes it'll hang fire, an' sometimes it'll go off at
half-cock, an' ginerally it disapp'ints me mightily. But, somehows, I
can't determinate to shoot with no other one. I'll hev ter feel by ye
jes' like I does by that thar old gun."

The descent was slow and difficult, and very painful to Nick, and
fraught with considerable danger to both boys. They accomplished it in
safety, however, and then, with Barney's aid, Nick managed to drag
himself through the woods to the nearest log cabin, where his arm was
set by zealous and sympathetic amateurs in a rude fashion that probably
would have shocked the faculty. They had some supper here, and an
invitation to remain all night; but Barney was wild to be at home, and
Nick, in his adversity, clung to his friend.

The rain had ceased, and they had only half a mile further to go.
Barney's heart was exultant when he saw the light in the window of his
home, and the sparks flying up from the chimney. He had some curiosity
to know how the family circle looked without him.

"Ye wait hyar, Nick, a minute, an' I'll take a peek at 'em afore I
bounce in 'mongst 'em," he said. "I'm all eat up ter know what Melissy
air a-doin' 'thout me."

But the sight smote the tears from his eyes when he stole around to the
window and glanced in at the little group, plainly shown in the flare
from the open fire.

Granny looked ten years older since morning. The three small boys,
instead of popping corn or roasting apples and sweet potatoes, as was
their habit in the evenings, sat in a dismal row, their chins on their
freckled, sunburned hands, and their elbows on their knees, and gazed
ruefully at the fire. And Melissy,--why, there was Melissy, a little
blue-and-white ball curled up on the floor. Asleep? No. Barney caught
the gleam of her wide-open blue eyes; but he missed something from
them,--the happy expression that used to dwell there.

He went at the door with a rush. And what an uproar there was when he
suddenly sprang in among them! Melissy laughed until she cried. Granny
whirled and whirled her stick, and nodded convulsively, and gasped out
eager questions about the trial and the "jedge." The little boys jumped
for joy until they seemed strung on wire.

Soon they were popping corn and roasting apples once more. The flames
roared up the chimney, and the shadows danced on the wall, and as the
hours wore on, they were all so happy that when midnight came, it caught
them still grouped around the fire.




A WARNING


It was night on Elm Ridge. So black, so black that the great crags and
chasms were hidden, the forest was lost in the encompassing gloom, the
valley and the distant ranges were gone,--all the world had disappeared.

There was no wind, and the dark clouds above the dark earth hung low and
motionless. Solomon Grow found it something of an undertaking to grope
his way back from the little hut of unhewn logs, where he had stabled
his father's horse, to the door of the cabin and the home-circle within.

He fumbled for the latchstring, and pulling it carelessly, the door flew
open suddenly, and he almost fell into the room.

"Why d' ye come a-bustin' in hyar that thar way, Sol?" his mother
demanded rather tartly. "Ef ye hed been raised 'mongst the foxes, ye
couldn't show less manners."

"Door slipped out'n my hand," said Sol, a trifle sullenly.

"Waal--air ye disabled anywhar so ez ye can't shet it, eh?" asked his
father, with a touch of sarcasm.

Sol shut the door, drew up an inverted tub, seated himself upon it, and
looked about, loweringly. He thought he had been needlessly affronted.
Still, he held his peace.

Within, there was a great contrast to the black night outside. The ash
and hickory logs in the deep fireplace threw blue and yellow flames high
up the wide stone chimney. The flickering light was like some genial,
cheery smile forever coming and going.

It illumined the circle about the hearth. There sat Sol's mother, idle
to-night, for it was Sunday. His grandmother, too, was there, so old
that she seemed to confirm the story told of these healthy mountains, to
the effect that people are obliged to go down in the valley to die, else
they would live forever.

There was Sol's father, a great burly fellow, six feet three inches in
height, still holding out his hands to the blaze, chilled through and
through by his long ride from the church where he had been to hear the
circuit-rider preach on "Forgiveness of Injuries."

He was beginning now to quarrel vehemently with his brother-in-law,
Jacob Smith, about the shabby treatment he had recently experienced in
the non-payment of work,--for work in this country is a sort of
circulating medium; a man will plough a day for another man, on
condition that the favor is rigorously reciprocated.

Jacob Smith had been to the still, and apparently had imbibed the spirit
there prevailing, to more effect than Sol's father had absorbed the
spirit that had been taught in church.

In plain words, Jacob Smith was very drunk, and very quarrelsome, and
very unreasonable. The genial firelight that played upon his bloated
face played also over objects much pleasanter to look upon,--over the
strings of red pepper-pods hanging from the rafters; over the bright
variegations of color in the clean patchwork quilt on the bed; over the
shining pans and pails set aside on the shelf; over the great, curious
frame of the warping-bars, rising up among the shadows on the other side
of the room, the equidistant pegs still holding the sized yarn that
Solomon's mother had been warping, preparatory to weaving.

On the other side of the room, too, was a little tow-headed child
sitting in a cradle, which, small as he was, he had long ago outgrown as
a bed.

It was only a pine box placed upon rude rockers, and he used it for a
rocking-chair. His bare, fat legs hung out on one side of the box, and
as he delightedly rocked back and forth, his grotesque little shadow
waved to and fro on the wall, and mocked and flouted him.

What he thought of it, nobody can ever know; his grave eyes were fixed
upon it, but he said nothing, and the silent shadow and substance swayed
joyously hither and thither together.

The quarrel between the two men was becoming hot and bitter. One might
have expected nothing better from Jacob Smith, for when a man is drunk,
the human element drops like a husk, and only the unreasoning brute is
left.

But had John Grow forgotten all the good words he had heard to-day from
the circuit-rider? Had they melted into thin air during his long ride
from the church? Were the houseless good words wandering with the rising
wind through the unpeopled forest, seeking vainly a human heart where
they might find a lodgment?

The men had risen from their chairs; the drunkard, tremulous with anger,
had drawn a sharp knife. John Grow was not so patient as he might have
been, considering the great advantage he had in being sober, and the
good words with which he had started out from the "meet'n'-house."

He laid his heavy hand angrily upon the drunken man's shoulder.

In another moment there would have been bloodshed. But suddenly the
dark shadows at the other end of the room swayed with a strange motion;
a great creaking sound arose, and the warping-bars tottered forward and
fell upon the floor with a crash.

The wranglers turned with anxious faces. No one was near the bars, it
seemed that naught could have jarred them; but there lay the heavy frame
upon the floor, the pegs broken, and the yarn twisted.

"A warning!" cried Sol's mother. "A warning how you-uns spen' the
evenin' o' the Lord's Day in yer quar'lin', an' fightin', an' sech. An'
ye, John Grow, jes' from the meet'n'-house!"

She did not reproach her brother,--nobody hopes anything from a
drunkard.

"A sign o' bad luck," said the grandmother. "It 'minds me o' the time
las' winter that the wind blowed the door in, an' straight arter that
the cow died."

"Them signs air ez likely ter take hold on folks ez on cattle," said
Jacob Smith, half-sobered by the shock.

There was a look of sudden anxiety on the face of Solomon's mother. She
crossed the room to the youngster rocking in the cradle.

"Come, Benny," she said, "ye oughter go ter bed. Ye air wastin' yer
strength sittin' up this late in the night. An' ye war a-coughin' las'
week. Ye must go ter bed."

Benny clung to his unique rocking-chair with a sturdy strength which
promised well for his muscle when he should be as old as his great,
strong brother Solomon. He had been as quiet, hitherto, as if he were
dumb, but now he lifted up his voice in a loud and poignant wail, and
after he was put to bed, he resurrected himself from among the
bedclothes, ever and anon, with a bitter, though infantile, jargon of
protest.

"I'm fairly afeard o' them bars," said Mrs. Grow, looking down upon the
prostrate timbers. "It's comical that they fell down that-a-way. I hopes
'tain't no sign o' bad luck. I wouldn't hev nothin' ter happen fur
nothin'. An' Benny war a-coughin' las' week."

She had not even the courage to put her fear into words. And she
tenderly admonished tow-headed Benny, who was once more getting out of
bed, to go to sleep and save his strength, and remember how he was
coughing last week.

"He hed a chicken-bone acrost his throat," said his father. "No wonder
he coughed."

Solomon rose and went out into the black night,--so black that he could
not distinguish the sky from the earth, or the unobstructed air from the
dense forest around.

He walked about blindly, dragging something heavily after him. The
weight of concealment it was. He knew something that nobody knew
besides.

At the critical moment of the altercation, he had stepped softly among
the shadows to the warping-bars,--a strong push had sent the great frame
crashing down. He was back in an instant among the others, and by reason
of the excitement his agency in the sensation was not detected.

Like his biblical namesake, Solomon was no fool. Had he been reared in a
cultivated community, with the advantages of education, he might have
been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who
control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious
associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by
a Cerberus of three Greek letters.

But, wise as he was, Solomon was not a prophet. He had intended only to
effect a diversion, and stop the quarrel. He had had no prevision of the
panic of superstition that he had raised in the minds of these simple
people; for the ignorant mountaineer is a devout believer in signs and
warnings.

As Solomon wandered about outside, he heard his father stumbling from
the door of the house to the barn to see if aught of evil had come to
the cow or the horse. He knew how his grandmother's heart was wrung with
fear for her heifer, and he could hardly endure to think of his mother's
anxieties about Benny.

No prophetic eye was needed to foresee the terrors that would beset her
in the days to come, when she would walk back and forth before the
bars, warping the yarn to be woven into cloth for his and Benny's
clothes; how she would regard the harmless frame as an uncanny thing,
endowed with supernatural powers, and look askance at it, and shrink
from touching it; how she would watch for the sign to come true, and
tremble lest it come.

