since comment seemed expected he conceded, "There seems to be
a germ of reason in that."

"Then ther boy commenced growin' up, lazy-like an' shiftless,"
enlightened the parson. "Ther old man 'lowed thet hit wouldn't hardly
be no fallacy ter name him Lizzie or Lake Erie, but he swore on a hull
stack of Bibles thet he aimed ter make a man of ther gal."

Suddenly the speaker broke off and his brow clouded. Following the
apprehensive direction of the frowning eyes as one might follow a
dotted line the man from the city saw a young mountaineer
surreptitiously tilting a flask to his lips in the lee of a huge
boulder. Palpably the drinker believed himself screened from view, and
when he had wiped the neck of the flask with the palm of his hand and
stowed it away again in his breast pocket he looked furtively about
him--and that furtiveness was unusual enough to elicit surprise in this
land where men drank openly and made moonshine whiskey and even gave it
to their small children.

"Since ther time of corn drappin' an' kiverin'," said the Parson,
slowly, "Bud Sellers hain't teched a dram afore now. Hit don't
pleasure me none ter see him startin' in afresh."

"He's been working hard," suggested the timber buyer tolerantly. "I've
watched him and he never seems to tire. Maybe he felt the need of a
stimulant."

But Acup growled. "When Bud leaves licker alone thar hain't no better
boy nowhars. When he follers drinking he gits p'izen mean right down
to ther marrer in his insidest bone. Folks calls him ther mad-dog
then. Ef these men finds out he's drinkin', they'll quit work an'
scatter like pa'tridges does when they sees a hawk flutterin' overhead."

The loose-jointed giant turned on his heel and left Brent standing
alone. Snow after snow had fallen this winter and frozen tight, heaped
high by blizzard after blizzard until all the legendary "old fashioned
winters" had been outdone and put to shame. Then without warning had
come some warm breath across the peaks bringing January rains on the
heels of zero frigidity and thaws of unprecedented swiftness. While
the "spring-tide" was to have been an agency of safe delivery for the
felled timber this premature flood threatened to be a lawless one of
devastation. Brent had rushed up here from the city driven by anxiety
as to the logs he had contracted to buy--logs which the oncoming flood
threatened to ravish into scattered and racing drift. He had found old
man McGiv