The gloom of the place had a unique underground quality which could
hardly be compassed elsewhere by the mere exclusion of daylight. The
yellow flare from the open door of the furnace seemed chiefly to serve
to render visible the surrounding darkness. The masses of shadow were
densely black. Where the firelight smote them they merged reluctantly
into expositions of the darkest possibilities of umber and burnt
sienna and dismal gradations of duskier brown. The clay wall facing
the furnace door at one side, however, glowed with the reddest of
terra-cotta hues. Against this the group was outlined, motionless, all
eyes turning upon the black aperture of the tunnel along which the
faint, wan gleams of Taft's lantern had preceded him. The moonshiners
had an air of pretermitting work, and the expectant, receptive
attention which characterizes the secluded in colloquy with him from
the world without.
There is a certain rapacity in this demand for developments. Withdrawn
from the scene of action, it seems as if anything definite and decisive
might have happened in the interval of time, when perhaps only
combinations of causes are slowly and imperceptibly tending toward
the precipitation of the event. When the full-voiced greetings were
supplemented by the inquiry for the news, Lorenzo Taft stood for a
moment at a loss, conscious of a need of caution in the recital of his
suspicions and doubts and indeterminate fears. He sat down on the side
of a barrel, looking, in the flickering dusk and the vivid gleams from
the furnace, like some able-bodied, overgrown Bacchus, with his flowing
yellow hair and beard definite against the terra-cotta wall behind him,
his reckless, jovial blue eyes full of life and vigor, and his fair and
florid complexion wearing already the deeper flush painted by brush
whiskey.
"I dunno 'bout _news_, edzac'ly." He hesitated, wiping his mouth
with the back of his hand, as if he could hardly summarize so few
experiences and impressions for the benefit of the debarred.
"That's always the way," sarcastically exclaimed Jack Espey, a slight,
eager-eyed young man, the impersonation of impatience. "'Renzo don't
never hear no news in the Cove; leastwise"--he cast a keen, significant
glance at the others--"none ez he air aimin' ter tell agin."
The facial expression of the other men changed subtly, unmistakably.
Some strong sentiment of disaffection had evidently been set astir in
Taft's absence. As he slowly recognized it, a deep, dismayed gravity
fell upon his features, which were as incongruous with his expression
for the moment as if they were merely component parts of some jovial
mask. It was a petrified look, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon
Head of Trouble.
The other men said nothing, maintaining a sort of wary attention
inimical in its close receptivity. The suggestion had communicated
instant fire to certain inflammable suspicions and antagonisms. All the
work about the still was given over for the nonce, and Lorenzo Taft
had a certain overpowering realization of being brought suddenly to
judgment, without a moment in which to take account with himself and
his agile duplicities and perfect his defense.
There were four of the moonshiners besides Lorenzo Taft. Their
aspect had so little in common that one might wonder at the cohesive
property of the enterprise to hold them together, were it not for
the opportunity of profit so rare in these mountain communities, and
the great and ever-present dangers of the law that served to cement
their association when once they had fallen into the toils of the
illicit worm. One, in his shirt-sleeves, was somewhat beyond middle
age, bearded and grizzled and grave, with a sedate eye, callous hands,
and a steady look as if he might be trusted to do a good deal of hard
work by sheer force of industrial momentum when once about it. He
had distilled much liquor against the law in his time, and even had
an experience in such matters antedating the unpopular whiskey tax.
His was a sober, trusted judgment in questions of pomace and mash,
singlings and doublings, and the successes of the manufacture were his.
Another had a downy lip, full, petulant, passionate; a large blue
eye, deeply bloodshot; a tousle of light curling hair; an overgrown,
large-jointed look,--a mere boy, despite his thickened utterance, his
shaking hand, and his frequent reference to a jug down amongst the
shadows which the others left almost untouched. A far more dangerous
personality was exemplified in the keen-eyed man, of about twenty-five,
called Jack Espey. He had a wild, alert, aggressive look, widely opened
bluish-gray eyes, full of reflections of the world without, straight
black hair, a drooping mustache, a fair complexion, a square jaw, and
about him was the unmistakable intimation of recklessness. He wore a
white wool hat set far back on his head, a blue shirt, and blue jeans
trousers, and he clasped both his hands across one knee above his long
spurred boot, while he sat on a shelf of the rock, half in the shadow
and half in the light. The gleam fell on the handle of the knife in his
belt and his pistols, which he did not lay aside to assist in the work.
