His Vanished Star

XIV.

LORENZO TAFT’S arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance with certain predatory suggestions,— on the contrary, finding in them its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles, cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats, —the integrity of all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual, save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing from the eaves. The wind rushed furiously in recurrent blasts against the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional drops fell a-sputtering into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions of its simple furniture distinguishable,— the table with its blue ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old warpingbars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft’s precocity did not extend to weaving. A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted some conference, — of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces of recent tears on the little girl’s face, and a most depressed expression.

“ Whar’s Copley ? Whar’s yer uncle Cop?” he demanded, looking hastily about the shadowy place.

She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the knitting needles through the ball of yarn.

“He ain’t hyar,” she said, lifting reproachful eyes ; “an’ he ain’t been hyar since ye been gone.”

He stared down at her in silent surprise.

“ Ye jes’ went off an’ Ief’ me an’ Joe hyar by ourse’fs, an’ we been mos’ skeered ter death,” she added, with a sob.

A sudden apprehension crossed Taft’s face.

“ I lef’ Cop hyar. Ain’t he been in ter git his vittles ? ”

She shook her head.

“ Did ye call him in the store ? ”

She nodded.

“ Mebbe he war in the barn.”

“ I blowed the hawn fur him ; he ain’t eat a mite sence ye been gone.”

Taft turned hastily toward the door, his florid face paling. Then he turned back. “ Whar’s Joe ? ”

“ He hev runned away! ” cried Sis. with a burst of sobs. “ Las’ night weuns hearn sech a cur’ous hurrah — somewhar — I dunno — sech cur’ous talk an’ hollerin’ ’way down in the groun’ — an’ — an’ — diggin’ — an’ ” —

He had paused, looking amazed at her. Then his face changed, aghast with a sort of certainty upon it. “ Jes’ some boys diggin’ in the Lost Time mine,” he urged, however, plausibly.

“ But — but”—she protested—“Joe, he say. they — they air — dead.”

She looked at him, hoping for some sufficient adult denial of this terrible fantasy; but his face betokened only its confirmation, and she fell to shivering and sobbing afresh,

“ Whenst it got so turrible in the middle o’ the night, Joe, he looked out’n the winder upsteers, an’ the moon hed riz. An’ he clomb down by the tree. He ’lowed he would n’t bide no mo’ an’ listen. So he jes’ skun the cat out’n the winder. He war ‘feared.”

And once more she covered her face with her hands and wept. Nevertheless, between her fingers, as the tears trickled down them, she furtively surveyed him.

“ Wunst,” she said tentatively. “ I ’lowed ’t war revenuers. An’ then I wisht ’t war. I hed ruther hev hearn them ’n — ’n — dead ones.舡

His countenance did not change a muscle.

“ Revenuers arter what ? ” he demanded.

She was now alarmed by her own temerity. In the long ordeal of solitude and fright she had lost control of her small nerves, or she would not have overstepped her habitual caution so far. Her father’s incidental, unconcerned manner reassured her,

“ Arter the ‘ wild-cat,’ I reckon,” she hazarded.

He affected to consider the suggestion.

“Some boys mought be talkin’ ’bout startin’ a still down thar in the Lost Time mine. I ’ll roust ’em out mighty quick, ef they do ! Ef thar’s enny whiskey sold round hyar, I ’m countin’ on doin’ it out’n my store, sure. I got a license ter sell.”

She looked at him narrowly, suspiciously, hardly more credulous than he himself.

“ I won’t hev my profits sp’iled. Whiskey’s the best trade I got,” he added, as he turned about. “ Waal, I ’lowed Copley would be in hyar ter holp me tote the truck in; but, howsever, set a rock afore the door ter hold it open, Sis, whilst I make a start, ennyhow.”

His show of industry as he toiled across the rainy yard, now with a keg, now with a box, on his shoulder, of anxiety for the safety of his goods, his sedulous care in displaying them to the best advantage on the shelves to lure customers, might have deceived a wiser head than Cornelia Taft’s. Her long-cherished suspicions were gradually dispelled, as she ran hither and thither, carrying the lighter packages in her arms, eagerly helping to bestow them, making place for them when she could do no more. It was not until she had gone back briskly to her task of preparing an early sapper that he ventured to descend from the store to the room below, and take his way along the dark tunnel to the still in the recess of the mine. He paused surprised at the disordered and careless disarray about the entrance to the tunnel : some of the boards of the partition were on the ground, others aslant, none as they were habitually adjusted. With a steady hand he rectified this, and went forward forthwith, his lantern swinging in his grasp. Once he paused to listen : no voice, no stir ; only the heavy windless silence. As he progressed, the faint tinkling of the running water smote his ear, and presently he had crossed it. No sound came from about the still; there was no suffusion of red light on the terracotta walls that sometimes glowed at the terminus of the tunnel when the furnace door stood open. He could hardly be said to have had a premonition. He was prepared for disaster by the previous events; but he could scarcely realize its magnitude, its conclusiveness, when the timid flare of the lantern illumined the dreary walls of the moonshiners’ haunt, the dead cold furnace, the tubs of mash, — on the margin of one of which a rat was boldly feeding, scarcely pausing to look around with furtive, sinister bright eyes, — and his two lieutenants, whom he had left to guard Larrabee, bound and gagged upon the floor.

The craft which characterized Lorenzo Taft was hardly predicable of so massive an organization. It was an endowment of foxlike ingenuity, sinuous, lithe, suggestive of darting swiftness and of doubled tracks. The expression of blunt dismay on his big jowl dropping visibly beneath his broad yellow beard, the widening stare in his round blue eyes as he gazed about the dismal place, his heavy, lumbering motion as he carefully set the lantern down upon the cold masonry of the fireless furnace, gave no intimation of the speed with which his mind had canvassed the situation, accepted the inevitable, and fixed upon his future course. It was hardly a moment before he was on one knee beside the prostrate form of the elder moonshiner, and had drawn from over his head the grain sack that had served both to gag him and to obscure his countenance. The glimmer of the lantern, like a slow rill of light trickling feebly through the darkness, illumined the expression of eager appeal in the haggard wild face and eyes of Copley. An instant longer was too long to wait, yet wait he must! Taft’s thumb jerked over his shoulder at the other prostrate form, convulsed now in a frenzied effort to attract the attention of the new-comer, whose footsteps had brought the only hope of speedy deliverance.

“ Drunk agin ? ” he asked, in a low voice.

