II.

A voice was calling from out the rising mists, calling again and again,

hailing the house. Briscoe dropped the lid of the piano and strode to the

door, followed by Bayne, the ladies standing irresolute on the hearthrug

and gazing apprehensively after them.

The sudden changes incident to the mountain atmosphere were evidenced in

the opaque density of the fog that had ensued on the crystalline

clearness of the sunset. It hung like a curtain from the zenith to the

depths of the valley, obscuring all the world. It had climbed the cliffs;

it was shifting in and out among the pillars of the veranda; it even

crossed the threshold as the door was opened, then shrank back

ghostly-wise, dissolving at the touch of the warm home radiance. As the

lamp-light flickered out, illuminating its pervasive pallor, the

new-comer urged a very lame horse to the steps of the veranda. The two

friends waiting within looked at each other in uncertainty as to their

policy in admitting the stranger. Then as his rapid footfalls sounded on

the veranda, and a stalwart figure appeared in the doorway, Briscoe

tilted the shade of the lamp on the table to throw its glare full on the

new-comer's face, and broke forth with an acclaim of recognition and

welcome.

To be sure, he was but a casual acquaintance, and Briscoe's cordiality

owed something of its fervor to his relief to find that the visitor was

of no untoward antecedents and intentions. An old school-fellow he had

been long ago in their distant city home, who chanced to be in the

mountains on a flying trip--no belated summer sojourner, no

pleasure-seeker, but concerned with business, and business of the

grimmest monitions. A brisk, breezy presence he had, his cheeks tingling

red from the burning of the wind and sun and the speed of his ride. He

was tall and active, thirty-five years of age perhaps, with a singularly

keen eye and an air intimating much decision of character, of which he

stood in need for he was a deputy collector of the revenue service, and

in the midst of a dangerous moonshining raid his horse had gone dead

lame.

"I hardly expected to find you still here at this season," he said to

Briscoe, congratulating himself, "but I took the chances. You must lend

me a horse."

Briscoe's instincts of hospitality were paramount, and he declared that

he would not allow the new-comer to depart so summarily. He must stay and

dine; he must stay the night; he must join the hunt that was planned for

to-morrow--a first-rate gun was at his disposal.

"I'll get you back to Glaston without delay. I'll let you drive the

dog-cart with Fairy-foot, the prettiest bit of horse-flesh that ever wore

a shoe--trots to beat the band! You can hunt all day with Bayne and me,

and a little before sunset you can start for Shaftesville, and she will

whisk you there in an hour and a quarter, twenty miles. You needn't start

till five o'clock to catch the seven-ten train, with lots of time to

spare."

In spite of all denial, the telephone bell was presently jangling as

Briscoe rang up the passenger-agent at the railroad depot in the little

town of Shaftesville, twenty miles away.

"Twenty-six--yes, Central, I _did_ say twenty-six!... Hello, Tucker, is

that you?... See here--Mr. Frank Dean will be there with the dog-cart

and Fairy-foot to-morrow evening to catch the seven-ten train for

Glaston--leaves here about an hour by sun. Will you do me the favor to

hire a responsible party there to bring the mare back?... Can't spare

a man from here. Lost two of my dogs--yes, my fine, full-blooded

hounds--you remember Damon and Pythias? Strayed off from the pack, and

all hands and the cook have got to get out straightway and hunt them.

Wolves--awfully afraid they will get the hounds. Outnumber them and pull

them down--fierce at this season.... Yes, I hope so! You'll look out for

Fairy-foot?... Thanks, awfully.... Yes, _he_ would do--careful fellow!

Tell him to drive slowly coming back. Dean will race her down there at

the top of her speed. (Hush up, Frank, _I_ know what I am talking about.)

Mr. Dean will be there all right. Thank you very much. Do as much for you

some day. Goo'-by."