Yet it was not toward him that Taft, surprised and overtaken, cast the
first covert glance of anxiety and deprecation. A smiling, dark-eyed
gaze fixed upon his face shook his confidence, in that moment of
detection. The smile was not one of pleasure, but Larrabee's eyes were
seldom without it. It was tinged with a suggestion of contempt; it was
habitually slow; it seemed rather an unintentional emanation from the
spirit within than a means of communication with others of his kind. He
smiled, as it were, to himself. He had a pale, clear-cut, intelligent
face, with fine straight features, dark eyes, and short auburn hair. He
was about twenty three or four years of age, lean but strongly built,
and tall, and was dressed in brown jeans, with great rough boots.
He had a certain inactive, lounging aspect, and laid aside with a
reluctant gesture the worn New Testament which he had been laboriously
reading as he sat close to the door of the furnace and caught its
glimmers.
"Naw," reiterated the keen, eager Espey, with what he intended to be a
sneer, but which was instead a snort of indignation, "ef 'Renzo hears
enny news, he ain't rememberin' ter sheer it with we-uns; he keeps it
from us, moles o' the yearth that we be!"
He dropped his voice dramatically. The others, with a hot sense of
injury, gazed with glowing eyes upon Taft.
"Why, look-a-hyar," Taft felt impelled to defend himself, "what is it I
ain't told ez ye want ter know?"
There was a close understanding among the "moles o' the yearth," for
the united accusation about to be voiced was withheld as Larrabee fixed
his ever-smiling eyes upon him and held up his warning hand.
"Waal, 'Renzo, what _is_ the news ye hev tole hyar?"
It was the pride of intellect which illumined Larrabee's face, that
ineffable sense of power which a conscious mental superiority bestows.
The smile in his eyes extended to his lips; he laughed a little,
showing his strong white teeth, and there was something craftily
brilliant in his expression as he looked down and turned the Testament
in his hands, and looked up and laughed again.
"Yes," exclaimed Espey rancorously, "ye purtend ter go out an' see
nuthin' an' hear nuthin'. I reckon ye air 'feared we'll git skeered too
easy, an' light out an' leave the still, an' sech; so ye tell we-uns
nuthin' 'bout sech ez ye meet up with. Jes' ondertake ter jedge fur us
an' gin us no warnin' nor nuthin'"--
Larrabee broke in suddenly: "_We_'ll ondertake ter tell you-uns
the news, 'Renzo Taft, though we do be 'moles o' the yearth'! _Thar's
a stranger in the Cove!_"
A large, imposing personality is at a peculiar disadvantage when
overtaken by disaster. Lorenzo Taft felt detected in every fibre,
and he was conscious of comprising a good many pounds avoirdupois of
culprit as he sat arraigned before them all. He could only look from
one to the other in flushed doubt and anxiety as to how much they knew
of what he had his own reasons to conceal.
"He air 'bidin' down at old Lucy Tems's house; an' ez ye sot out ter
go thar this evenin', ye air 'bleeged ter hev viewed him," persisted
Larrabee.
"Oh, I viewed him," said Lorenzo Taft, the steadiness of his fixed gaze
beginning to waver somewhat as he sought to assume a more incidental
manner, in the midst of his amazement to hear the details of his visit
to the Tems cabin from these "moles o' the yearth," miles away in the
rain and the mist and the darkness, and locked up in the denser medium
of the depths of the solid ground.
"I'll tell ye his name," continued Larrabee, his eyes still smiling,
but the curves of his mouth fierce, and his breath coming fast. "His
name is Kenn'ston, or sech."
A wild, confusing fear of supernatural agency in this knowledge had
begun to pervade Taft's consciousness. Then he caught himself suddenly.