Copley made shift to nod his head affirmatively. Then again that frantic plea for release illumined his eyes and contorted his anxious features.

Taft, regardless, rose, with the slow swinging motion common to many bulky men, and, with the lantern swaying in his hand, made his way to the opposite side of the furnace, where the young drunkard lay — very sober now, in good truth — cramped in every hard-bound limb, racked with the tortures of thirst, and half famished. Taft had partly unbound the ropes from about the furnace and cut them in twain, thus dissevering the companions in misery ; he swiftly knotted those that held the elder moonshiner, while the ends of Dan Sykes’s bonds lay loose along the floor.

“ Why, Dan,” he cried roughly, “ what sort’n caper is this ? ”

The prostrate young fellow made an effort to rise, so strong that the already loosened cords relaxed; and as Taft emphasized his demand by a sharp kick in the ribs, and an urgent exhortation to the young sot to “quit this damned fooling,” the sack which Sykes had worn some twenty hours as hood and gag, and which, since his wakening from his long drunken sleep, he had strained in every fibre by his mad lurches of fright and efforts for freedom, rolled off, his pinioned arms were at liberty, and it seemed he had naught to do but to sit up and untie his craftily bound feet and legs. “Ye demented gopher!” cried Taft angrily, as Sykes stupidly sat up, blinking in the gleam of the lantern. “ What ails ye ? Drunk agin ? ”

If his bursting skull were admissible testimony, — but he shook his head stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a scornful boot.

“ Then the worst fool you-uns ! Looka-hyar ! ” he cried furiously, as he caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes about his legs. “ Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer drunken tantrums ! Murder ! murder ! or mighty nigh it! ”

He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended, as he groped bending toward it in the darkness.

“ Who’s that ? Lar’bee ? ” he said.

“ Lar’bee ! ” exclaimed Taft scornfully. “ Lar’bee’s been out’n the still ever since yestiddy evenin’.”

It was Sykes’s drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft departed ; but alack ! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on. Nevertheless he blurted out: —

“ Ye tole me ter watch him,” — he set his teeth in a sort of snarl, and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly spirituous, — “ ter gyard him like a dog. ‘ Hold fast! ‘ ye said, ‘ hold fast!’ ”

Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows.

“ Sykes,” he said, “ this is a bad business fur you, an’ ye ‘ll swing fur it, I’m a-thinkin’. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter watch nobody. I let Lar’bee ont myse’f. Ye an’ Copley war lef’ hyar ter keep sober an’ run the still; an’ what do ye do ? Ye murder him! ”

As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic, voice, the young fellow’s blood ran cold.

“ Ye murder him, an’ tie him up like that, an’ then do yerse’f up sorter fancy with bags an’ a rope. Ye ’ll hev closer dealin’s with a rope yit; I kin spy out that in the day that’s kemin’.” His eyes gleamed with a sinister smile.

Sykes’s knees shook.

“ Oh, my Lord ! ” he exclaimed wildly. “ Air — air he dead ? ’T war n’t me ! God A’mighty knows ’t war n’t me ! ” The ready tears rushed to his eyes. “ ’T war Lar’bee ! ’T war Lar’bee! ”

“Shucks!” Taft turned wearily away. “ Ain’t I tole ye I seen Lar’bee set out ’fore I did ? Blackenin’ Lar’bee won’t save ye, Dan ! Drink — drink ! I tole ye drink would ruinate ye ; always brings a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n’t put some water in the jug beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o’ yer spree.” He shook his head. “ So it is! So it is ! ”

“ Oh, is he dead, —air ye sure he is dead ? ” cried the young fellow in a heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner.

Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of anxiety.

The boy drew back, with a shudder of repulsion. “ Oh, I never went ter do it! I never went ter do it! I war drunk ! crazy drunk ! devil drunk ! Oh ” —

“ They say,” Taft interrupted suddenly, — “ leastwise the lawyers do, — ez a man bein’ drunk in c’mittin’ a crime ought n’t ter influence a jury, — the law makes no allowance ; but,” with an encouraging nod, “ they say, too, ez it do influence the jury every time. An’ the court can’t holp it. The jury will allow suthin’ fur a man bein’ drunk.”

The white face of the boy, imposed against the darkness with all the contour ot youth, had hardly a characteristic that was not expressive of age, so pinched, so lined, so drawn, so bloodless, was every sharpened feature. The natural horror of his supposed deed, his simple, superficial repentance of the involuntary crime, were suddenly expunged; his whole being was controlled by a single impulse ; a passion of fear possessed him. Jury, crime, lawyer,— these words looking to a legal arraignment first brought to his horror-stricken mind the idea of a responsibility other than moral for his deed. What slight independence of thought he had, what poor capacity for sifting and judging and weighing the probabilities his easily influenced mind might have exerted as he more and more recovered from his recent inebriation, became nullified upon the instant. He did not look once again back to the past, but to the future, wild, quaking, frenzied, as Taft elected to foretell the event.

“ That’s why,” Taft coolly said, nodding sagely, and inclining his head toward the breathless, frantic, almost petrified creature, “ I’d leave it ter men.”

Sykes recoiled, with a shudder.

“ Yes,” reiterated Taft, weightily and slowly. “ The jury would take yer drunk inter account; an’ on the witness-stand I’d testify ez ye war gin over ter the failin’.”

The young fellow’s gray, stony face did not change as Taft ceased to speak. Taft felt its fixed look upon him as he stood, his head bent, his big hat thrust back on his yellow hair; one hand was laid meditatively on his long beard, as he gazed down on the prostrate figure of Copley ; with the other hand he held the lantern, whose spare white glimmers of light out into the surrounding obscurity seemed so meagre in the darksome place, never cheerful at best, but without the roar and heat of the furnace, the keen, brilliant glinting from the crevice of the door when closed or the red suffusive flare when it was swung ajar, the dreariest presentment of subterranean gloom.

“ Yes,” Taft continued thoughtfully, “ I’d ruther leave it ter men — ter the courts, ye know — ’n ter hev the folks round hyar ez war frien’ly ter Copley ondertake ter settle ye fur it; they’d — Hey ? ” he interrupted himself.

For the young fellow had reached out his arm and laid his hand with a viselike grip upon Taft’s wrist. His head was thrust forward ; he seemed about to speak, but his parted lips, drawn tight across his large, prominent teeth, emitted not a sound, although his wild, dilated, bloodshot eyes looked an eager protest. His voice had failed in framing the obnoxious words, which, however, Taft spoke patly enough.

