more
painfully obstinate. "I'll die fust!" He lifted his quivering hand and
shook it passionately in the air. "I ain't no ransomed saint, an' I
know it, but afore I'll betray that thar jury o' view what's been
app'inted by the county court ter lay off the damned road, I'll die
fust! I ain't no ransomed saint, I ain't, but I'll _die_ fust! I ain't
no ransomed"--

"Stop, boys, stop!" cried the wiry little horse-thief, as the others
gathered about Sneed with threatening eyes and gestures, while he
vociferated amongst them, as lordly as if he were in his oft-time
preeminence as the foreman of a jury. Nick Peters's face had changed.
There was a sudden fear upon it, uncomprehended by Persimmon Sneed. It
did not occur to him until long afterward that he had for the first
time used the expression "a jury of view," and that the horse-thief's
familiarity with the idea of a jury was only in the sense of twelve
men.

Peters spoke aside to the others, only a word or so, but there was
amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed
was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his
eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however,
was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense
of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although
afterward it became plain enough.

"Ye'll hev ter go an' 'bide along o' we-uns fur awhile, Mr. Sneed," he
said, choking with the laughter of some occult happy thought. "Ye
ain't a ransomed saint yit, but ye will be arter awhile, I reckon, ef
ye live long enough."

Their shadows skulked away as swiftly as they themselves, even more
furtively, running on ahead, in great haste to be gone. The
fire-light slanted through the woods in quick, elusive fluctuations,
ever dimmer, ever recurrently flaring, and when the jury of view and
their companions, alarmed by the long absence of Persimmon Sneed,
followed the strange light through the woods to the brink of the
burning spring, they found naught astir save the vagrant shadows of
the great boles of the trees, no longer held to their accustomed
orbit, but wandering through the woods with a large freedom.

That this fire, blazing brilliantly on the surface of the clear spring
water, was kindled by supernatural power was not for a moment doubted
by the mountaineers who had never before heard of such a phenomenon,
and the spiriting away of Persimmon Sneed they promptly ascrib