"Ye mus' hev hearn on _him_ whenst _he_ war hyar afore," he
said.
"Hyar afore!" exclaimed the anxious-eyed men in concert.
"He be the man ez 'lows ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove, or
sech like. Ye mus' hev hearn 'bout him."
A silence ensued. "That war 'way las' year," the elder moonshiner said
at last.
"He 'pears ter go powerful slow," said the boy, disaffected and
incredulous.
As the grizzled elderly distiller pondered on the matter, the perplexed
wrinkles and lines of his worn face were painful to see. "Ye be
right sure he ain't no revenuer nor nuthin'?" he asked anxiously,
subordinating his own judgment.
"Great Gosh, naw!" exclaimed Taft, with a resonant, confident note.
This idea, so at variance with his knowledge of Kenniston's plans,
had not occurred to him. He broke out into a sonorous laugh at the
fears which for the first time he comprehended. "Revenuer!" he cried
contemptuously. "Moonshining would be a powerful slick bizness ef
revenuers war sech ez him!"
The sense of relief induced a slackening of the tension among the
others. They too laughed, albeit a trifle constrainedly, and glanced
consciously from one to the other. But Larrabee turned the Testament
back and forth doubtfully in his hands, and asked suddenly, without
looking up, "Then, why n't ye tell 'bout him a-fust, ef ye didn't want
us not ter know 'bout him,--jes' ez news?"
Taft was silent for an instant. But the sense of partial success
is a prophetic element in the completion of triumph, and, with an
irreflective dash at the nearest means of exculpation without full
disclosure, he replied precipitately:--
"News! I didn't count _him_ no news. Sech ez him don't count much
whenst a man's a-goin' a-courtin'."
The silence with which this was received was expressive of extreme
surprise. The crackle of the furnace fuel, the roar of the flames,
the rush of the air along one of the unseen shafts near by that had
some immediate communication with the outer atmosphere, and sustained
a strong current through the connecting drift, even the continuous
dripping from the worm, each made itself conspicuous in the absence of
other sound.
Jack Espey had suddenly lifted one spurred boot to his knee, and was
affecting to examine the rowel. "Who be ye a-courtin' thar at old Cap'n
Lucy's?" he gruffly demanded, but with an obvious effort to assume an
off-hand manner.
The steady look which Larrabee fixed upon Taft was, evidently, not
incidental. The blood rushed to Taft's head. He had not dreamed of
this complication. He saw that his answer meant far more to each of
them than to him. And yet it was a difficult answer to give. He could
not even seem to hesitate, and he must needs decide his fate at chance
medley.
"Ad'licia!" he blurted out at a venture. Then, as the recollection of
the handsome, silent Julia came over him with the inevitable sense of
comparison, a pang seized his utilitarian heart; for since an excuse
for his silence as to the details of his visit must needs be framed,
and a stepmother be chosen in such haste, why could he not have
bethought himself of the beauty? The fact that others were touched by
this matter, of which he had so suddenly a subtle perception, rendered
his decision extra hazardous. His own natural interest, his swift
regret for his choice, which was likely to ensue in any event since
his feelings were not involved, dulled his observation for the moment.
It was the least fraction of time which he had failed to improve, but
when his discerning, covert gaze sought the faces of the other two men
it could tell him naught of what he wished to know. Jack Espey still
sedulously examined the rowel of his spur lifted to his knee, and
Larrabee's eyes were fastened upon the worn book which he turned in his
hands.
"I reckon I'm mighty welcome ter my ch'ice of Ad'licia," Taft said
ruefully to himself. "Ad'licia 'd stand no sort'n chance with young
fellers sech ez them, alongside o' sech a lookin' gal ez Julia."
The instinct strong in ambitious human nature to enter the lists for
a prize stirred within him, albeit it was merely his own fancy that
rated Julia at this phenomenal value. Fictitious though it was, it
belittled Adelicia in his estimation. However, the die was cast. He
had openly avowed his preference, and it was hardly to be presumed
that the arrogant Julia would suffer herself to be second choice to
one of her own household. The possibility of defeat from any objection
to him on the part of the lady never occurs to a man of that type.