“ Why, ye know, they would, they would. Jedge Lynch is the only court fur this kentry. What sati’faction is it ter the folks hyarabouts ter hev a man kerried ter jail, thirty mile away, ter stan’ his trial in the courthouse year arter nex’, mebbe, an’ then arter all’s come an’ gone cheat hemp at las’ ? Yes, that’s yer bes’ chance ; set out fur Colbury straight, an’ s’render yerse’f thar.”

He paused, apparently thinking deeply. “ Ef ye hed enny kin, though, in enny out’n-the-way place, my advices ter ye would be ter cut an’ run, an’ bide along o’ them ; fur this hyar air a mighty bad job, an’ it’s goin’ ter go hard with the man ez done it.”

Once more the pallid, evasive light flickered in feeble vibrations across the long, motionless, rope-bound figure, and the stark face curiously distorted and painfully repulsive with the gag in its stretched jaws.

“ Ye ain’t got no kin in no’th Georgy, say ? ” Taft demanded.

“ Naw,” replied the boy huskily.

The suggestion seemed to have restored his voice, albeit muffled and shaken ; into his eyes, staring, wide and bloodshot, into the gloom, was creeping a definiteness of expression, as if he beheld, instead of the vacant black darkness, some scene projected there as a possibility and painted by his expectation. His grip on Taft’s arm had relaxed. It had been close and hard, and Taft rubbed the wrist a trifle with the hand that still held the lantern, setting the feeble glimmer a-swinging swiftly about the dark walls.

“ That’s a pity, — that’s a tur’ble pity,” Taft averred gloomily ; then, with an air of rousing himself, “ Waal, ye ‘ll jes’ hev ter leave it ter men. That’s the bes’ ye kin do.” He was turning briskly toward the tunnel. “ I’ll ondertake ter gin ye the matter of a two hours’ start of the folks ’bout hyar by not tellin’ ’bout old Copley till then. But ye hed bes’ ride with speed, fur they ‘ll be hot shod on yer tracks, sure.”

As he went forward with his swinging, elastic stride, swaying the lantern back and forth, according to his wont, to illumine the path, his manner, his words, his expression, so tallied with the situation he had invented and the rôle he had played that even the most discerning might have descried no discrepancy in point of fact. The young moonshiner, barely sobered and wholly frightened, was easily to be deluded by a verisimilitude far less complete. He followed, his clumsy feet stumbling and stepping awry, as if his gait were still subject to spirituous influences from which his brain was freed. His cramped limbs yet felt the numbness of their long constraint and the pain of his bonds, for Larrabee’s ropes had not been adjusted with due regard to the free circulation of the blood. His progress was far slower than his host’s, who paused from time to time and waited to be overtaken. On these occasions it soon became apparent that there was something in his mind on which he had begun to ponder deeply; for whereas at first he had visibly hastened to join Taft on seeing him whirl around, the lantern describing in the distance a wheel of pallid white light against the dense blackness of the tunnel, he now continued to plod heavily, slower and slower, even when the light settled to a shining focus, again motionless. Taft lifted it once as Sykes approached, throwing its force full upon the swollen, mottled, absorbed face, the fixed introspective eyes, the heavy slouching shoulders and bent head. At that moment of careful reconnoitre a genuine expression was on Taft’s face, keen, furtive, triumphant; it passed unobserved. He whirled around again, leading the way with the lantern, and it was with a perfectly cloaked satisfaction that he began to observe the young fellow’s convulsive haste to depart as they neared the exit from the tunnel, his flimsy pretense of heed to his elder’s advice, and finally his heedlessness altogether, no longer able to maintain attention or its semblance.

He was gone at last, and Taft, returning to his prostrate comrade in the still, dismissed him from his mind, and thenceforward from his life, with a single comment. “ That drunken shoat hev got an uncle in north Texas,” he said, as he placed the lantern on the cold brickwork of the dead and fireless furnace. “ I knowed that, so I fixed it so ez he’d light out fur them furrin parts d’rec’ly. He ain’t dawdlin’, I’m thinkin’.”

Then, as he addressed himself to removing the gag and cutting the bonds of the elder distiller, his brow darkened.

“That cuss Lar’bee’s work, hey?” he demanded gruffly ; and as the liberated Copley gasped out an assent he growled a deep oath, his face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.

“ That kerns from sparin’ powder an’ lead,” he declared vindictively. “ Why n’t ye or Sykes shoot him ? ”

“ He war too suddint,” gasped Copley. “ Ye never see a painter so suddint an’ sharp.”

“ An’ why n’t ye be suddint, too ? ” retorted Taft aggressively.

Copley might have protested that in his own interest he had been as “ suddint ” as he could, and had done his best. He evidently felt, however, much in fault, and as, in silence, he ruefully rubbed his numbed limbs, just free from their ligatures, tingling painfully with the renewal of the circulation of the blood, he gazed about, crestfallen and humbled, and even grief-stricken, at the scene of his wonted labors. It was but faintly revealed by the lantern on the masonry of the furnace, — the dimly white focus with divergent filaments of rays weaving only a tenuous web of light in the darkness which encompassed all. The great burly forms of tubs and barrels were but vaguely glimpsed as brownish suggestions in the blackness ; a yellow gleam from the copper still gave the effect of an independent illumination rather than the resources of reflection, so dull and unresponsive was all else upon which the lantern cast its glimmer. Taft sat, according to his habit, upon the side of a barrel, his legs crossed, his elbow on one knee, his head bowed upon his hand, his big hat intercepting all view of his face. Copley gave a long sigh, as his spiritless glance noted the dejection of his friend ; but his grooved and wrinkled face seemed as incapable of expressiveness as before, and, with its tanned tints and blunt, illcut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of reattaining his liberty, from the immediate disaster to the details of his drudgery which so habitually occupied his every waking faculty.

“That thar mash must be plumb ripe by this time,” he remarked. his eyes fixed upon a spot in the darkness where presumably the tub in question was situated. “ ’T war nigh ripe whenst Lar’bee jumped up demented, it ’peared like, an’ tuk arter we-uns.”

Taft lifted a red face and a scowling brow. With an air of reckless desperation he strode to the tub, and the next moment Copley heard the splash as the contents were poured out down the shaft.