He turned about, dragging and tugging this weight of concealment after
him, reëntered the house, and sat down beside the fire.

His uncle Jacob Smith had gone to his own home. The others were telling
stories, calculated to make one's hair stand on end, about signs and
warnings, and their horrible fulfillment.

"Granny," said Solomon suddenly.

"Waal, sonny?" said his grandmother.

When the eyes of the family group were fixed upon him, Solomon's courage
failed.

"Nothin'," he said hastily. "Nothin' at all."

"Why, what ails the boy?" exclaimed his mother.

"I tell ye now, Solomon," said his grandmother, with an emphatic nod,
"ye hed better respec' yer elders,--an' a sign in the house!"

Solomon slept little that night. Toward day he began to dream of the
warping-bars. They seemed to develop suddenly into an immense animated
monster, from which he only escaped by waking with a sudden start.

Then he found that a great white morning, full of snow, was breaking
upon the black night. And what a world it was now! The mountain was
graced with a soft white drapery; on every open space there were vague
suggestions of delicate colors: in this hollow lay a tender purple
shadow; on that steep slope was an elusive roseate flush, and when you
looked again, it was gone, and the glare was blinding.

The bare black branches of the trees formed strangely interlaced
hieroglyphics upon the turquoise sky. The crags were dark and grim,
despite their snowy crests and the gigantic glittering icicles that here
and there depended from them. A cascade, close by in the gorge, had
been stricken motionless and dumb, as if by a sudden spell; and still
and silent, it sparkled in the sun.

The snow lay deep on the roof of the log cabin, and the eaves were
decorated with shining icicles. The enchantment had followed the zigzag
lines of the fence, and on every rail was its embellishing touch.

All the homely surroundings were transfigured. The potato-house was a
vast white billow, the ash-hopper was a marble vase, and the
fodder-stack was a great conical ermine cap, belonging to some mountain
giant who had lost it in the wind last night.

"I mought hev knowed that we-uns war a-goin' ter hev this spell o'
weather by the sign o' the warpin'-bars fallin' las' night," said John
Grow, stamping off the snow as he came in from feeding his horse.

"I hope 'tain't no worse sign," said his wife. "But I misdoubts." And
she sighed heavily.

"'Tain't no sign at all," said Solomon suddenly. He could keep his
secret no longer. "'Twar me ez flung down them warpin'-bars."

For a moment they all stared at him in silent amazement.

"What fur?" demanded his father at last. "Just ter enjye sottin' 'em up
agin? I'll teach ye ter fling down warpin'-bars!"

"Waal," said the peacemaker, hesitating, "it 'peared ter me ez Uncle
Jacob Smith war toler'ble drunk,--take him all tergether,--an' ez he hed
drawed a knife, I thought that ye an' him hed 'bout quar'led enough. An'
so I flung down the warpin'-bars ter git the fuss shet up."

"Waal, sir!" exclaimed his grandmother, red with wrath. "Ez ef _my_ son
couldn't stand up agin all the Smiths that ever stepped! Ye must fling
down the warpin'-bars an' twist the spun-truck--fur Jacob Smith!"

"Look-a-hyar, Sol," said his father gruffly, "'tend ter yerself, an' yer
own quar'ls, arter this, will ye!"

Then, with a sudden humorous interpretation of the incident, he broke
into a guffaw. "I hev lived a consider'ble time in this tantalizin'
world, an' ez yit I dunno ez I hev hed any need o' Sol ter pertect
_me_."

But Sol had unburdened his mind, and felt at ease again; not the less
because he knew that but for his novel method of making peace, there
might have been something worse than a sign in the house.




AMONG THE CLIFFS


It was a critical moment. There was a stir other than that of the wind
among the pine needles and dry leaves that carpeted the ground.

The wary wild turkeys lifted their long necks with that peculiar cry of
half-doubting surprise so familiar to a sportsman, then all was still
for an instant.

The world was steeped in the noontide sunlight, the mountain air
tasted of the fresh sylvan fragrance that pervaded the forest, the
foliage blazed with the red and gold of autumn, the distant Chilhowee
heights were delicately blue.

That instant's doubt sealed the doom of one of the flock. As the turkeys
stood in momentary suspense, the sunlight gilding their bronze feathers
to a brighter sheen, there was a movement in the dense undergrowth. The
flock took suddenly to wing,--a flash from among the leaves, the sharp
crack of a rifle, and one of the birds fell heavily over the bluff and
down toward the valley.

The young mountaineer's exclamation of triumph died in his throat. He
came running to the verge of the crag, and looked down ruefully into the
depths where his game had disappeared.

"Waal, sir," he broke forth pathetically, "this beats my time! If my
luck ain't enough ter make a horse laugh!"

He did not laugh, however. Perhaps his luck was calculated to stir only
equine risibility. The cliff was almost perpendicular; at the depth of
twenty feet a narrow ledge projected, but thence there was a sheer
descent, down, down, down, to the tops of the tall trees in the valley
far below.

As Ethan Tynes looked wistfully over the precipice, he started with a
sudden surprise. There on the narrow ledge lay the dead turkey.

The sight sharpened Ethan's regrets. He had made a good shot, and he
hated to relinquish his game. While he gazed in dismayed meditation, an
idea began to kindle in his brain. Why could he not let himself down to
the ledge by those long, strong vines that hung over the edge of the
cliff?

It was risky, Ethan knew,--terribly risky. But then,--if only the vines
were strong!

He tried them again and again with all his might, selected several of
the largest, grasped them hard and fast, and then slipped lightly off
the crag.

He waited motionless for a moment. His movements had dislodged clods of
earth and fragments of rock from the verge of the cliff, and until these
had ceased to rattle about his head and shoulders he did not begin his
downward journey.

Now and then as he went he heard the snapping of twigs, and again a
branch would break, but the vines which supported him were tough and
strong to the last. Almost before he knew it he stood upon the ledge,
and with a great sigh of relief he let the vines swing loose.

"Waal, that warn't sech a mighty job at last. But law, ef it hed been
Peter Birt stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this
hyar ledge plumb till the Jedgmint Day!"

He walked deftly along the ledge, picked up the bird, and tied it to one
of the vines with a string which he took from his pocket, intending to
draw it up when he should be once more on the top of the crag. These
preparations complete, he began to think of going back.

He caught the vines on which he had made the descent, but before he had
fairly left the ledge, he felt that they were giving way.

He paused, let himself slip back to a secure foothold, and tried their
strength by pulling with all his force.

Presently down came the whole mass in his hands. The friction against
the sharp edges of the rock over which they had been stretched with a
strong tension had worn them through. His first emotion was one of
intense thankfulness that they had fallen while he was on the ledge
instead of midway in his precarious ascent.

"Ef they hed kem down whilst I war a-goin' up, I'd hev been flung plumb
down ter the bottom o' the valley, 'kase this ledge air too narrer ter
hev cotched me."

He glanced down at the sombre depths beneath. "Thar wouldn't hev been
enough left of me ter pick up on a shovel!" he exclaimed, with a tardy
realization of his foolish recklessness.

The next moment a mortal terror seized him. What was to be his fate? To
regain the top of the cliff by his own exertions was an impossibility.

He cast his despairing eyes up the ascent, as sheer and as smooth as a
wall, without a crevice which might afford a foothold, or a shrub to
which he might cling.

His strong head was whirling as he again glanced downward to the
unmeasured abyss beneath. He softly let himself sink into a sitting
posture, his heels dangling over the frightful depths, and addressed
himself resolutely to the consideration of the terrible danger in which
he was placed.

[Illustration: HOW LONG WAS IT TO LAST]

Taken at its best, how long was it to last? Could he look to any human
being for deliverance? He reflected with growing dismay that the place
was far from any dwelling, and from the road that wound along the ridge.

There was no errand that could bring a man to this most unfrequented
portion of the deep woods, unless an accident should hither direct some
hunter's step.

It was quite possible, nay, probable, that years might elapse before the
forest solitude would again be broken by human presence.

His brothers would search for him when he should be missed from
home,--but such boundless stretches of forest! They might search for
weeks and never come near this spot. He would die here, he would
starve,--no, he would grow drowsy when exhausted and fall--fall--fall!

He was beginning to feel that morbid fascination that sometimes seizes
upon those who stand on great heights,--an overwhelming impulse to
plunge downward. His only salvation was to look up. He would look up to
the sky.

And what were these words he was beginning to faintly remember? Had not
the circuit-rider said in his last sermon that not even a sparrow falls
to the ground unmarked of God? There was a definite strength in this
suggestion. He felt less lonely as he stared resolutely at the big blue
sky. There came into his heart a sense of encouragement, of hope.

He would keep up as long and as bravely as he could, and if the worst
should come,--was he indeed so solitary? He would hold in remembrance
the sparrow's fall.

He had so nerved himself to meet his fate that he thought it was a fancy
when he heard a distant step. But it did not die away, it grew more and
more distinct,--a shambling step, that curiously stopped at intervals
and kicked the fallen leaves.

He sought to call out, but he seemed to have lost his voice. Not a sound
issued from his thickened tongue and his dry throat. The step came
nearer. It would presently pass. With a mighty effort Ethan sent forth a
wild, hoarse cry.

The rocks reverberated it, the wind carried it far, and certainly there
was an echo of its despair and terror in a shrill scream set up on the
verge of the crag. Then Ethan heard the shambling step scampering off
very fast indeed.

The truth flashed upon him. It was some child, passing on an
unimaginable errand through the deep woods, frightened by his sudden
cry.