In his bluff vanity, a concomitant of his other hardy attributes, he
thought he had only to choose. And he had chosen. He began to seek
to reconcile himself to his selection. It would not be judicious to
have a rivalry in a matter of this sort--of which young men are apt to
make so much--between himself and members of his gang; more especially
Espey, who was dangerous because of his hot head, and Larrabee, who
was dangerous because of his cool head. And then Adelicia was of an
easy, acquiescent, optimistic temperament, and was likely to put up
more readily with the two children, Joe and Cornelia. He astutely
reflected that it would probably require all the optimism attainable in
the Cove to put up with "Sis." He began to feel that he was very lucky,
or rather instinctively and intuitively sagacious, to have made such a
choice at a snap shot. A troublous household would the determined and
doubtless exacting beauty make of it. "Sp'iled ter death, I expec', by
Luther an' old Lucy; nare one of 'em dunno _how_ ter say 'no' ter
nuthin' Julia sets her head ter, I reckon. An' I ain't no young feller,
nohow, to go danglin' arter the purtiest gal in the kentry, pickin'
out a second ch'ice fur a wife. Ad'licia hain't got no home, bein'
jes' Cap'n Lucy's niece, an' I reckon she 'd be glad an' pleased ter
hev a house o' her own, with nuthin' ter do but ter keep blinders on
Sis 'bout'n the still an' sech, an' set her a-sewin' or a-hoein' till
she gits some growth an' jedgmint." He began to pluck up. "Purty is ez
purty does. Air one o' them boys is welcome to Julia!"
Then a sudden thought smote him.
"'Pears ter me I oughter hev a cornsider'ble gredge agin you-uns," his
big voice boomed out with all its sonorous confidence once more. "I
kem hyar arter goin', ez ye knowed, ter Tems's, an' durned ef ye don't
haul me over the coals like ez ef I hed hearn suthin' ez I didn't want
you-uns ter know."
"So ye did, so ye did!" said Espey eagerly. "Ye didn't 'low fur we-uns
ter know ez that man war hyar agin surely settin' out ter build his
tavern or sech. 'Kase ef sech a many folks war stirrin' in the Cove,
we-uns would be 'feared they'd nose us out 'fore long, an' quit the
still."
Lorenzo Taft's face once more grew stony, as if he beheld some
petrifying prospect not included in the range of vision of the natural
eye.
"I reckon I hev got ez much call ter be 'feared ez you-uns," he
protested. "I dunno ez enny o' you-uns hev sarved out a prison term fur
illicit distillin' but me."
The others stirred uneasily at the mere mention of the possibility,
their faces, stricken with a deep gravity, all illumined by the
brilliant flare of the flames springing up anew; for the grizzled
elderly man was busying himself in replenishing the fire. The wall
of red earth on one side, on the other the wall of dark gray rock,
alternating with lighter tints, where the blastings had riven its
close texture; the heavy supporting timbers made of great tree boles
(what sordid translation from the noble forests without, where the
unstricken of their kindred still towered toward the stars, and sang
with the winds, and received glad gifts from the seasons in springing
sap and spreading leaf, in acorn and cone, and kept a covenant with
time registering the years in mystic rings in their inmost hearts!);
the black aperture of the tunnel on one hand, and opposite a mysterious
recess leading beyond; even a rat, and his elongated shadow, which,
augmented into frightful proportions, sped after him in a mimic chase
across the trampled red clay floor,--all became visible in detail.
The disorder of the immediate surroundings, the barrels, the tubs,
the sacks full of meal, the great woodpile, the rotting refuse of the
pomace in heaps waiting to be cast down into the half-submerged shaft
close at hand, the copper still, itself, and the spiral worm and its
adjuncts made a definite impression hitherto lost in the gloom. The
shadows of the mountaineers doubled their number, as they sat, grave
and absorbed, and gazed at the deep red and yellow and vivid white
flare within the furnace. They seemed to wait in silence until the
ill-fitting door clanged again, as if their senses recognized an added
safety in the gloom which was not approved by their judgment.