“ Laws-a-massy, ’Renzo ! ” with the decisive ring of anger in his voice and all the arrogations of the expert, “ why n’t ye let me examinate it ? Ye ain’t got my ’speriunce ; ye ain’t ekal ter jedge like me. Why n’t ye ” —

“ Ye miser’ble mole ! ” Taft retorted angrily. “ Ye may be a jedge o’ fermentin’ an’ stillin’ an’ sech like, but ye hev got powerful leetle gumption ’bout’n the signs o’ the times. Thar ye sit, a-yawpin’ away ’bout yer mash, ripe or raw, an’ I’m lookin’ fur the shootin’ iron o’ the marshal’s men under my nose every time I turn my head.”

He suited the action to the word at the moment, looking down with a sudden squint which gave a frightfully realistic suggestion of the muzzle of a weapon held at his very teeth.

“ The thing’s busted ! ” Taft cried desperately. “ It’s done ! Kin ye onderstan’ that? We-uns hev got ter the jumpin’-off place!”

The bewildered Copley looked vaguely at the verge of the deep shaft, perilously near.

“ That Lar’bee’s loose now, full o’ gredges fur bein’ belt hyar. We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An’ the dep’ty sher’ff’s on his track, ’lowin’ he be Espey, an’ s’picionin’ moonshinin’. The dep’ty sher’ff ain’t got nuthin’ ter do with sech ez moonshinin’ hisse’f, but he air try in’ ter find Espey, an’ settle his gredges with him ; so he ’ll gin the revenue dogs the word ’bout Lar’bee an’ distillin’, an’ whenst Lar’bee’s tuk he ’ll take a heap o’ pleasure in guidin’ ’em hyar, I’ll he bound. He mought even turn informer hisse’f, ter git even.”

He sunk down suddenly on the barrel.

“ It’s powerful hard on me ! ” he cried. “ I hev treated them boys like they war my own sons.” He had forgotten, in this arrogation of age and paternal feeling, his recent youthfulness of matrimonial pretensions. “ I hev tuk ’em in,” — he did not say in what sense, — “ an’ divided fair with ’em ; an’ they hev gotten mo’ money out’n me than they ’d ever elsewise view in thar whole lifetime. An’ I hev been keerful an’ kep’ the place secret an’ quiet. I hev tuk good heed ter all p’ints. An’ weuns mought hev gone on peaceful an’ convenient till the crack o’ doom, ef it hed n’t been fur them. Oh, thar never war sech a place ! ” He looked round with the eyes of gloating admiration on the gruesome, shadowy den about him, so singularly suited to his vocation. “ An’ even the danger ’bout’n the hotel is done with, an’ the lan’ percessioned by now, I reckon, an’ thar won’t be no mo’ packs o’ strangers in the Cove ; an’ yit — an’ yit — all fur nuthin’ ! ”

He took off his hat, and rubbed his corrugated brow with his hand with a gesture of desperation.

It is a singular trait of what might perhaps be called sentimental economy that every individual in this world should be the object of the hero worship of some other. It may be submitted that there are no conditions so sterile as to induce a dearth of this perfectly disinterested, unrewarded admiration and acceptation of some embodied ideal. It is familiar enough in the higher walks of life and with worthy objects. But there may be a champion among beggars. It is a potent agent. Its purblind flatteries have advanced many a dullard to a foremost place. The plainest face has some devotee of its beauty ; and even the most unpromising infant is a miracle of grace and genius to a doting grandmother. Hardly a hero of the world’s history is more dignified on his elevated plane than was Lorenzo Taft in the eyes of his humble coadjutor. His wiliness was wisdom ; his domineering spirit, his dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy ; his self-seeking a cogent prudence ; and his natural courage — with which, indeed, he was well endowed — the finest flower of the extravaganza of valor.

Copley looked at him now with the respectful sympathy which one might well feel in witnessing the fall of a very great man. He scarcely remembered his own interests, inextricably involved. Every inflection of the mellow, sonorous voice raised to a declamatory pitch found a vibrating acquiescence in chords of responsive emotion. Every unconscious gesture of the massive and imposing figure, as histrionically appropriate as if acquired by labor and tuition, since it was indeed the nature that art simulates, was marked with appreciative eyes. A rat in a trap is hardly esteemed a fit object of sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, the emotional melodrama within the small circuit of the wires !

“ Don’t take it so tur’ble hard, ‘Renzo,” expostulated Copley, still seated on the floor.

For Taft was standing motionless, his eyes staring and fixed, his hat far back on his head, exposing his set, drawn face with its teeth hard clenched, one hand mechanically clutching his flowing yellow beard, the other continually closing and unclosing on the handle of a pistol which he had half drawn from his pocket, —a habit of his in moments of mental perplexity, as if he instinctively appealed to this summary arbiter to decide on questions far enough removed from its jurisdiction.

“ Don’t be so tur’ble desolated ; some way out’n it, sure ez ye air born,’ urged Copley in a consolatory wheeze.

The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Taft. He caught himself with a start and turned hastily away, looking about as if in search of something. He took the lantern presently to aid him in this, and when it came back, glimmering through the dusk, he carried a box of tools in the other hand.

“Thar ’s one way out’n it, sure,” he said in a muffled, changed voice, “ though it’s gone powerful hard with me ter git my own cornsent ter take it.”

He placed the lantern upon the furnace, and, as he went vigorously to work, the astounded Copley, still upon the ground, began to perceive that he was taking the apparatus carefully apart; he was disconnecting the worm from the neck, when his amazed coadjutor found his voice.

“ Hold on, ’Renzo,” he remonstrated ; “ ye ain’t a-goin’ ter take the contraption down, surely ” —

“ Ruther hev the revenuers do it ? ” said Taft, showing his teeth in a sarcastic smile as he looked up. “ They ‘ll make wuss slarter with the worm ‘n I will.” Then, pausing, with a frown of rancorous reminiscence, “ I hed a still o’ bigger capacity ’n this one over yander in Persimmon Cove, an’ they cut it up in slivers, an’ the worm war let’ in pieces no longer ’n that,” measuring with both hands, “ an’ the furnace all tore up. I never seen sech a sight ez whenst I croped back ter view the wreck. I ’lowed I’d never git forehanded enough ter start ter manufacture sperits agin in this worl.”

He stood idly gazing down these vistas of memory grimly enough for a moment; then, turning back to the still, “I’ll make a try ter save the property this time, so when the storm blows over we kin git started agin another way an’ another day. I ‘ll fix it so ez when Lar’bee tells, his words will be cast back in his teeth fit ter knock ’em all down his own throat. He ‘ll he sorry enough, sure ’s ye air born. They ’ll be hard swallowin’.”