"Stop, bubby!" he shouted; "stop a minute! It's Ethan Tynes that's
callin' of ye. Stop a minute, bubby!"

The step paused at a safe distance, and the shrill pipe of a little boy
demanded, "Whar is ye, Ethan Tynes?"

"I'm down hyar on the ledge o' the bluff. Who air ye ennyhow?"

"George Birt," promptly replied the little boy. "What air ye doin' down
thar? I thought it war Satan a-callin' of me. I never seen nobody."

"I kem down hyar on vines arter a tur-r-key I shot. The vines bruk, an'
I hev got no way ter git up agin. I want ye ter go ter yer mother's
house, an' tell yer brother Pete ter bring a rope hyar fur me ter climb
up by."

Ethan expected to hear the shambling step going away with a celerity
proportionate to the importance of the errand. On the contrary, the step
was approaching the crag.

A moment of suspense, and there appeared among the jagged ends of the
broken vines a small red head, a deeply freckled face, and a pair of
sharp, eager blue eyes. George Birt had carefully laid himself down on
his stomach, only protruding his head beyond the verge of the crag, that
he might not fling away his life in his curiosity.

"Did ye git it?" he asked, with bated breath.

"Git what?" demanded poor Ethan, surprised and impatient.

"The tur-r-key--what ye hev done been talkin' 'bout," said George Birt.

Ethan had lost all interest in the turkey. "Yes, yes; but run along,
bub. I mought fall off'n this hyar place,--I'm gittin' stiff sittin'
still so long,--or the wind mought blow me off. The wind is blowin'
toler'ble brief."

"Gobbler or hen?" asked George Birt eagerly.

"It air a hen," said Ethan. "But look-a-hyar, George, I'm a-waitin' on
ye, an' ef I'd fall off'n this hyar place, I'd be ez dead ez a door-nail
in a minute."

"Waal, I'm goin' now," said George Birt, with gratifying alacrity. He
raised himself from his recumbent position, and Ethan heard him
shambling off, kicking every now and then at the fallen leaves as he
went.

Presently, however, he turned and walked back nearly to the brink of the
cliff. Then he prostrated himself once more at full length,--for the
mountain children are very careful of the precipices,--snaked along
dexterously to the verge of the crag, and protruding his red head
cautiously, began to parley once more, trading on Ethan's necessities.

"Ef I go on this yerrand fur ye," he said, looking very sharp indeed,
"will ye gimme one o' the whings of that thar wild tur-r-key?"

He coveted the wing-feathers, not the joint of the fowl. The "whing" of
the domestic turkey is used by the mountain women as a fan, and is
considered an elegance as well as a comfort. George Birt aped the
customs of his elders, regardless of sex,--a characteristic of very
small boys.

"Oh, go 'long, bubby!" exclaimed poor Ethan, in dismay at the
dilatoriness and indifference of his unique deliverer. "I'll give ye
both o' the whings." He would have offered the turkey willingly, if
"bubby" had seemed to crave it.

"Waal, I'm goin' now."

George Birt rose from the ground and started off briskly, exhilarated by
the promise of both the "whings."

Ethan was angry indeed when he heard the boy once more shambling back.
Of course one should regard a deliverer with gratitude, especially a
deliverer from mortal peril; but it may be doubted if Ethan's gratitude
would have been great enough to insure that small red head against a
vigorous rap, if it had been within rapping distance, when it was once
more cautiously protruded over the verge of the cliff.

"I kem back hyar ter tell ye," the doughty deliverer began, with an air
of great importance, and magnifying his office with an extreme relish,
"that I can't go an' tell Pete 'bout'n the rope till I hev done kem back
from the mill. I hev got old Sorrel hitched out hyar a piece, with a bag
o' corn on his back, what I hev ter git ground at the mill. My mother
air a-settin' at home now a-waitin' fur that thar corn-meal ter bake
dodgers with. An' I hev got a dime ter pay at the mill; it war lent ter
my dad las' week. An' I'm afeard ter walk about much with this hyar
dime; I mought lose it, ye know. An' I can't go home 'thout the meal;
I'll ketch it ef I do. But I'll tell Pete arter I git back from the
mill."

"The mill!" echoed Ethan, aghast. "What air ye doin' on this side o' the
mounting, ef ye air a-goin' ter the mill? This ain't the way ter the
mill."

"I kem over hyar," said the little boy, still with much importance of
manner, notwithstanding a slight suggestion of embarrassment on his
freckled face, "ter see 'bout'n a trap that I hev sot fur squir'ls. I'll
see 'bout my trap, an' then I hev ter go ter the mill, 'kase my mother
air a-settin' in our house now a-waitin' fur meal ter bake corn-dodgers.
Then I'll tell Pete whar ye air, an' what ye said 'bout'n the rope. Ye
must jes' wait fur me hyar."

Poor Ethan could do nothing else.

As the echo of the boy's shambling step died in the distance, a
redoubled sense of loneliness fell upon Ethan Tynes. But he endeavored
to solace himself with the reflection that the important mission to the
squirrel-trap and the errand to the mill could not last forever, and
before a great while Peter Birt and his rope would be upon the crag.

This idea buoyed him up as the hours crept slowly by. Now and then he
lifted his head and listened with painful intentness. He felt stiff in
every muscle, and yet he had a dread of making an effort to change his
constrained position. He might lose control of his rigid limbs, and fall
into those dread depths beneath.

His patience at last began to give way. His heart was sinking. His
messenger had been even more dilatory than he was prepared to expect.
Why did not Pete come? Was it possible that George had forgotten to tell
of his danger?

The sun was going down, leaving a great glory of gold and crimson clouds
and an opaline haze upon the purple mountains. The last rays fell on the
bronze feathers of the turkey still lying tied to the broken vines on
the ledge.

And now there were only frowning masses of dark clouds in the west; and
there were frowning masses of clouds overhead.

The shadow of the coming night had fallen on the autumnal foliage in the
deep valley; in the place of the opaline haze was only a gray mist.

And now came, sweeping along between the parallel mountain ranges, a
sombre rain-cloud. The lad could hear the heavy drops splashing on the
treetops in the valley, long, long before he felt them on his head.

The roll of thunder sounded among the crags. Then the rain came down
tumultuously, not in columns, but in livid sheets. The lightnings rent
the sky, showing, as it seemed to him, glimpses of the glorious
brightness within,--too bright for human eyes.

He clung desperately to his precarious perch. Now and then a fierce rush
of wind almost tore him from it. Strange fancies beset him. The air was
full of that wild symphony of nature, the wind and the rain, the pealing
thunder, and the thunderous echo among the cliffs, and yet he thought he
could hear his own name ringing again and again through all the tumult,
sometimes in Pete's voice, sometimes in George's shrill tones.

He became vaguely aware, after a time, that the rain had ceased, and the
moon was beginning to shine through rifts in the clouds.

The wind continued unabated, but, curiously enough, he could not hear it
now. He could hear nothing; he could think of nothing. His consciousness
was beginning to fail.

George Birt had indeed forgotten him,--forgotten even the promised
"whings." Not that he had discovered anything so extraordinary in his
trap, for his trap was empty, but when he reached the mill, he found
that the miller had killed a bear and captured a cub, and the orphan,
chained to a post, had deeply absorbed George Birt's attention.

To sophisticated people, the boy might have seemed as grotesque as the
cub. George wore an unbleached cotton shirt. The waistband of his baggy
jeans trousers encircled his body just beneath his armpits, reaching to
his shoulder-blades behind, and nearly to his collar-bone in front. His
red head was only partly covered by a fragment of an old white wool hat;
and he looked at the cub with a curiosity as intense as that with which
the cub looked at him. Each was taking first lessons in natural history.

As long as there was daylight enough left to see that cub, did George
Birt stand and stare at the little beast. Then he clattered home on old
Sorrel in the closing darkness, looking like a very small pin on the top
of a large pincushion.

At home, he found the elders unreasonable,--as elders usually are
considered. Supper had been waiting an hour or so for the lack of meal
for dodgers. He "caught it" considerably, but not sufficiently to impair
his appetite for the dodgers. After all this, he was ready enough for
bed when small boy's bedtime came. But as he was nodding before the
fire, he heard a word that roused him to a new excitement.

"These hyar chips air so wet they won't burn," said his mother. "I'll
take my tur-r-key whing an' fan the fire."

"Law!" he exclaimed. "Thar, now! Ethan Tynes never gimme that thar wild
tur-r-key's whings like he promised."

"Whar did ye happen ter see Ethan?" asked Pete, interested in his
friend.

"Seen him in the woods, an' he promised me the tur-r-key whings."

"What fur?" inquired Pete, a little surprised by this uncalled-for
generosity.

"Waal,"--there was an expression of embarrassment on the important
freckled face, and the small red head nodded forward in an explanatory
manner,--"he fell off'n the bluffs arter the tur-r-key whings--I mean,
he went down to the ledge arter the tur-r-key, and the vines bruk an' he
couldn't git up no more. An' he tole me that ef I'd tell ye ter fotch
him a rope ter pull up by, he would gimme the whings. That happened
a--leetle--while--arter dinner-time."

"Who got him a rope ter pull up by?" demanded Pete.

There was again on the important face that indescribable shade of
embarrassment. "Waal,"--the youngster balanced this word judicially,--"I
forgot 'bout'n the tur-r-key whings till this minute. I reckon he's thar
yit."

"Mebbe this hyar wind an' rain hev beat him off'n the ledge!" exclaimed
Pete, appalled, and rising hastily. "I tell ye now," he added, turning
to his mother, "the best use ye kin make o' that thar boy is ter put him
on the fire fur a back-log."

