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 of the roof. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional drops fell a-sputteriug 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 warping-bars, 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' lef' 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 we-uns 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, with a sort of aghast 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 wouldn'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 'twar revenuers. An' then I wisht 'twar. I hed ruther hev hearn _them_ 'n--'n--dead ones."

His countenance did not change a muscle.

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. "Revenuers arter what?" he demanded. His 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 supper 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 terra-cotta 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 obscure his countenance and more completely secure his gag. 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 jerked his thumb 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 deliverence.

"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 swinging motion which was characteristic of him, 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 sat up stupidly, 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 worse fool you-uns! Look-a-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 out 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? 'Twarn't me! God A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar Lar'bee! 'Twar 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 of 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, and 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 thrown out into the surrounding obscurity seemed very meagre in the darksome place, which was 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 still-room was 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 vise-like 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 hyarabout, 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?" 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 role 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 darkness 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 brick-work 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 Taft growled a deep oath, his face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.

"That kems from sparin' powder an' lead," he declared vindictively. "Whyn't ye or Sykes shoot him?"

"He war too suddint," gasped Copley. "Ye never see a painter so suddint an' sharp."

"An' whyn'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 numb 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, ill-cut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of re-attaining 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. "'Twar 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, "whyn't ye let me examinate it? Ye ain't got my 'speriunce; ye ain't ekal ter jedge like me. Whyn'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' irons 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' helt hyar," Taft continued. "We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An' the dep'ty sher'ff's on his track, 'lowin' ez Espey be Lar'bee an' s'picionin' moonshinin'. The dep'ty sher'ff ain't got nuthin' ter do with sech ez moonshinin' hisse'f, but he air tryin' ter find Lar'bee, 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 be 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' we-uns mought hev gone on peaceful an' convenient till the crack o' doom, ef it hedn'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 dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy; his self-seeking a cogent prudence; and his natural courage--with which, indeed, be 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 for sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, consider 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 lef' 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 be 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 the 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?" 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 disaffect Taft's mind toward it.

"Mebbe somebody mought be passin' an' hear the 'splosion; moughtn't they low 'twar 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, "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 of powder; 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 still-room, the reiterated strokes of a pick echoing 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 the sound, 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, false-ringing 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 laughing as 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 an entrance 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.