The natural fortitude of Taft’s character, the elastic quality of his strength, his big, bluff mental methods, combined to support him in this ordeal to a degree which contrasted advantageously with the weak, almost supine grief that Copley manifested. Perhaps, too, Taft’s dinner was a material element which gave cohesion and decision to his mental resolves. Now, Copley, half starved, nervous, wild with anxiety, dread for the future, regret for the past, doubt of the present, would angrily protest, even while he aided in dismantling the apparatus; and then, after a word or two of argument, would admit its necessity, its urgency, and again lament it as futile. He almost wept when the object of his solicitude, which he had served as if it were a fetich, was finally dismembered, and he found only a partial consolation in being himself permitted to pack it, secure from injury, in boxes which Taft brought down from the store. This scanty satisfaction was short-lived, for, despite his objection, Taft poured out upon the ground the liquor which remained after the shipment of the two barrels to the cross-roads. The tubs were cut into pieces in true “ revenuer ” fashion, the mash was poured out, the furnace was demolished out of all semblance to its former proportions and uses, before Taft began to lay the train to blow the place up, and thus effectually silence its testimony forever.

“ S’pos’n’ — s’pos’n’ ” — Copley shivered — “ s’pos’n’ somebody war in the Lost Time mine, down thar ” —

Taft paused, with a lot of tow in his hands which he was arranging for a fuse ; he glanced around, the lantern swinging on his arm, as if waiting for the sequel to the unfinished sentence ; then, as Copley remained vaguely staring as if at a vision of possible laborers in Lost Time mine, “ Skeer ’em powerful, I reckon,” he said casually, and bent once more to his work.

“ But — but ” — Copley recommenced, in a tone so urgent that Taft once more desisted to listen, with an inquiring look on his half-turned face — “but — but — s’pos’n’ the— a — ’splosion o’ the powder war — war ter bring down the rocks an’ the timbers in some o’ them tunnels an’ open shafts, an’ somebody war in thar, hey ? hey ? 舡 with eager insistence.

“ Shut ’em in thar fur good an’ all, I reckon, — git buried a leetle before thar time, that’s all,” said Taft coolly, and went on with his work as before.

Perhaps some vague premonition, perhaps an intuition of subterranean proximity to an unsuspected wanderer in the Lost Time mine, perhaps only a morbid aversion to the whole project, induced by the lack of that conscience-fortifying force, dinner, actuated Copley, but for the third time he sought to disaffeet Taft’s mind toward it.

“ Mebbe somebody mought be passin’ an’ hear the ’splosion ; mought n’t they ’low ’t war cur’us ? What would they make of it ? ”

Taft did not now pause in his work ; he answered still bending down to the ground laying the train.

“Yearthquake,” he said composedly, 舠or else jes’ some o’ the rottin’ timbers o’ the mine settlin’ an’ givin’ way. Besides,” he added, straightening himself up, “ nobody’s passin’ at this time o’ night, nohow.”

“ Night! ” exclaimed Copley. “ Is it night ? ”

“ Midnight,” replied Taft laconically.

He stood silent, thinking, a moment, and resting after the labor of cautiously adjusting the charges ; and then, so quiet it all was, not the stir of a breath, not the whisper of a word, not the silken rustle of a ribbon of flame in the demolished furnace, he heard, what he had never before heard so far as here in the stillroom, the regular stroke of a pickaxe sounding down the tunnel, and cleaving the ground with the regularity of a practiced workman. He said not a word to Copley; he walked along the tunnel toward it. a chill thrill stealing over him despite the fact that his temerity was a trifle more pronounced than usual because he was about to leave the place forever. The strokes continued, now growing louder, now more muffled, always accurately timed ; and suddenly the faint clamors of that high, queer, falseringing voice that seemed to seek out and shock every nerve within him. He recoiled with fright and an unreasoning anger. He turned himself about, and swiftly changed the position of a can filled with powder which was to aid in the demolition of the place, arranging it in a niche in the earth close to the wall whence the sound came.

“ I make ye my partin’ compliments,” he said, with a sarcastic smile and a mocking wave of the hand to the gruesome unknown. The next moment his expression changed to a frightened gravity, and he ran through the black tunnel as if he consciously had the devil at his heels, pausing not until he was safe in the cellar beneath the store.

The paroxysm, if so it might be called, passed in a moment, and he was laughingas he stood at the aperture of the tunnel, holding the lantern, red-faced and a trifle shamefaced, when Copley, left far behind, came hobbling up slowly and painfully. Taft was quite restored ; it was with his own assured, definite manner and elastic stride that he presently took his way along the tunnel again and applied the match to the fuse. He evidently accomplished his work thoroughly, for he had no doubts of its efficacy when he returned and stood leaning against a pile of boxes, waiting quite carelessly as here and there tiny stellular lights sprang up along that darksome way that was not wont to blossom out such constellations.

Stars ? No ; lines of fire, vermicular, writhing, growing, serpentine, swiftly gliding, armed with venom, with destruction, under their forked tongues; for suddenly a flare, a frightful clap as of thunder, a wrench as if the foundations of the earth were torn asunder, and the two men were thrown to the ground and the lantern extinguished in the jar.

The reverberations were slow to die away; only gradually quiet came. A stillness ensued, stifling with dust, and with such strong sense of alternation with that moment of deafening detonation that the pulses quivered with expectancy, and the slightest movement set the nerves to jarring. Taft had groped for a light, and as the faint coruscation of a match, then the steadier gleam of the lantern, pierced the darkness, the nearest results of the explosion were open to view. The timbers roofing the tunnel had been shaken down, and close at hand masses of earth had fallen with them and lay banked at the very door. If Taft had been warned in a dream, he could hardly have made his defense more perfect. He and his one trusted adherent worked there the rest of the night. The old original timbers of the house, partly rotten and time-stained, were replaced as formerly, leaving no trace that there had ever been a door into the abandoned mine; and when at last Taft clambered through the aperture of the counter into the store, he left the door broadly flaring after him.

“ Trust Sis ter notice it,” he remarked. “ She ‘ll git used ter it in ten minits, an’ it ‘ll ’pear like she always knowed t war thar.”

The still was conveyed some miles away and buried in a marked spot, and thus the business of moonshining was abandoned at the moment when the project of the summer hotel, from which it had so much to fear, was pretermitted amidst its varied entanglements, and the Cove, which certainly could not have comfortably contained both, was left without either for the nonce.

XV.