Pete made his preparations in great haste. He took the rope from the
well, asked the crestfallen and browbeaten junior a question or two
relative to locality, mounted old Sorrel without a saddle, and in a few
minutes was galloping at headlong speed through the night.

The rain was over by the time he had reached the sulphur spring to
which George had directed him, but the wind was still high, and the
broken clouds were driving fast across the face of the moon.

When he had hitched his horse to a tree, and set out on foot to find the
cliff, the moonbeams, though brilliant, were so intermittent that his
progress was fitful and necessarily cautious. When the disk shone out
full and clear, he made his way rapidly enough, but when the clouds
intervened, he stood still and waited.

"I ain't goin' ter fall off'n the bluff 'thout knowin' it," he said to
himself, in one of these eclipses, "ef I hev ter stand hyar all night."

The moonlight was brilliant and steady when he reached the verge of the
crag. He identified the spot by the mass of broken vines, and more
indubitably by Ethan's rifle lying upon the ground just at his feet. He
called, but received no response.

"Hev Ethan fell off, sure enough?" he asked himself, in great dismay and
alarm. Then he shouted again and again. At last there came an answer,
as though the speaker had just awaked.

"Pretty nigh beat out, I'm a-thinkin'!" commented Pete. He tied one end
of the cord around the trunk of a tree, knotted it at intervals, and
flung it over the bluff.

At first Ethan was almost afraid to stir. He slowly put forth his hand
and grasped the rope. Then, his heart beating tumultuously, he rose to
his feet.

He stood still for an instant to steady himself and get his breath.
Nerving himself for a strong effort, he began the ascent, hand over
hand, up, and up, and up, till once more he stood upon the crest of the
crag.

And, now that all danger was over, Pete was disposed to scold. "I'm
a-thinkin'," said Pete severely, "ez thar ain't a critter on this hyar
mounting, from a b'ar ter a copper-head, that could hev got in sech a
fix, 'ceptin' ye, Ethan Tynes."

And Ethan was silent.

"What's this hyar thing at the e-end o' the rope?" asked Pete, as he
began to draw the cord up, and felt a weight still suspended.

"It air the tur-r-key," said Ethan meekly.

"I tied her ter the e-end o' the rope afore I kem up."

"Waal, sir!" exclaimed Pete, in indignant surprise.

And George, for duty performed, was remunerated with the two "whings,"
although it still remains a question in the mind of Ethan whether or not
he deserved them.




IN THE "CHINKING"


Not far from an abrupt precipice on a certain great mountain spur there
stands in the midst of the red and yellow autumn woods a little log
"church-house." The nuts rattle noisily down on its roof; sometimes
during "evenin' preachin'"--which takes place in the afternoon--a
flying-squirrel frisks near the window; the hymns echo softly, softly,
from the hazy sunlit heights across the valley.

"That air the doxol'gy," said Tom Brent, one day, pausing to listen
among the wagons and horses hitched outside. He was about to follow home
his father's mare, that had broken loose and galloped off through the
woods, but as he glanced back at the church, a sudden thought struck
him. He caught sight of the end of little Jim Coggin's comforter
flaunting out through the "chinking,"--as the mountaineers call the
series of short slats which are set diagonally in the spaces between the
logs of the walls, and on which the clay is thickly daubed. This work
had been badly done, and in many places the daubing had fallen away.
Thus it was that as Jim Coggin sat within the church, the end of his
plaid comforter had slipped through the chinking and was waving in the
wind outside.

Now Jim had found the weather still too warm for his heavy jeans jacket,
but he was too cool without it, and he had ingeniously compromised the
difficulty by wearing his comforter in this unique manner,--laying it on
his shoulders, crossing it over the chest, passing it under the arms,
and tying it in a knot between the shoulder-blades. Tom remembered this
with a grin as he slyly crept up to the house, and it was only the work
of a moment to draw that knot through the chinking and secure it firmly
to a sumach bush that grew near at hand.

It never occurred to him that the resounding doxology could fail to
rouse that small, tow-headed, freckle-faced boy, or that the
congregation might slowly disperse without noticing him as he sat
motionless and asleep in the dark shadow.

The sun slipped down into the red west; the blue mountains turned
purple; heavy clouds gathered, and within three miles there was no other
human creature when Jim suddenly woke to the darkness and the storm and
the terrible loneliness.

Where was he? He tried to rise: he could not move. Bewildered, he
struggled and tugged at his harness,--all in vain. As he realized the
situation, he burst into tears.

"Them home-folks o' mine won't kem hyar ter s'arch fur me," he cried
desperately, "kase I tole my mother ez how I war a-goin' ter dust down
the mounting ter Aunt Jerushy's house ez soon ez meet'n' war out an'
stay all night along o' her boys."

Still he tried to comfort himself by reflecting that it was not so bad
as it might have been. There was no danger that he would have to starve
and pine here till next Sunday, for a "protracted meeting" was in
progress, service was held every day, and the congregation would return
to-morrow, which was Thursday.

His philosophy, however, was short-lived, for the sudden lightning rent
the clouds, and a terrific peal of thunder echoed among the cliffs.

"The storm air a-comin' up the mounting!" he exclaimed, in vivacious
protest. "An' ef this brief wind war ter whurl the old church-house
off'n the bluff an' down inter the valley whar-r--would--I--be?"

All at once the porch creaked beneath a heavy tread. A clumsy hand was
fumbling at the door. "Strike a light," said a gruff voice without.

As a lantern was thrust in, Jim was about to speak, but the words froze
upon his lips for fear when a man strode heavily over the threshold and
he caught the expression of his face.

It was an evil face, red and bloated and brutish. He had small,
malicious, twinkling eyes, and a shock of sandy hair. A suit of
copper-colored jeans hung loosely on his tall, lank frame, and when he
placed the lantern on a bench and stretched out both arms as if he were
tired, he showed that his left hand was maimed,--the thumb had been cut
off at the first joint.

A thickset, short, swaggering man tramped in after him.

"Waal, Amos Brierwood," he said, "it's safes' fur us ter part. We
oughter be fur enough from hyar by daybreak. Divide that thar traveler's
money--hey?"

They carefully closed the rude shutters, barred the door, and sat down
on the "mourners' bench," neither having noticed the small boy at the
other end of the room.

Poor Jim, his arms akimbo and half-covered by his comforter, stuck to
the wall like a plaid bat,--if such a natural curiosity is
imaginable,--feverishly hoping that the men might go without seeing him
at all.

For surely no human creature could be more abhorrent, more incredibly
odious of aspect, than Amos Brierwood as he sat there, his red, brutish
face redder still with a malign pleasure, his malicious eyes gloating
over the rolls of money which he drew from a pocket-book stolen from
some waylaid traveler, snapping his fingers in exultation when the
amount of the bills exceeded his expectation.

The leaves without were fitfully astir, and once the porch creaked
suddenly. Brierwood glanced at the door sharply,--even fearfully,--his
hand motionless on the rolls of money.

"Only the wind, Amos, only the wind!" said the short, stout man
impatiently.

But he, himself, was disquieted the next moment when a horse neighed
shrilly.

"That ain't my beastis, Amos, nor yit your'n!" he cried, starting up.

"It air the traveler's, ye sodden idjit!" said Brierwood, lifting his
uncouth foot and giving him a jocose kick.

But the short man was not satisfied. He rose, went outside, and Jim
could hear him beating about among the bushes. Presently he came in
again. "'Twar the traveler's critter, I reckon; an' that critter an'
saddle oughter be counted in my sheer."

Then they fell to disputing and quarreling,--once they almost
fought,--but at length the division was made and they rose to go. As
Brierwood swung his lantern round, his malicious eyes fell upon the poor
little plaid bat sticking against the wall.

He stood in the door staring, dumfounded for a moment. Then he clenched
his fist, and shook it fiercely. "How did ye happen ter be hyar this
time o' the night, ye limb o' Satan?" he cried.

"Dunno," faltered poor Jim.

The other man had returned too. "Waal, sir, ef that thar boy hed been a
copper-head now, he'd hev bit us, sure!"

"_He mought do that yit_," said Amos Brierwood, with grim significance.
"He hev been thar all this time,--'kase he air tied thar, don't ye see?
An' he hev _eyes_, an' he hev _ears_. What air ter hender?"

The other man's face turned pale, and Jim thought that they were afraid
he would tell all he had seen and heard. The manner of both had changed,
too. They had a skulking, nervous way with them now in place of the
coarse bravado that had characterized them hitherto.

Amos Brierwood pondered for a few minutes. Then he sullenly demanded,--

"What's yer name?"

"It air Jeemes Coggin," quavered the little boy.

"Coggin, hey?" exclaimed Brierwood, with a new idea bringing back the
malicious twinkle to his eyes. He laughed as though mightily relieved,
and threw up his left hand and shook it exultingly.

The shadow on the dark wall of that maimed hand with only the stump of a
thumb was a weird, a horrible thing to the child. He had no idea that
his constant notice of it would stamp it in his memory, and that
something would come of this fact. He was glad when the shadow ceased to
writhe and twist upon the wall, and the man dropped his arm to his side
again.

"What's a-brewin', Amos?" asked the other, who had been watching
Brierwood curiously.

They whispered aside for a few moments, at first anxiously and then with
wild guffaws of satisfaction. When they approached the boy, their manner
had changed once more.

"Waal, I declar, bubby," said Brierwood agreeably, "this hyar fix ez ye
hev got inter air sateful fur true! It air enough ter sot enny boy on
the mounting cat-a-wampus. 'Twar a good thing ez we-uns happened ter kem
by hyar on our way from the tan-yard way down yander in the valley whar
we-uns hev been ter git paid up fur workin' thar some. We'll let ye out.
Who done yer this hyar trick?"