But Dean's protests were serious. His duties admitted of no trifling. He

wanted no such superfine commodity as Fairy-foot, but a horse stout and

sound he must have to-night and the favor of leaving his disabled steed

in Briscoe's stable. He explained that his misfortune in laming the horse

and the fog combined had separated him from the revenue posse just from a

secluded cove, where his men had discovered and raided an illicit

distillery in a cavern, cutting the copper still and worm to bits,

demolishing the furnace and fermenters, the flake-stand and thumper,

destroying considerable store of mash and beer and singlings, and seizing

and making off with a barrel of the completed product. A fine and

successful adventure it might have seemed, but there were no arrests. The

moonshiners had fled the vicinity. For aught the officer had to show for

it, the "wild-cat" was a spontaneous production of the soil. He made

himself very merry over this phase of the affair, when seated at the

prettily appointed dinner table of the bungalow, and declared that

however the marshal might regard the matter, he could not call it a

"water-haul."

The repast concluded, he insisted that he must needs be immediately in

the saddle again. He scarcely stayed for a puff of an after-dinner cigar,

and when he had bidden the ladies adieu both Bayne and Briscoe went with

him to the stable, to assist in the selection of a horse suited to his

needs. Little Archie ran after them, begging to be admitted to their

company. Briscoe at once caught him up to his shoulder, and there he was

perched, wisely overlooking the choice of an animal sound and fresh and

strong as the three men made the tour from stall to stall, preceded by a

brisk negro groom, swinging a lantern to show the points of each horse

under discussion.

In three minutes the revenue officer, mounted once more, tramped out into

the shivering mists and the black night. The damp fallen leaves deadened

the sound of departing hoofs; the obscurities closed about him, and he

vanished from the scene, leaving not a trace of his transitory presence.

Briscoe lingered in the stable, finding a jovial satisfaction in the

delight of little Archie in the unaccustomed experience, for the child

had the time of his life that melancholy sombre night in the solitudes of

the great mountains. His stentorian shouts and laughter were as bluff as

if he were ten years old, and as boisterous as if he were drunk besides.

Briscoe had perched him on the back of a horse, where he feigned to ride

at breakneck speed, and his cries of "Gee!" "Dullup!" "G'long!" rang out

imperiously in the sad, murky atmosphere and echoed back, shrilly sweet,

from the great crags. The stable lantern showed him thus gallantly

mounted, against the purple and brown shadows of the background, his

white linen frock clasped low by his red leather belt, his cherubic legs,

with his short half hose and his red shoes, sticking stiffly out at an

angle of forty-five degrees, his golden curls blowing high on his head,

his face pink with joy and laughter. The light shone too in the big,

astonished eyes of the fine animal he bestrode, now and then turning his

head inquisitively toward Briscoe--who stood close by with a cautious

grasp on the skirts of the little boy--as if wondering to feel the clutch

of the infantile hands on his mane and the tempestuous beat of the little

feet as Archie cried out his urgency to speed.

Archie would not willingly have relinquished this joy till dawn, and the

problem how to get him peaceably off the horse became critical. He had

repeatedly declined to dismount, when at length a lucky inspiration

visited Briscoe. The amiable host called for an ear of corn, and with

this he lured the little horseman to descend, in order to feed a "poor

pig" represented as in the last stages of famine and dependent solely on

the ministrations of the small guest. Here renewed delights expanded, for

the "poor pig" became lively and almost "gamesome," being greatly

astonished by the light and men and the repast at this hour of the night.

As he was one of those gormands who decline no good thing, he affably

accepted Archie's offering, so graciously indeed that the little fellow

called for another ear of corn more amply to relieve the porcine

distresses, the detail of which had much appealed to his tender heart. It

seemed as if the choice of the good Mr. Briscoe lay between the fiction

of riding an endless race or playing the Samaritan to the afflicted pig,

when in the midst of Archie's noisy beatitudes sleep fell upon him

unaware, like a thief in the night. As he waited for the groom to

reappear with the second relay of refreshments, Briscoe felt the tense

little body in his clasp grow limp and collapse; the eager head with its

long golden curls drooped down on his shoulder; the shout, already

projected on the air, quavered and failed midway, giving place to a

deep-drawn sigh, and young Royston was fairly eclipsed for the night,

translated doubtless to an unexplored land of dreams where horses and

pigs and revenue officers and mountains ran riot together "in much

admired disorder." Briscoe bore him tenderly in his arms to the house,

and, after transferring him to his nurse, rejoined with Bayne the ladies

in the hall.

Here they found a change of sentiment prevailing. Although failing in no

observance of courtesy, Mrs. Briscoe had been a little less than

complaisant toward the departed guest. This had been vaguely perceptible

to Briscoe at the time, but now she gency constrained him."