As Julia entered her father’s house, quite fresh and dry after the tumults of the storm, each of the group gathered about the fireside was too insistently preoccupied at the moment to notice the discrepancy between her spotless attire and the aspects of the weather, except indeed Luther. The details of their attire she marked at once, and dimpled at the sight. These rain-lashed victims of the processioning had hustled into their cast-off gear ; and albeit the fashions of the day were not exigent in the Cove, very forlorn appeared these ancient garments, having long ago seen the best of their never very good days. Captain Lucy’s brown coat was like a russet old crinkled leaf, as it clung, out of shape and ruffled by unskillful folding, about him ; Luther wore one of his own of former years, far too small now for his burly shoulders that threatened to burst out of it at every seam, and his long arms that protruded their blue shirt sleeves, only half covered from the elbow. He met her glance with a resentful glare, as if he could imagine now no cause for mirth, which was untimely in its best estate. His Sunday coat graced the form of Jasper Larrabee, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who, albeit not of the processioning party, had been caught in the rain in coming hither. Although as tall as Luther, he was much more slender, and he seemed to have shrunk, somehow, in the amplitude of his host’s big blue coat. He gave Julia a formal greeting, and was apparently much perturbed by the untoward state of mind in which he found Captain Lucy. And indeed Captain Lucy’s face seemed to have adopted sundry wrinkles from his coat, so old, so awry, so crinkled, so suggestive of better days, had it suddenly become. Julia was reminded all at once of the business interests at stake.

“ How did the percessionin’ turn out, dad ? ” she inquired, as she stood with her hand on the back of a chair, and looked across the fire at him.

If any eyes might watch Fortune’s wheel undismayed, whether it swing high or low, one might deem them these, surely, with perpetual summer blooming there, as if there were no frosts, no winter’s chill, no waning of time or love or life. What cared she for land or its lack ?

The forelegs of Captain Lucy’s chair came to the floor with an irascible thump. He turned and surveyed the room ; then, looking at her, “ Air yer eyesight good ? ” he demanded.

“ Toler’ble,” she admitted.

“ D’ ye see that thar contraption ? ” he continued, leaning forward, and pointing with great empressement at a spinning-wheel in the corner.

“ I see it,” she said, meeting his keen return glance.

“ D’ ye know what it’s made fur ? ” he inquired, dropping his voice, and with an air of being about to impart valuable information.

“ Fur spinnin’,” she answered wonderingly.

“ Oh, ye know, do ye ? Then — mind it.”

And thus he settled the woman question, in his own house at least, and repudiated feminine interest and inquisitiveness in his business affairs, and spurned feminine consolation and rebuke as far as he could, — poor Captain Lucy !

Larrabee had that sense of being ill at ease which always characterizes a stranger whose unhappy privilege it is to assist at a family quarrel. He was divided by the effort to look as if he understood nothing of ill temper in the colloquy, and the doubt as to whether he did not appear to side with one or the other, — to relish Julia’s relegation to the spinning-wheel, or to resent Captain Lucy’s strong measures ; or perhaps he might seem lightly scornful of both.

He gazed steadily out of the open door, where a great lustrous copper-tinted sky glassed itself in myriads of gleaming copper-tinted ponds made in every depression by the recent rains ; between were the purplish-black mountains cut sharply on the horizon. He heard a mocking-bird singing, and what a medley the frogs did pipe ! Then rushed out into the midst the whir of Julia’s spinning-wheel, that made all other songs of the evening only its incidental burden. She sat near the door, her figure imposed upon those bright hues of sky and water as if she were painted on some lustrous metal. Their reflection was now and again on her hair; she might have seemed surrounded by some glorious aureola. Not that he definitely discerned this. He only felt that she was fairer than all women else, and that the evening gleamed. The bird’s song struck some chord in his heart that silently vibrated, and the whir of her wheel was like a hymn of the fireside. He wished that he had never left it for Taft and his gang, and the hope of making money for a home of his own, of which his mother’s hospitality had well - nigh bereft him. The thought roused him to a recollection of his errand.

“ I kem hyar ter git yer advices, Cap’n Lucy,” he began.

Captain Lucy turned upon him a silent but snarling face. He needed all his “ advices ” for himself.

“ I ain’t got nothin’ ter hide from you-uns,” Larrabee continued, after a pause for the expected reply. “Ye know all I do,” — a fleeting recollection of the still came over him, — “ that I ‘m able ter tell,” he added ; for the idea of betraying the secrets involving Taft and the other moonshiners had never entered his mind.

Captain Lucy’s scornful chin was tossed upward.

“ We-uns feel toler’ble compliminted,” he averred, “ ter hev it ’lowed ez we-uns knows all you-uns do, fur that s a heap, ez ye air aimin’ ter tell.”

“I mean—I went ter say, Cap’n Lucy ” — Jasper Larrabee’s words, in their haste, tripped one over the other, as they sought to set their meaning in better array.

“ He jes’ means, uncle Lucy, ez it ain’t no new thing,” Adelicia interposed to expound, touched by the anxious contrition of the younger man, who was leaning eageily forward, his elbow on his knee, toward the elder, and to allay the contrariety of spirit of “ uncle Lucy.”

“ An’ meddlin’ ain’t no new thing, nuther, with you-uns, Ad’licia,” snarled Captain Lucy, much overwrought. “ I wish ter Gawd, with all the raisin’ an’ trainin’ I hev hed ter gin ye, I could hev larnt ye ter hold yer jaw wunst in a while whenst desir’ble, an’ show sech manners ez — ez T’bithy thar kin.” He pointed at the cat on the hearth, and gave a high, fleering laugh, in which the sarcastic vexation overmastered every suggestion of mirth.

A slight movement of Tabitha’s ears might have intimated that she marked the mention of her name. Otherwise she passed it with indifference. With her skimpy, shabby attire, — her fur seemed never to flourish, — her meek air of disaffection with the ways of this world, her look of adverse criticism as her yellow eyes followed the movements of the family, her thankless but resigned reception of all favors as being less than she had a right to expect, her ladylike but persistent exactions of her prerogatives, gave her, somehow, the style of a reduced gentlewoman, and the quietude and gentle indifference and air of superiority of the manners on which Captain Lucy had remarked were very genteel as far as they went.

Adelicia seemed heedless of the mentor thus pointed out. She noisily gathered up her work, somewhat cumbrous of paraphernalia, since it consisted of a small cedar tub, a large wooden bowl, and a heavy sack of the reddest of apples which she was paring for drying, and carried it all around the fireplace to seat herself between the two parties to this controversy.

“Now, uncle Lucy, ye jes’ got ter gin Jasper yer advices, an’ holp him out’n whatever snap he hev got inter.”