"Dunno--witches, I reckon!" cried poor Jim, bursting into tears.

"Witches!" the man exclaimed, "the woods air a-roamin' with 'em this
time o' the year; bein', ye see, ez they kem ter feed on the mast."

He chuckled as he said this, perhaps at the boy's evident terror,--for
Jim was sorrowfully superstitious,--perhaps because he had managed to
cut unnoticed a large fragment from the end of the comforter. This he
stuffed into his own pocket as he talked on about two witches, whom he
said he had met that afternoon under an oak-tree feeding on acorns.

"An' now, I kem ter remind myself that them witches war inquirin' round
'bout'n a boy--war his name Jeemes Coggin? Le''s see! That boy's name
_war_ Jeemes Coggin!"

While Jim stood breathlessly, intently listening, Brierwood had twisted
something into the folds of his comforter so dexterously that unless
this were untied it would not fall; it was a silk handkerchief of a
style never before seen in the mountains, and he had made a knot hard
and fast in one corner.

"Thar, now!" he exclaimed, holding up the fragment of knitted yarn, "I
hev tore yer comforter. Never mind, bubby, 'twar tore afore. But it'll
do ter wrop up this money-purse what b'longs ter yer dad. He lef' it
hid in the chinking o' the wall over yander close ter whar I war sittin'
when I fust kem in. I'll put it back thar, 'kase yer dad don't want
nobody ter know whar it air hid."

He strode across the room and concealed the empty pocket-book in the
chinking.

"Ef ye won't tell who teched it, I'll gin a good word fur ye ter them
witches what war inquirin' round fur ye ter-day."

Jim promised in hot haste, and then, the rain having ceased, he started
for home, but Brierwood stopped him at the door.

"Hold on thar, bub. I kem mighty nigh furgittin' ter let ye know ez I
seen yer brother Alf awhile back, an' he axed me ter git ye ter go by
Tom Brent's house, an' tell Tom ter meet him up the road a piece by that
thar big sulphur spring. Will ye gin Tom that message? Tell him Alf said
ter come quick."

Once more Jim promised.

The two men holding the lantern out in the porch watched him as he
pounded down the dark road, his tow hair sticking out of his tattered
black hat, the ends of his comforter flaunting in the breeze, and every
gesture showing the agitated haste of a witch-scared boy. Then they
looked at each other significantly, and laughed loud and long.

"He'll tell sech a crooked tale ter-morrer that Alf Coggin an' his dad
will see sights along o' that traveler's money!" said Brierwood,
gloating over his sharp management as he and his accomplice mounted
their horses and rode off in opposite directions.

When Jim reached Tom Brent's house, and knocked at the door, he was so
absorbed in his terrors that, as it opened, he said nothing for a
moment. He could see the family group within. Tom's father was placidly
smoking. His palsied "gran'dad" shook in his chair in the chimney-corner
as he told the wide-eyed boys big tales about the "Injuns" that harried
the early settlers in Tennessee.

"Tom," Jim said, glancing up at the big boy,--"Tom, thar's a witch
waitin' fur ye at the sulphur spring! Go thar, quick!"

"Not ef I knows what's good fur me!" protested Tom, with a great
horse-laugh. "What ails ye, boy? Ye talk like ye war teched in the
head!"

"I went ter say ez Alf Coggin air thar waitin' fur ye," Jim began again,
nodding his slandered head with great solemnity, "an' tole me ter tell
ye ter kem thar quick."

He took no heed of the inaccuracy of the message; he was glancing
fearfully over his shoulder, and the next minute scuttled down the road
in a bee-line for home.

Tom hurried off briskly through the woods. "Waal, sir! I'm mighty nigh
crazed ter know what Alf Coggin kin want o' me; goin' coon-huntin',
mebbe," he speculated, as he drew within sight of an old
lightning-scathed tree which stood beside the sulphur spring and
stretched up, stark and white, in the dim light.

The clouds were blowing away from a densely instarred sky; the moon was
hardly more than a crescent and dipping low in the west, but he could
see the sombre outline of the opposite mountain, and the white mists
that shifted in a ghostly and elusive fashion along the summit. The
night was still, save for a late katydid, spared by the frost, and
piping shrilly.

He experienced a terrible shock of surprise when a sudden voice--a voice
he had never heard before--cried out sharply, "Hello there! Help! help!"

As he pressed tremulously forward, he beheld a sight which made him ask
himself if it were possible that Alf Coggin had sent for him to join in
some nefarious work which had ended in leaving a man--a stranger--bound
to the old lightning-scathed tree.

Even in the uncertain light Tom could see that he was pallid and
panting, evidently exhausted in some desperate struggle: there was blood
on his face, his clothes were torn, and by all odds he was the angriest
man that was ever waylaid and robbed.

"Ter-morrer he'll be jes' a-swoopin'!" thought Tom, tremulously untying
the complicated knots, and listening to his threats of vengeance on the
unknown robbers, "an' every critter on the mounting will git a clutch
from his claws."

And in fact, it was hardly daybreak before the constable of the
district, who lived hard by in the valley, was informed of all the
details of the affair, so far as known to Tom or the "Traveler,"--for
thus the mountaineers designated him, as if he were the only one in the
world.

By reason of the message which Jim had delivered, and its strange
result, they suspected the Coggins, and as they rode together to the
justice's house for a warrant, this suspicion received unexpected
confirmation in a rumor that they found afloat. Every man they met
stopped them to repeat the story that Coggin's boy had told somebody
that it was his father who had robbed the traveler, and hid the empty
pocket-book in the chinking of the church wall. No one knew who had set
this report in circulation, but a blacksmith said he heard it first from
a man named Brierwood, who had stopped at his shop to have his horse
shod.

It was still early when they reached Jim Coggin's home; the windows and
doors were open to let out the dust, for his mother was just beginning
to sweep. She had pushed aside the table, when her eyes suddenly
distended with surprise as they fell upon a silk handkerchief lying on
the floor beside it. The moment that she stooped and picked it up, the
strange gentleman stepped upon the porch, and through the open door he
saw it dangling from her hands.

He tapped the constable on the shoulder.

"That's my property!" he said tersely.

The officer stepped in instantly. "Good-mornin', Mrs. Coggin," he said
politely. "'T would pleasure me some ter git a glimpse o' that
handkercher."

"Air it your'n?" asked the woman wonderingly. "I jes' now fund it, an' I
war tried ter know who had drapped it hyar."

The officer, without a word, untied the knot which Amos Brierwood had
made in one corner, while the Coggins looked on in open-mouthed
amazement. It contained a five-dollar bill, and a bit of paper on which
some careless memoranda had been jotted down in handwriting which the
traveler claimed as his own.

It seemed a very plain case. Still, he got out of the sound of the
woman's sobs and cries as soon as he conveniently could, and sauntered
down the road, where the officer presently overtook him with Alf and his
father in custody.

"Whar be ye a-takin' of us now?" cried the elder, gaunt and haggard, and
with his long hair blowing in the breeze.

"Ter the church-house, whar yer boy says ye hev hid the traveler's
money-purse," said the officer.

"_My boy_!" exclaimed John Coggin, casting an astounded glance upon his
son.

Poor Alf was almost stunned. When they reached the church, and the men,
after searching for a time without result, appealed to him to save
trouble by pointing out the spot where the pocket-book was concealed, he
could only stammer and falter unintelligibly, and finally he burst into
tears.

"Ax the t'other one--the leetle boy," suggested an old man in the crowd.

Alf's heart sank--sank like lead--when Jim, suddenly remembering the
promised "good word" to the witches, piped out, "I war tole not ter tell
who teched it,--'kase my dad didn't want nobody ter know 'twar hid
thar."

John Coggin's face was rigid and gray.

"The Lord hev forsook me!" he cried. "An' all my chillen hev turned
liars tergether."

Then he made a great effort to control himself.

"Look-a-hyar, Jim, ef ye hev got the truth in ye,--speak it! Ef ye know
whar I hev hid anything,--find it!"

Jim, infinitely important, and really understanding little of what was
going on, except that all these big men were looking at him, crossed the
room with as much stateliness as is compatible with a pair of baggy
brown jeans trousers, a plaid comforter tied between the shoulder-blades
in a big knot, a tow-head, and a tattered black hat; he slipped his
grimy paw in the chinking where Amos Brierwood had hid the pocket-book,
and drew it thence, with the prideful exclamation,--

"B'longs ter my dad!"

The officer held it up empty before the traveler,--he held up, too, the
bit of comforter in which it was folded, and pointed to the small boy's
shoulders. The gentleman turned away, thoroughly convinced. Alf and his
father looked from one to the other, in mute despair. They foresaw many
years of imprisonment for a crime which they had not committed.

The constable was hurrying his prisoners toward the door, when there was
a sudden stir on the outskirts of the crowd. Old Parson Payne was
pushing his way in, followed by a tall young man, who, in comparison
with the mountaineers, seemed wonderfully prosperous and well-clad, and
very fresh and breezy.

"You're all on the wrong track!" he cried.

And his story proved this, though it was simple enough.