"I don't see why you should have asked him to dine," she said to her

husband. "He was difficult to persuade, and only your urgency constrained

him."

Her face was uncharacteristically petulant and anxious as she stood on

the broad hearth at one side of the massive mantelpiece, one hand lifted

to the high shelf; her red cloth gown with the amber-tinted gleams of the

lines of otter fur showed richly in the blended light of fire and lamp.

Her eyes seemed to shrink from the window, at which nevertheless she

glanced ever and anon.

"I delight in the solitude here, and I have never felt afraid, but I

think that since this disastrous raid that revenue officer is in danger

in this region from the moonshiners, and that his presence at our house

will bring enmity on us. It really makes me apprehensive. It was not

prudent to entertain him, and certainly not at all necessary--it was

almost against his will, in fact."

"Well, well, he is gone now," returned Briscoe easily, lifting the lid of

the piano and beginning to play a favorite air. But she would not quit

the subject.

"While you three were at the stable I thought I heard a step on the

veranda--you need not laugh--Lillian heard it as well as I. Then, when

you were so long coming back, I went upstairs to get a little shawl to

send out to you to put over Archie as you came across the yard--the mists

are so dank--and I saw--I am _sure_ I saw--just for a minute--a light

flicker from the hotel across the ravine."

Briscoe, his hands crashing out involuntarily a discordant chord, looked

over his shoulder with widening eyes. "Why, Gladys, there is not a soul

in the hotel now!"

"That is why the light there seemed so strange."

"Besides, you know, you _couldn't_ have seen a light for the mists."

"The mists were shifting; they rose and then closed in again. Ask

Lillian--she happened to be standing at the window there, and she said

she saw the stars for a few moments."

"_Now, now, now!_" exclaimed Briscoe remonstrantly, rising and coming

toward the hearth. "You two are trying to get up a panic, which means

that this delicious season in the mountains is at an end for us, and we

must go back to town. Why can't you understand that Mrs. Royston saw the

stars and perhaps a glimpse of the moon, and that then you both saw the

glimmer of their reflection on the glass of the windows at the vacant

hotel. Is there anything wonderful in that? I appeal to Julian."

"I don't know anything about the conditions here, but certainly that

explanation sounds very plausible. As to the step on the veranda, Ned and

I can take our revolvers and ascertain if anyone is prowling about."

The proposition appealed to Mrs. Briscoe, and she was grateful for the

suggestion, since it served, however illogically, to soothe her nerves.

She looked at Bayne very kindly when he came in with his host, from the

dripping densities of the fog, his face shining like marble with the

pervasive moisture, his pistol in his hand, declaring that there was

absolutely nothing astir. But indeed there was more than kind

consideration in Mrs. Briscoe's look; there was question, speculation, an

accession of interest, and he was quick to note an obvious, though

indefinable, change in Mrs. Royston's eyes as they rested upon him. She

had spent the greater portion of the evening tête-à-tête with her

hostess, the men being with the horses. He was suddenly convinced that

meantime he had been the theme of conversation between the two, and--the

thought appalled him!--Mrs. Briscoe had persuaded her friend that to see

again the woman who had enthralled him of yore was the lure that had

brought him so unexpectedly to this solitude of the mountains. His object

was a matter of business, they had been told, to be sure, but "business"

is an elastic and comprehensive term, and in fact, in view of the

convenience of mail facilities, it might well cloak a subterfuge.

Naturally, the men had not divulged to the women the nature of the

business, more especially since it concerned the qualifications of a

prospective attorney-in-fact. This interpretation of his stay Bayne had

not foreseen for one moment. His whole being revolted against the

assumption--that he should languish again at the feet of this traitress;

that he should open once more his heart to be the target of her poisonous

arrows; that he should drag his pride, his honest self-respect, in the

dust of humiliation! How could they be so dull, so dense, as to harbor

such a folly? The thought stung him with an actual venom; it would not

let him sleep; and when toward dawn he fell into a troubled stupor, half

waking, half dreaming, the torpid state was so pervaded with her image,

the sound of her voice, that he wrested himself from it with a conscious

wrench and rose betimes, doubtful if, in the face of this preposterous

persuasion, he could so command his resolution as to continue his stay as

he had planned.