Her deep gray eyes smiled upon the young man, as the firelight flashed upon her glittering knife and the red fruit in her hand, although her delicate oval face was grave enough. Ever and again she raised her head, as she worked, to toss back the tendrils of her auburn hair which were prone to fall forward as she bent over the task. There was a moment’s silence as Jasper vainly sought to collect his ideas.

“Tell on, Jasper,” she exhorted him. “ I ‘m by ter pertect ye now. An’ ennyhows, uncle Lucy’s bark is a long shakes wuss ’n his bite.”

She smiled encouragingly upon the suppliant for advice ; her own face was all unmarred by the perception that matters had gone much amiss with the processioning of the land, for uncle Lucy was a man often difficult to please, and sometimes only a crumple in his rose leaf was enough to make him condemn the queen of flowers as a mere vegetable, much overrated. The girl’s aspect was all the brighter as she wore a saffrontinted calico blouse and apron with her brown homespun skirt, and she seemed, with her lighted gray eyes, her fair, colorless face, and her ruddy auburn hair, a property of the genial firelight, flickering and flaring on the bright spot of color which she made in the brown shadows where she sat and pared the red apples. She reverted in a moment to that proclivity to argue with Captain Lucy which was so marked in their conversation.

“ An’ who is the young men ter depend on in thar troubles, uncle Lucy, ef not the old ones ? ” she demanded.

“ On the young gals, ’pears like,” promptly retorted “ uncle Lucy,” pertinently and perversely.

Then he caught himself suddenly. In the impossibility, under the circumstances, to concentrate his mind exclusively on his own affairs, his interest in correlated matters was reasserted. It occurred to him that it behooved him to foster any predilection that Adelicia might show for any personable man other than the fugitive Espey. He could see naught but perplexity and complication of many sorts to ensue for himself and his household should Espey return ; and although Captain Lucy selfishly hoped and believed that this was, in the nature of things, impossible, still he had reluctantly learned by bitter experience the fallibility of his own judgment. It seemed to him a flagrant instance of inconstancy on Adelicia’s part, but Captain Lucy gave that no heed. Few men truly resent a woman’s cruelty to another man. Adelicia might have brought all the youth in the county to despair, for all hard-hearted Captain Lucy would have cared. And thus her appeal for Jasper Larrabee was not altogether disregarded.

“ Goin’ ter set thar an’ chaw on it alt day, Jasper ? ” he demanded acridly. “ Why n’t ye spit it out ? ”

“ Why,” said Larrabee, “ it ’s ’bout this hyar Jack Espey.”

The apple dropped from Adelicia’s hand, and rolled unheeded across the hearth ; the spinning-wheel was suddenly silent, and Julia, all glorified in the deeply yellow glare about her, sat holding it still with one hand on its rim. Captain Lucy’s head was canted to one side, as if he were prepared to deliberate impartially on some difficult proposition.

“ This Jack Espey, — I met up with him at the cross-roads store, an’ struck up a likin’ fur him, an’ brung him home an’ tuk him in, an’ he hev been thar with me fur months an’ months — an’ — an’ he never tole me ez he hed enny cause ter shirk the law.”

“ He war ’feared ter, I reckon, Jasper,” said Adelicia.

“ He never meant no harm, Jasper,” the silent Julia broke in from where she sat in her dull red dress and the tawnily gilded glories of the western sky.

Beyond a mechanical “ Hesh up, Ad’licia,” Captain Lucy gave them no heed, but Luther glanced sharply from one to the other.

Jasper Larrabee replied in some sort: “ Then he never treated me with the same confidence I done him. An’, Cap’ll Lucy,” he continued, “ye yerse’f seen the e-end o’ it. He purtended ter the sher’ff ter be me, an’ tuk advantage o’ my mother’s callin’ him ‘ sonny,’ an’ wore my name, an’ went with ’em a-sarchin’ fur hisse’f ; an’ whenst he got skeered, thinkin’ ez they knowed him, he resisted arrest, an’ kem nigh ter takin’ the off’cer’s life, whilst purtendin’ ter be me, in my name ! ”

“ He never meant no harm,” faltered Adelicia, aghast at this showing against her absent lover.

“ None in the worl’ ; he never went ter harm nuthin’,” protested Julia’s flutelike tones.

舠 Did ye kem hyar ter git my advices fur Jack Espey ? ” demanded Captain Lucy sourly. 舠He needs ’em, I know, but舡 —

“Naw, Cap’n Tems. I kem ter git it fur myse’f, fur I don’t know which way ter turn. You-uns hyar saw the e-end o’ it, — the night the dep’ty kem a-sarchin’ far Jasper Lar’bee, who he ’lowed he hed flung over the bluffs, an’ I went along at bis summons, knowin’ ’t war Espey ez hed got away from him, purtendin’ ter be me.”

Captain Lucy nodded.

“ Now I hev hearm that dep’ty air in the Cove agin.”

Captain Lucy remembered the dark, facetious, malicious face that the officer had borne as a spectator of the processioning of the land. He nodded again. “ I hev seen him hyar ter-day.”

“ Ef I war knowed ez Lar’bee, I mought be ’rested fur harborin’ a fugitive, ez holpin’ out the murder arter the fac’—an’ — an’ my mother — Espey gin me no chance, no ch’ice ! Would n’t ye ’low ez ennybody — ennybody — would hev tole me that, Cap’n Lucy, ter gin me the ch’ice o’ dangerin’ myse’f afore he tuk so much from me an’ mine ? ”

Captain Lucy changed countenance. This was a new view of the matter. He had not judged from Larrabee’s standpoint ; for he himself had had full knowledge of the circumstances and the fact that they were withheld from Espey’s entertainer. This was made suddenly manifest.

“ Why, Jasper,” expostulated Adelicia, her eyes full of tears, her vibrant tones tremulous with emotion, “ he ’lowed ter we-uns ez he war sure the man would n’t die o’ the gunshot wound, bein’ powerful big an’ hearty ; but he tuk out an’ run, bein’ tur-r’ble ’feared o’ the law — arrest an’ lyin’ in jail fur a long time, waitin’, an’ uncle Lucy said ” —

She paused suddenly, for Jasper Larrabee had leaned forward in his chair, scanning the faces about him with a blank amazement so significant that it palsied the words on her tongue.

舠 Espey tole you-uns ! An’ Espey tole yer uncle Lucy ! Why, then ye all knowed him ter be a runaway, an’ ye knowed ez he war a-playin’ his deceits on nobody but me an’ my mother ez hed got him quartered on us, an’ mebbe war liable ter the law fur it.”