He was sojourning in the mountains with some friends on a "camp-hunt,"
and the previous evening he had chanced to lose his way in the woods.
When night and the storm came on, he was perhaps five miles from camp.
He mistook the little "church-house" for a dwelling, and dismounting, he
hitched his horse in the laurel, intending to ask for shelter for the
night. As he stepped upon the porch, however, he caught a glimpse,
through the chinking, of the interior, and he perceived that the
building was a church. There were benches and a rude pulpit. The next
instant, his attention was riveted by the sight of two men, one of whom
had drawn a knife upon the other, quarreling over a roll of money. He
stood rooted to the spot in surprise. Gradually, he began to understand
the villainy afoot, for he overheard all that they said to each other,
and afterward to Jim. He saw one of the men cut the bit from the
comforter, wrap the pocket-book in it, and hide it away, and he
witnessed a dispute between them, which went on in dumb show behind the
boy's back, as to which of two bills should be knotted in the
handkerchief which they twisted into the comforter.

The constable was pressing him to describe the appearance of the
ruffians.

"Why," said the stranger, "one of them was long, and lank, and
loose-jointed, and had sandy hair, and"--He paused abruptly, cudgeling
his memory for something more distinctive, for this description would
apply to half the men in the room, and thus it would be impossible to
identify and capture the robbers.

"He hedn't no thumb sca'cely on his lef' hand," piped out Jim, holding
up his own grimy paw, and looking at it with squinting intensity as he
crooked it at the first joint, to imitate the maimed hand.

"No thumb!" exclaimed the constable excitedly. "Amos Brierwood fur a
thousand!"

Jim nodded his head intelligently, with sudden recollection. "That air
the name ez the chunky man gin him when they fust kem in."

And thus it was that when the Coggins were presently brought before the
justice, they were exonerated of all complicity in the crime for which
Brierwood and his accomplice were afterward arrested, tried, and
sentenced to the State Prison.

Jim doubts whether the promised "good word" was ever spoken on his
behalf to the witches, who were represented as making personal inquiries
about him, because he suspects that the two robbers were themselves the
only evil spirits roaming the woods that night.




ON A HIGHER LEVEL


As Jack Dunn stood in the door of his home on a great crag of Persimmon
Ridge and loaded his old rifle, his eyes rested upon a vast and imposing
array of mountains filling the landscape. All are heavily wooded, all
are alike, save that in one the long horizontal line of the summit is
broken by a sudden vertical ascent, and thence the mountain seems to
take up life on a higher level, for it sinks no more and passes out of
sight.

This abrupt rise is called "Elijah's Step,"--named, perhaps, in honor of
some neighboring farmer who first explored it; but the ignorant boy
believed that here the prophet had stepped into his waiting fiery
chariot.

He knew of no foreign lands,--no Syria, no Palestine. He had no dream of
the world that lay beyond those misty, azure hills. Indistinctly he had
caught the old story from the nasal drawl of the circuit-rider, and he
thought that here, among these wild Tennessee mountains, Elijah had
lived and had not died.

There came suddenly from the valley the baying of a pack of hounds in
full cry, and when the crags caught the sound and tossed it from
mountain to mountain, when more delicate echoes on a higher key rang out
from the deep ravines, there was a wonderful exhilaration in this sylvan
minstrelsy. The young fellow looked wistful as he heard it, then he
frowned heavily.

"Them thar Saunders men hev gone off an' left me," he said reproachfully
to some one within the log cabin. "Hyar I be kept a-choppin' wood an' a
pullin' fodder till they hev hed time ter git up a deer. It 'pears ter
me ez I mought hev been let ter put off that thar work till I war
through huntin'."

He was a tall young fellow, with a frank, freckled face and auburn hair;
stalwart, too. Judging from his appearance, he could chop wood and pull
fodder to some purpose.

A heavy, middle-aged man emerged from the house, and stood regarding his
son with grim disfavor. "An' who oughter chop wood an' pull fodder but
ye, while my hand air sprained this way?" he demanded.

That hand had been sprained for many a long day, but the boy made no
reply; perhaps he knew its weight. He walked to the verge of the cliff,
and gazed down at the tops of the trees in the valley far, far below.

The expanse of foliage was surging in the wind like the waves of the
sea. From the unseen depths beneath there rose again the cry of the
pack, inexpressibly stirring, and replete with woodland suggestions. All
the echoes came out to meet it.

"I war promised ter go!" cried Jack bitterly.

"Waal," said his mother, from within the house, "'tain't no good nohow."

Her voice was calculated to throw oil upon the troubled waters,--low,
languid, and full of pacifying intonations. She was a tall, thin woman,
clad in a blue-checked homespun dress, and seated before a great
hand-loom, as a lady sits before a piano or an organ. The creak of the
treadle, and the thump, thump of the batten, punctuated, as it were, her
consolatory disquisition.

Her son looked at her in great depression of spirit as she threw the
shuttle back and forth with deft, practiced hands.

"Wild meat air a mighty savin'," she continued, with a housewifely
afterthought. "I ain't denyin' that."

Thump, thump, went the batten.

"But ye needn't pester the life out'n yerself 'kase ye ain't a-runnin'
the deer along o' them Saunders men. It 'pears like a powerful waste o'
time, when ye kin take yer gun down ter the river enny evenin' late,
jes' ez the deer air goin' ter drink, an' shoot ez big a buck ez ye hev
got the grit ter git enny other way. Ye can't do nothin' with a buck but
eat him, an' a-runnin' him all around the mounting don't make him no
tenderer, ter my mind. I don't see no sense in huntin' 'cept ter git
somethin' fitten ter eat."

This logic, enough to break a sportsman's heart, was not a panacea for
the tedium of the day, spent in the tame occupation of pulling fodder,
as the process of stripping the blades from the standing cornstalks is
called.

But when the shadows were growing long, Jack took his rifle and set out
for the profit and the pleasure of still-hunting. As he made his way
through the dense woods, the metallic tones of a cow-bell jangled on the
air,--melodious sound in the forest quiet, but it conjured up a scowl on
the face of the young mountaineer.

"Everything on this hyar mounting hev got the twistin's ter-day!" he
exclaimed wrath-fully. "Hyar is our old red cow a-traipsing off ter Andy
Bailey's house, an' thar won't be a drap of milk for supper."

This was a serious matter, for in a region where coffee and tea are
almost unknown luxuries, and the evening meal consists of such
thirst-provoking articles as broiled venison, corn-dodgers, and sorghum,
one is apt to feel the need of some liquid milder than "apple-jack,"
and more toothsome than water, wherewith to wet one's whistle.

In common with everything else on the mountain, Jack, too, had the
"twistin's," and it was with a sour face that he began to drive the cow
homeward. After going some distance, however, he persuaded himself that
she would leave the beaten track no more until she reached the cabin. He
turned about, therefore, and retraced his way to the stream.

There had been heavy rains in the mountains, and it was far out of its
banks, rushing and foaming over great rocks, circling in swift
whirlpools, plunging in smooth, glassy sheets down sudden descents, and
maddening thence in tumultuous, yeasty billows.

An old mill, long disused and fallen into decay, stood upon the brink.
It was a painful suggestion of collapsed energies, despite its
picturesque drapery of vines. No human being could live there, but in
the doorway abruptly appeared a boy of seventeen, dressed, like Jack, in
an old brown jeans suit and a shapeless white hat.

Jack paused at a little distance up on the hill, and parleyed in a
stentorian voice with the boy in the mill.

"What's the reason ye air always tryin' ter toll off our old red muley
from our house?" he demanded angrily.

"I ain't never tried ter toll her off," said Andy Bailey. "She jes' kem
ter our house herself. I dunno ez I hev got enny call ter look arter
other folkses' stray cattle. Mind yer own cow."

"I hev got a mighty notion ter cut down that thar sapling,"--and Jack
pointed to a good-sized hickory-tree,--"an' wear it out on ye."

"I ain't afeard. Come on!" said Andy impudently, protected by his
innocence, and the fact of being the smaller of the two.

There was a pause. "Hev ye been a-huntin'?" asked Jack, beginning to be
mollified by the rare luxury of youthful and congenial companionship;
for this was a scantily settled region, and boys were few.

Andy nodded assent.

Jack walked down into the rickety mill, and stood leaning against the
rotten old hopper. "What did ye git?" he said, looking about for the
game.

"Waal," drawled Andy, with much hesitation, "I hain't been started out
long." He turned from the door and faced his companion rather
sheepishly.

"I hopes ye ain't been poppin' off that rifle o' your'n along that
deer-path down in the hollow, an' a-skeerin' off all the wild critters,"
said Jack Dunn, with sudden apprehension. "Ef I war ez pore a shot ez ye
air, I'd go a-huntin' with a bean-pole instead of a gun, an' leave the
game ter them that kin shoot it."

Andy was of a mercurial and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps
may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy
was the scoff of Persimmon Ridge.

"I hev seen many a gal who could shoot ez well ez ye kin,--better,"
continued Jack jeeringly. "But law! I needn't kerry my heavy bones down
thar in the hollow expectin' ter git a deer ter-day. They air all off in
the woods a-smellin' the powder ye hev been wastin'."

Andy was pleased to change the subject. "It 'pears ter me that that thar
water air a-scuttlin' along toler'ble fast," he said, turning his eyes
to the little window through which the stream could be seen.

It _was_ running fast, and with a tremendous force. One could obtain
some idea of the speed and impetus of the current from the swift
vehemence with which logs and branches shot past, half hidden in foam.

The water looked black with this white contrast. Here and there a great,
grim rock projected sharply above the surface. In the normal condition
of the stream, these were its overhanging banks, but now, submerged,
they gave to its flow the character of rapids.

The old mill, its wooden supports submerged too, trembled and throbbed
with the throbbing water. As Jack looked toward the window, his eyes
were suddenly distended, his cheek paled, and he sprang to the door
with a frightened exclamation.