As the door closed the elder distiller spoke.
"I dunno ez I hanker ter sarve no prison term," he said lugubriously.
"An' I kin see full plain ez this hyar still will hev ter quit ef the
Cove gits full o' valley folks. We-uns will hev ter move, sure!"
"Move whar?" demanded Taft. "I been a-movin' afore. That's how kem I
lef' Piomingo Cove, whar the revenue folks knowed me better."
There was another long silence.
"Burn him out!" exclaimed Jack Espey violently, bringing the foot which
he had held on his knee down to the ground with a vehemence that made
the spurs jingle. "Let _him_ move! Burn his shanty every time he
gits it started."
Lorenzo Taft recoiled. The glimmer from the crevices of the furnace
door made a dull red twilight about him, as he sat on the barrel
against the red wall. The suggestion was not new to his mind. He had
not intended, however, that it should take root amongst the moonshiners
and augment their jeopardy. He thought that, if he were any judge of
character, Kenniston would soon have enemies enough here. The stranger
was already busy in antagonizing Cap'n Lucy,--an early collision was
inevitable. This catastrophe to the building might be presumed to be
the natural outcome of their wrangles, and he would fain have silently
awaited this interpretation of the event. As to the old mountaineer he
felt no qualms of conscience; Cap'n Lucy was amply able to take care of
himself.
This was the trend of Lorenzo Taft's plan,--the reason of his avoidance
of the subject of the stranger. How or why his expectation should have
miscarried he could not for the life of him see. The man had before
been in the Cove. His presence would soon be an ordinary accepted fact.
Fate merely would seem to harass Kenniston and his plans. Fire is a
dangerous element in building, nevertheless requisite, in the tinner's,
the plumber's, even the paper-hanger's art, and a conflagration in
remote places is a terrible thing. Kenniston would become discouraged
after a time, and desist.
But Lorenzo Taft had never intended that this work should be through
the united means of moonshiners. Five men were too many to keep the
secrets of arson. The art of moonshining is necessarily worked with
numbers, but the fire-bug's must needs be a solitary trade. He could
not see the rift in his logic. How _had_ they taken the alarm?
He marked with secret fear how the suggestion fared. Larrabee, who had
begun again to read by the knifelike gleam from the crevice of the
furnace door, caught upon the page on his knee, as he sat close beside
it, looked up with a keen, pondering face, his finger still on the line
along which it was wont to guide his wavering comprehension. Surely
he found no thoughts in its wake responsive to the idea now astir in
his active, untaught brain. Law-breaking is a progressive evil. If
he had not been engaged in the crime of illicit distilling,--which
has, however, its apologists from the mere standpoint of economics,
who plead the inherent right of a man to use his own corn and fruit
to serve his own advantage,--this further iniquity of the destruction
of the property of another could not have found lodgment in his
consideration, for he was not naturally a cruel man, nor wicked.
But in the depths of the earth, working at an unlawful vocation, in
jeopardy of his liberty and in fear of his life, viewing the world
only in transient glimpses in the midst of a backwoods community, and
sustaining in effect an assumed character, that of a slothful farmer,
an ignorant man's mind, however good the native essence, is not likely
to develop fairly; and he may read the New Testament, as indeed those
wiser and better than he have done, as a matter of literary interest
and excitement, with not a thought of personal application.
The half-drunken boy pulled himself out of his semi-recumbent position
on the floor.
"That's the dinctum, by Gawd!" he exclaimed, his solemn red face
swollen and somnolent of expression. "Burn him out! Burn him out! Make
_him_ move! Kindle up a leetle hell around him!"
He broke out with a wild, hiccoughing laugh, singing in a queer
falsetto,--
"'Ladybug, Ladybug, fly to yer home!
Yer house is on fire'"--
ending in a shrill cackle of derision and a quavering whoop.
"Shet up, sonny!" said Copley, the veteran moonshiner, who seldom
interfered save upon a question of work. Even he turned from the
examination of the fermentation of a tub of mash which had been in
question, his lantern in his hand, and a slow smile of discovery in
the perplexed, anxious wrinkles of his wooden face. "I reckon our fire
would last ez long ez his buildin' timber."