Adelicia leaned back trembling in her chair. Captain Lucy cast an infuriated glance upon her, and then, with a hasty, nervous hand, rubbed his brow back and forth, as if to stimulate his slow brain that brought him no solution of the difficulty. Jasper Larrabee still sat leaning forward, his clear-cut face full of keen thought, a flush on his pale cheek, a fire kindling in his brown eyes, and a sarcastic smile curving his angry lips.

“ My Gawd ! ” he exclaimed, “ it is a cur’ous thing ez my mother ain’t got a frien’ in this worl’ ! She says she don’t work fur thanks, an’ I ‘ll take my livin’ oath she don’t git ‘em. That thar door o’ the widder’s cabin on the Notch hev stood open ter the frien’less day an’ night since I kin remember. Her table ’s spread for the hongry. Her h’a’th’s the home o’ them ez hev no welcome elsewise an’ elsewhere. An’ her nigh neighbor an’ old frien’ sees a s’pected murderer quarter himself thar, an’ bring s’picion an’ trouble ennyhow, an’ danger mebbe, on her an’ hern. Ye mought hev advised Espey ter gin her her ch’ice, or leave. Ye mought hev done ez much ez that! My mother’s a ole ’ oman ; an’ she ’s a proud ’oman, though ye mought n’t think it, an’ the bare idee o’ sech talk ez that, — of s’picion, an’ arrest, an’ jail, — it would kill her ! it would kill her ! ”

Captain Lucy sat almost stunned, as under an arraignment. He pulled mechanically at his pipe, but his head was sunk on his breast, and his face was gray and set. The circumstances so graphically placed before him seemed to have no relation to those of his recollection ; they wore a new guise. He had known all his life instances of collision in which powder and lead had played more or less a tragic part; but the rôle of the law had always been subsidiary and inadequate in the background of the scene, sometimes represented only by an outwitted officer, and the jollity of details of hair-breadth escapes. This construction of crime was beyond his purview of facts. He did not know, or he did not remember, that aught that others than the principal could do subsequent to a crime might render them liable as accessory after the fact. Espey had, in a fight, shot his antagonist, — such things were of frequent occurrence in Captain Lucy’s memory. He never expected to see or to hear of the beagles of the law on the trail of the fugitive ; his care, and his only care, was to prevent his niece from marrying an expatriated man while expatriated.

He thought now with a grievous sense of fault of old “ Widder Lar’bee,” — her softness, her kindness, her life of thought for others ; and then he thought of Rodolphus Ross and his crude brutality, his imperviousness to any sanctions, his rough interpretation of fun, his eagerness to shield his own lapses of care and official vigilance, his grudges against the supposed Larrabee, and his threats. What mischief might a chance word work !

The dusky red of the last of the evening glow was creeping across the floor. All the metallic yellow glare was tarnished in the sky. Instead were strata of vaporous gray and slate tints alternating with lines of many-hued crimson, graduated till the ethereal hue of faintest rose ended the ascending scale of color. Still the frogs chorused and still the bird sang, but shadows had fallen, and they were not all of the night. Something of melancholy intimations drew his eyes to the purple heights without as Jasper Larrabee spoke.

“Waal, I’m her friend, ef she ain’t got nare nether.” And then, as if he felt he were arrogating unduly to his purpose, “ An’ I s’pose I’m a friend o’ my own, too, an’ I know I ain’t got nare nother. I kem hyar ter-night fur yer advices, Cap’n Tems ; but ez ye don’t ’pear ter hev none ter gimme, I b’lieve I ’ll take my own. I ’ll settle this thing for myse’f. I ’ll find Jack Espey ! I ’ll track him out. I ’ll run him down. I ’ll arrest him myse’f, an’ I ‘ll deliver him ter the law. An’ let the door o’ the jail that he opened fur me be shut an’ barred on him! ” There was a concentrated fury in his face as he said this. “ I won’t hide no mo’ like a beast o’ the yearth in a den in the ground, consortin’ with wuss ’n wolves an’ bar an’ painters. I won’t skulk homeless like a harnt no mo’ through the woods. I won’t shirk the sher’ff no mo’ fur Jack Espey’s crimes, an’ kase I done him nuthin’ but good an’ kindness ! I ’ll find him, — the yearth can’t kiver him so I can’t find him, — an’ I ‘ll deliver him ter the law ! ”

He stood for one moment more, and then he strode across the room to the door, his shadow blotting out the last red light of the day, leaving the circle about the fire gazing wistfully and aggrieved after him, except Luther, who was picking up the borrowed coat which Larrabee had tossed aside as he passed.

Outside the night had fallen suddenly. The west was clouded, despite the lingering red strata, and the twilight curtailed. He looked through purple tissues of mists that appeared to have the consistency of a veil, to where yellow lights already gleamed through the shadows. They came from the shanties of the workmen beneath the cliffs, on which the ruins of the hotel had at last ceased to smoke. He hardly knew whither to turn. What pressure for explanations, what unbearable inquisitive insistence, would meet him at home, where Henrietta Timson reigned in the stead of his mother, he could well forecast; to venture near the Lost Time mine, within reach of Taft, was, he knew, as much as his life was worth. Larrabee hesitated now and again, as he went aimlessly up the road ; regretting his outbreak at the Tems cabin; coveting its shelter, its fireside, the companionship of the home group; half minded to return thither ; but resentment because of their half-hearted friendship, as he deemed it, pride and anger and shame, conspired to withhold him. Once again, as he ascended the mountain, he turned and looked down at the cluster of orangetinted lights from the workmen’s shanties that clung so close together in the depths of the purple valley, and he hesitated anew as he looked at them. White mists were abroad on their stealthy ways ; a brooding stillness held the clouds ; the mountains loomed sombre, melancholy, against them, indistinguishable and blent with them toward the west, save when the far-away lightnings of the past storm fluctuated through their dense gray folds, and showed the differing immovable outlines of the purple heights. In the invisible pools below these transient lines of fire were glassed, shining through the gloom. The reflection of stars failed midway, because of the mists. There were few as yet in the sky, but as he lifted his eyes he beheld again, immeasurably splendid in the purple dusk, that Sudden kindling of ethereal, palpitating, white fire which he had marked once before, — that new and supernal star, strange to all familiar ways of night hitherto, shining serene, aloof, infinitely fair above the melancholy piping mountain wilds and the troublous toils of the world.

Charles Egbert Craddock.