Too late! the immense hole of a fallen tree, shooting down the channel
with the force and velocity of a great projectile, struck the tottering
supports of the crazy, rotting building.

It careened, and quivered in every fibre; there was a crash of falling
timbers, then a mighty wrench, and the two boys, clinging to the
window-frame, were driving with the wreck down the river.

The old mill thundered against the submerged rocks, and at every
concussion the timbers fell. It whirled around and around in eddying
pools. Where the water was clear, and smooth, and deep, it shot along
with great rapidity.

The convulsively clinging boys looked down upon the black current, with
its sharp, treacherous, half-seen rocks and ponderous driftwood. The
wild idea of plunging into the tumult and trying to swim to the bank
faded as they looked. Here in the crazy building there might be a
chance. In that frightful swirl there lurked only a grim certainty.

The house had swung along in the middle of the stream; now its course
was veering slightly to the left. This could be seen through the window
and the interstices of the half-fallen timbers.

The boys were caged, as it were; the doorway was filled with the heavy
debris, and the only possibility of escape was through that little
window. It was so small that only one could pass through at a
time,--only one could be saved.

Jack had seen the chance from far up the stream. There was a stretch of
smooth water close in to the bank, on which was a low-hanging
beech-tree,--he might catch the branches.

They were approaching the spot with great rapidity. Only one could go.
He himself had discovered the opportunity,--it was his own.

Life was sweet,--so sweet! He could not give it up; he could not now
take thought for his friend. He could only hope with a frenzied
eagerness that Andy had not seen the possibility of deliverance.

In another moment Andy lifted himself into the window. A whirlpool
caught the wreck, and there it eddied in dizzying circles. It was not
yet too late. Jack could tear the smaller, weaker fellow away with one
strong hand, and take the only chance for escape. The shattered mill was
dashing through the smoother waters now; the great beech-tree was
hanging over their heads; an inexplicable, overpowering impulse mastered
in an instant Jack's temptation.

"Ketch the branches, Andy!" he cried wildly.

His friend was gone, and he was whirling off alone on those cruel,
frantic waters. In the midst of the torrent he was going down, and down,
and down the mountain.

Now and then he had a fleeting glimpse of the distant ranges. There was
"Elijah's Step," glorified in the sunset, purple and splendid, with red
and gold clouds flaming above it. To his untutored imagination they
looked like the fiery chariot again awaiting the prophet.

The familiar sight, the familiar, oft-repeated fancy, the recollection
of his home, brought sudden tears to his eyes. He gazed wistfully at the
spot whence he believed the man had ascended who left death untasted,
and then he went on in this mad rush down to the bitterness of death.

Even with this terrible fact before him, he did not reproach himself
with his costly generosity. It was strange to him that he did not regret
it; perhaps, like that mountain, he had suddenly taken up life on a
higher level.

The sunset splendor was fading. The fiery chariot was gone, and in its
place were floating gray clouds,--the dust of its wheels, they seemed.
The outlines of "Elijah's Step" were dark. It looked sad, bereaved. Its
glory had departed.

Suddenly the whole landscape seemed full of reeling black shadows,--and
yet it was not night. The roar of the torrent was growing faint upon
his ear, and yet its momentum was unchecked. Soon all was dark and all
was still, and the world slipped from his grasp.

[Illustration: IN THE MIDST OF THE TORRENT]

"They tell me that thar Jack Dunn war mighty nigh drownded when them men
fished him out'n the pond at Skeggs's sawmill down thar in the valley,"
said Andy Bailey, recounting the incident to the fireside circle at his
own home. "They seen them rotten old timbers come a-floatin' ez
peaceable on to the pond, an' then they seen somethin' like a human
a-hangin' ter 'em. The water air ez still ez a floor thar, an' deep an'
smooth, an' they didn't hev no trouble in swimmin' out to him. They
couldn't bring him to, though, at fust. They said in a little more he
would hev been gone sure! Now"--pridefully--"ef he hed hed the grit ter
ketch a tree an' pull out, like I done, he wouldn't hev been in sech a
danger."

Andy never knew the sacrifice his friend had made. Jack never told him.
Applause is at best a slight thing. A great action is nobler than the
monument that commemorates it; and when a man gives himself into the
control of a generous impulse, thenceforward he takes up life on a
higher level.




CHRISTMAS DAY ON OLD WINDY MOUNTAIN


The sun had barely shown the rim of his great red disk above the sombre
woods and snow-crowned crags of the opposite ridge, when Rick Herne, his
rifle in his hand, stepped out of his father's log cabin, perched high
among the precipices of Old Windy Mountain. He waited motionless for a
moment, and all the family trooped to the door to assist at the
time-honored ceremony of firing a salute to the day.

Suddenly the whole landscape catches a rosy glow, Rick whips up his
rifle, a jet of flame darts swiftly out, a sharp report rings all around
the world, and the sun goes grandly up--while the little tow-headed
mountaineers hurrah shrilly for "Chris'mus!"

As he began to re-load his gun, the small boys clustered around him,
their hands in the pockets of their baggy jeans trousers, their heads
inquiringly askew.

"They air a-goin' ter hev a pea-fow_el_ fur dinner down yander ter
Birk's Mill," Rick remarked.

The smallest boy smacked his lips,--not that he knew how pea-fowl
tastes, but he imagined unutterable things.

"Somehows I hates fur ye ter go ter eat at Birk's Mill, they air sech a
set o' drinkin' men down thar ter Malviny's house," said Rick's mother,
as she stood in the doorway, and looked anxiously at him.

For his elder sister was Birk's wife, and to this great feast he was
invited as a representative of the family, his father being disabled by
"rheumatics," and his mother kept at home by the necessity of providing
dinner for those four small boys.

"Hain't I done promised ye not ter tech a drap o' liquor this Chris'mus
day?" asked Rick.

"That's a fac'," his mother admitted. "But boys, an' men-folks
ginerally, air scandalous easy ter break a promise whar whiskey is in
it."

"I'll hev ye ter know that when I gin my word, I keeps it!" cried Rick
pridefully.

He little dreamed how that promise was to be assailed before the sun
should go down.

He was a tall, sinewy boy, deft of foot as all these mountaineers are,
and a seven-mile walk in the snow to Birk's Mill he considered a mere
trifle. He tramped along cheerily enough through the silent solitudes of
the dense forest. Only at long intervals the stillness was broken by the
cracking of a bough under the weight of snow, or the whistling of a gust
of wind through the narrow valley far below.

All at once--it was a terrible shock of surprise--he was sinking! Was
there nothing beneath his feet but the vague depths of air to the base
of the mountain? He realized with a quiver of dismay that he had
mistaken a huge drift-filled fissure, between a jutting crag and the
wall of the ridge, for the solid, snow-covered ground. He tossed his
arms about wildly in his effort to grasp something firm. The motion only
dislodged the drift. He felt that it was falling, and he was going
down--down--down with it. He saw the trees on the summit of Old Windy
disappear. He caught one glimpse of the neighboring ridges. Then he was
blinded and enveloped in this cruel whiteness. He had a wild idea that
he had been delivered to it forever; even in the first thaw it would
curl up into a wreath of vapor, and rise from the mountain's side, and
take him soaring with it--whither? How they would search these bleak
wintry fastnesses for him,--while he was gone sailing with the mist!
What would they say at home and at Birk's Mill? One last thought of the
"pea-fow_el_," and he seemed to slide swiftly away from the world with
the snow.

He was unconscious probably only for a few minutes. When he came to
himself, he found that he was lying, half-submerged in the great drift,
on the slope of the mountain, and the dark, icicle-begirt cliff towered
high above. He stretched his limbs--no bones broken! He could hardly
believe that he had fallen unhurt from those heights. He did not
appreciate how gradually the snow had slidden down. Being so densely
packed, too, it had buoyed him up, and kept him from dashing against the
sharp, jagged edges of the rock. He had lost consciousness in the jar
when the moving mass was abruptly arrested by a transverse elevation of
the ground. He was still a little dizzy and faint, but otherwise
uninjured.

Now a great perplexity took hold on him. How was he to make his way back
up the mountain, he asked himself, as he looked at the inaccessible
cliffs looming high into the air. All the world around him was
unfamiliar. Even his wide wanderings had never brought him into this
vast, snowy, trackless wilderness, that stretched out on every side. He
would be half the day in finding the valley road that led to Birk's
Mill. He rose to his feet, and gazed about him in painful indecision.
The next moment a thrill shot through him, to which he was
unaccustomed. He had never before shaken except with the cold,--but this
was fear.

For he heard voices! Not from the cliffs above,--but from below! Not
from the dense growth of young pines on the slope of the mountain,--but
from the depths of the earth beneath! He stood motionless, listening
intently, his eyes distended, and his heart beating fast.

All silence! Not even the wind stirred in the pine thicket. The snow lay
heavy among the dark green branches, and every slender needle was
encased in ice. Rick rubbed his eyes. It was no dream. There was the
thicket; but whose were the voices that had rung out faintly from
beneath it?

A crowd of superstitions surged upon him. He cast an affrighted glance
at the ghastly snow-covered woods and sheeted earth. He was remembering
fireside legends, horrible enough to raise the hair on a sophisticated,
educated boy's head; much more horrible, then, to a young backwoodsman
like Rick. On this, the most benign day that ever dawns upon the world,
was he led into these endless wastes of forest to be terrified by the
"harnts"?

Suddenly those voices from the earth again! One was singing a drunken
catch,--it broke into falsetto, and ended with an unmistakable hiccup.

Rick's blood came back with a rush.

"I hev never hearn tell o' the hoobies gittin' boozy!" he said with a
laugh. "That's whar they hev got the upper-hand o' humans."