There was not a protest from among them. Lorenzo Taft, more dismayed
than he could at once realize, again marveled how they had taken the
sudden alarm.
"Ye ain't never tole me yit how it air ez you-uns fund out, sence I
been gone this evenin', ez thar war a stranger in the Cove, an' how ye
knowed 'twar this hyar Kenn'ston down at Tems's."
There was a sudden volley of laughter, and Larrabee closed his book
with a bang of triumph.
"Our turn now! Jack, _he_ wants ter hear the news!" he called out
to Espey.
"Ye mought ez well s'arch the hen-house fur teeth ez ter kem hyar
ter we-uns, 'way down in the ground, axin' fur news!" protested Jack
sarcastically.
A frown was gathering on Taft's face. He no longer had the incentive
to self-command which the welfare of a plot requires. His plot was
shattered; the event was out of his control, at the uncovenanted mercy
of the future. It was almost sheerly from the force of curiosity that
he pressed the question:--
"How _did_ ye know, ennyhow?"
Perhaps he might not have been enlightened save for Larrabee's relish
for detailing the circumstances, in the paucity of incident and
interest in their underground career.
"Waal," he began in a narrative tone, and they all composed themselves
to listen. Even the elderly drudge decanted a jug of doublings into a
keg with marked speed of manner, and shuffled up into the circle, where
he seated himself on a broken-backed chair, which, since he could not
lean backward, rendered him fain to lean forward, his elbows on his
knees,--"waal, this evenin', it bein' sorter lonesome down hyar,--I
knowed 'twar goin' ter rain,--I felt sorter like 'twould be toler'ble
pleasant ter read in my book."
He paused in pride; the respect of the others for this accomplishment
was visible on their faces; it might be said to be almost tangible.
"I couldn't find it, though, nowhar; an' I s'arched an' s'arched. An'
suddint I 'membered I hed lef' it on the counter in the store. So
knowin' 'twar nigh dark, an' nobody likely ter be stirrin', I went up
inter the suller an' listened; an' ez I hearn nuthin', I went up the
ladder inter the room. Ye know I felt plumb safe, fur I thunk the door
war locked on the outside."
"Waal, warn't it?" asked Taft, with a swift look of alarm.
"_It warn't locked at all_; fur, ez I stood thar,--I hed jes' by
accident shet the door o' the counter up an' the suller,--the door of
the room opened."
Taft's breath was fast. He had himself unlocked the door before he came
down to the still. He could have sworn it.
"The door opened, an' a leetle gal kem in," Larrabee went on.
Taft's dismayed eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon him.
"Ye didn't tell her nuthin'!" he exclaimed, for he recognized the
avenging "Sis" without description.
Larrabee laughed at the reminiscence of the humors of the situation.
"I war fit ter drap down dead with plumb skeer at the sight o' her!
But I sorter held up by the counter, an' I say, 'I kem ter see 'Renzo
Taft,--yer dad, I reckon.' An' she owned up ter it. An' I say, 'I
'lowed he kep' the door o' the sto' locked.' An' she say, 'He do.
I think 'twar locked.' 'I reckon not,' I say, 'fur I couldn't hev
walked in ef he hed locked it.' An' she say, 'I couldn't hev locked it
_good_, agin. I _onlocked_ it this evenin' with my grandmam's
key what I brung from her house.'"
Lorenzo Taft gasped. The idea of old Mrs. Jiniway's keys unlocking his
helpless doors gave him a sense of the futility of concealment from the
prying feminine eye which nothing else could so adequately compass.