As he gazed again at the thicket, he saw now something that he had been
too much agitated to observe before,--a column of dense smoke that rose
from far down the declivity, and seemed to make haste to hide itself
among the low-hanging boughs of a clump of fir-trees.

"It's somebody's house down thar," was Rick's conclusion. "I kin find
out the way to Birk's Mill from the folkses."

When he neared the smoke, he paused abruptly, staring once more.

There was no house! The smoke rose from among low pine bushes. Above
were the snow-laden branches of the fir.

"Ef thar war a house hyar, I reckon I could see it!" said Rick
doubtfully, infinitely mystified.

There was a continual drip, drip of moisture all around. Yet a thaw had
not set in. Rick looked up at the gigantic icicles that hung to the
crags and glittered in the sun,--not a drop trickled from them. But this
fir-tree was dripping, dripping, and the snow had melted away from the
nearest pine bushes that clustered about the smoke. There was heat below
certainly, a strong heat, and somebody was keeping the fire up steadily.

"An' air it folkses ez live underground like foxes an' sech!" Rick
exclaimed, astonished, as he came upon a large, irregularly shaped rift
in the rocks, and heard the same reeling voice from within, beginning to
sing once more. But for this bacchanalian melody, the noise of Rick's
entrance might have given notice of his approach. As it was, the
inhabitants of this strange place were even more surprised than he,
when, after groping through a dark, low passage, an abrupt turn brought
him into a lofty, vaulted subterranean apartment. There was a great
flare of light, which revealed six or seven muscular men grouped about a
large copper vessel built into a rude stone furnace, and all the air was
pervaded by an incomparably strong alcoholic odor. The boy started back
with a look of terror. That pale terror was reflected on each man's
face, as on a mirror. At the sight of the young stranger they all sprang
up with the same gesture,--each instinctively laid his hand upon the
pistol that he wore.

Poor Rick understood it all at last. He had stumbled upon a nest of
distillers, only too common among these mountains, who were hiding from
the officers of the Government, running their still in defiance of the
law and eluding the whiskey-tax. He realized that in discovering their
stronghold he had learned a secret that was by no means a safe one for
him to know. And he was in their power; at their mercy!

"Don't shoot!" he faltered. "I jes' want ter ax the folkses ter tell me
the way ter Birk's Mill."

What would he have given to be on the bleak mountain outside!

One of the men caught him as if anticipating an attempt to run. Two or
three, after a low-toned colloquy, took their rifles, and crept
cautiously outside to reconnoitre the situation. Rick comprehended their
suspicion with new quakings. They imagined that he was a spy, and had
been sent among them to discover them plying their forbidden vocation.
This threatened a long imprisonment for them. His heart sank as he
thought of it; they would never let him go.

After a time the reconnoitring party came back.

"Nothin' stirrin'," said the leader tersely.

"I misdoubts," muttered another, casting a look of deep suspicion on
Rick. "Thar air men out thar, I'm a-thinkin', hid somewhar."

"They air furder 'n a mile off, ennyhow," returned the first speaker.
"We never lef' so much ez a bush 'thout sarchin' of it."

"The off'cers can't find this place no-ways 'thout that thar chap fur a
guide," said a third, with a surly nod of his head at Rick.

"We're safe enough, boys, safe enough!" cried a stout-built, red-faced,
red-bearded man, evidently very drunk, and with a voice that rose into
quavering falsetto as he spoke. "This chap can't do nothin'. We hev got
him bound hand an' foot. Hyar air the captive of our bow an' spear,
boys! Mighty little captive, though! hi!" He tried to point jeeringly at
Rick, and forgot what he had intended to do before he could fairly
extend his hand. Then his rollicking head sank on his breast, and he
began to sing sleepily again.

One of the more sober of the men had extinguished the fire in order that
they should not be betrayed by the smoke outside to the revenue officers
who might be seeking them. The place, chilly enough at best, was growing
bitter cold. The strange subterranean beauty of the surroundings, the
limestone wall and arches, scintillating wherever they caught the
light; the shadowy, mysterious vaulted roof; the white stalactites that
hung down thence to touch the stalagmites as they rose up from the
floor, and formed with them endless vistas of stately colonnades, all
were oddly incongruous with the drunken, bloated faces of the
distillers. Rick could not have put his thought into words, but it
seemed to him that when men had degraded themselves like this, even
inanimate nature is something higher and nobler. "Sermons in stones"
were not far to seek.

He observed that they were making preparations for flight, and once more
the fear of what they would do with him clutched at his heart. He was
something of a problem to them.

"This hyar cub will go blab," was the first suggestion.

"He will keep mum," said the vocalist, glancing at the boy with a
jovially tipsy combination of leer and wink. "Hyar is the persuader!" He
rapped sharply on the muzzle of his pistol. "This'll scotch his wheel."

"Hold yer own jaw, ye drunken 'possum!" retorted another of the group.
"Ef ye fire off that pistol in hyar, we'll hev all these hyar rocks"--he
pointed at the walls and the long colonnades--"answerin' back an'
yelpin' like a pack o' hounds on a hot scent. Ef thar air folks outside,
the noise would fotch 'em down on us fur true!"

Rick breathed more freely. The rocks would speak up for him! He could
not be harmed with all these tell-tale witnesses at hand. So silent now,
but with a latent voice strong enough for the dread of it to save his
life!

The man who had put out the fire, who had led the reconnoitring party,
who had made all the active preparations for departure, who seemed, in
short, to be an executive committee of one,--a long, lazy-looking
mountaineer, with a decision of action in startling contrast to his
whole aspect,--now took this matter in hand.

"Nothin' easier," he said tersely. "Fill him up. Make him ez drunk ez a
fraish b'iled ow_el_. Then lead him to the t'other eend o' the cave,
an' blindfold him, an' lug him off five mile in the woods, an' leave him
thar. He'll never know what he hev seen nor done."

"That's the dinctum!" cried the red-bearded man, in delighted approval,
breaking into a wild, hiccupping laugh, inexpressibly odious to the boy.
Rick had an extreme loathing for them all that showed itself with
impolitic frankness upon his face. He realized as he had never done
before the depths to which strong drink will reduce men. But that the
very rocks would cry out upon them, they would have murdered him.

In the preparations for departure all the lights had been extinguished,
except a single lantern, and a multitude of shadows had come thronging
from the deeper recesses of the cave. In the faint glimmer the figures
of the men loomed up, indistinct, gigantic, distorted. They hardly
seemed men at all to Rick; rather some evil underground creatures,
neither beast nor human.

And he was to be made equally besotted, and even more helpless than
they, in order that his senses might be sapped away, and he should
remember no story to tell. Perhaps if he had not had before him so vivid
an illustration of the malign power that swayed them, he might not have
experienced so strong an aversion to it. Now, to be made like them
seemed a high price to pay for his life. And there was his promise to
his mother! As the long, lank, lazy-looking mountaineer pressed the
whiskey upon him, Rick dashed it aside with a gesture so unexpected and
vehement that the cracked jug fell to the floor, and was shivered to
fragments.

Rick lifted an appealing face to the man, who seized him with a strong
grip. "I can't--I won't," the boy cried wildly. "I--I--promised my
mother!"

He looked around the circle deprecatingly. He expected first a guffaw
and then a blow, and he dreaded the ridicule more than the pain.

But there were neither blows nor ridicule. They all gazed at him,
astounded. Then a change, which Rick hardly comprehended, flitted across
the face of the man who had grasped him. The moonshiner turned away
abruptly, with a bitter laugh that startled all the echoes.

"_I--I_ promised _my_ mother, too!" he cried. "It air good that in her
grave whar she is she can't know how I hev kep' my word."

And then there was a sudden silence. It seemed to Rick, strangely
enough, like the sudden silence that comes after prayer. He was
reminded, as one of the men rose at length and the keg on which he had
been sitting creaked with the motion, of the creaking benches in the
little mountain church when the congregation started from their knees.
And had some feeble, groping sinner's prayer filled the silence and the
moral darkness!

The "executive committee" promptly recovered himself. But he made no
further attempt to force the whiskey upon the boy. Under some whispered
instructions which he gave the others, Rick was half-led, half-dragged
through immensely long black halls of the cave, while one of the men
went before, carrying the feeble lantern. When the first glimmer of
daylight appeared in the distance, Rick understood that the cave had an
outlet other than the one by which he had entered, and evidently miles
distant from it. Thus it was that the distillers were well enabled to
baffle the law that sought them.

They stopped here and blindfolded the boy. How far and where they
dragged him through the snowy mountain wilderness outside, Rick never
knew. He was exhausted when at length they allowed him to pause. As he
heard their steps dying away in the distance, he tore the bandage from
his eyes, and found that they had left him in the midst of the wagon
road to make his way to Birk's Mill as best he might. When he reached
it, the wintry sun was low in the western sky, and the very bones of the
"pea-fow_el_" were picked.

On the whole, it seemed a sorry Christmas Day, as Rick could not know
then--indeed, he never knew--what good results it brought forth. For
among those who took the benefit of the "amnesty" extended by the
Government to the moonshiners of this region, on condition that they
discontinue illicit distilling for the future, was a certain long, lank,
lazy-looking mountaineer, who suddenly became sober and steady and a
law-abiding citizen. He had been reminded, this Christmas Day, of a
broken promise to a dead mother, and this by the unflinching moral
courage of a mere boy in a moment of mortal peril. Such wise, sweet,
uncovenanted uses has duty, blessing alike the unconscious exemplar and
him who profits by the example.


The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Young Mountaineers, by Charles Egbert Craddock