"An' then," continued Larrabee, with another burst of laughter,--Taft
did not think "Sis" half so funny,--"I axed her what ailed her ter
open the door of her dad's store whilst he war gone. She looked like
she hed a mind not to say another word. But she tuk another notion,--I
reckon she didn't like ter be faulted,--an' 'lowed ez a strange man hed
rid by; an' his horse bein' turrible fractious and hard-mouthed, the
bit hed bruk in the critter's mouth, an' he wanted ter buy another. So
Sis tried ter open the door, and done it, with her granny's key. An'
she sold him a bit. She said he war powerful saaft-spoken an' perlite,
ez ef she 'lowed _I warn't_! An' that gin me a chance ter ax her
what he said. An' she tole his name, an' the word ez he war 'bidin' at
Tems's,--fur Sis axed him. He got away with mighty leetle news that Sis
hed enny cur'osity 'bout."
Lorenzo Taft listened in silent despair. Disaster seemed closing about
him. Certainly this was a field for a stepmother. Adelicia could not
take the enterprising "Sis" in hand a moment too soon.
"How much did she want to know 'bout _you-uns_ that _ye_
didn't tell?" demanded Taft.
"Waal, I fell in line, an' wanted ter buy suthin', too. I purtended I
wanted ter buy a pound o' nails. Sis weighed 'em out fur me,--gin me
mighty scant measure,--an' then I 'lowed I would wait ter see you-uns,
an' I sot down in a cheer. An' she sent Joe ter set with me,--ter see I
never stole nuthin' o' the gear, I reckon,--an' went off in the t'other
room ter spinnin', ter jedge by the sound o' the wheel. An' Joe drapped
off ter sleep, an' arter a while I croped down hyar agin. I reckon she
'lowed, when she missed me, ez I got tired an' went away."
Taft, anxiously canvassing the probabilities, could but deem this more
than likely. He began to breathe freely. The girl was too young to
critically observe any departure from the usual routine, or to reason
about the matter. He doubted if she would know what moonshining was,
or could draw any inference from the fact of concealment should their
precautions chance to fall under her notice. Not that he intended,
however, to submit them to this jeopardy. The finding and fitting of
old Mrs. Jiniway's key to the door, in order that the sale of the bit
might not be lost, savored too much of a precocious intelligence to
be needlessly trusted. "Sis will bear watchin'," he said to himself,
unaware that this was a mutual conclusion.
For early rising was one of the virtues inculcated in old Mrs.
Jiniway's rule of life. Cornelia Taft was awake betimes the following
morning,--a dawn full of rain, of gray mist veiling the mountains,
of low clouds, of heavy, windless air. She saw its melancholy gleams
through the crevices of the clapboards of the roof above her head and
the batten shutter close by her bed. She knew that these fugitive
glimmers were brighter than the dull day slowly breaking without,
from the contrast with the deep tones of intervenient shadow. She lay
looking at them for a time with this thought in her mind, and then
she leaned forward and opened the shutter. It was as she had fancied:
the dusk was almost visible, like a brown mist that seemed subtle
and elusive, and always vaguely withdrew whenever the eye would fain
dwell upon it. A great elm grew just without the window and hung high
above the roof. Its leaves were all lustrous and deeply green with the
moisture; the graceful bole and branches were darker and more definite
than their wont. A bird's-nest was in a crotch. She turned her head
to hear the sleepy chirp of nestlings. She wondered that Joe had not
rifled it,--only because he had not observed it, she felt sure. "That
boy don't take notice o' nuthin'," she commented acridly upon her
senior. The next moment her own powers of observation were brought
into play. She heard steps, voices, a loud laugh, and before she
could experience either fear or surprise very definitely two or three
men passed out of the house, under the elm-tree, and down the road,
vanishing in the mist. She recognized one of them as the man who had so
suddenly appeared in the store the day before; another she had never
seen; the third was very young and very drunk.
Despite the sanctimonious atmosphere that had characterized Mrs.
Jiniway's domicile, the doings of the unregenerate had always been
commented upon with the freedom affected by those who are subject
neither to the temptation nor the transgression. Few gossips were
better informed upon current affairs than she and her youthful charge;
and it might be safe to say that, to all intents and purposes, a United
States marshal knew no more about the revenue laws as applied to
illicit distilling than did Miss Cornelia Taft.
Her small mind received a great enlightenment as she watched the young
moonshiner reel down the road with his two companions, and then she
leaned forward and softly and deftly closed the shutter as before.