t a spy----"

He broke off suddenly, and one saw how strong had been the bond between
him and the young justice, how greatly he cared that the memory of the
man even should be cleared.

The boys looked at each other, and with a gulp Jeff began again:

"I reckon you knowed well enough we stood in with Blatch when he hid out
and let folks believe the killin' had been did. We knowed you seen
through it all; but when ye git started in a business like that, one
thing leads on to another, and befo' you're done with it, ye do a plenty
that you'd ruther not."

"Well, hit's over and cain't be he'ped, but you've done what's right at
last," Jephthah assured them. "The church is a mighty good thing for
young fellers like you. A good wife'll do a sight to he'p along."

He looked at them kindly. He had never liked his boys half so well.

"I'm mighty proud of the both of ye," he concluded heartily. "Ef Creed
Bonbright ever does come back in the mountains, we'll show him that the
Turrentines can be better friends than foes to a man."

Chapter XXI

The Baptising

October had led forth her train across the Cumberlands. One night the
forest was fairly green, but early risers next morning found that in the
darkness while they slept the hickories had been touched to gold, the
oaks smitten with a promise of the glowing mahogany-red which was to be
theirs. Sourwood and sumach blazed; the woodbine flung its banner of
blood, chestnuts were yellow where the nuts dropped through them from
loosened burs. The varying dark greens of balsam and fir, pine and cedar,
heightened by contrast the glow of colour, while the dim blue sky above
set its note of tender distance and forgetfulness. On a thousand mountain
peaks smoked and smouldered, flared and flamed the altar fires of
autumn.

After that each day saw a deepening of the glory in the hills. It was
like a noble overture a multitudinous chorus made visible. The marvel of
it was that one sense should be so clamorously challenged while the other
was not addressed. The ear hearkened ever amid that grand symphony of
colour for some mighty harmony of sound. But even the piping song-birds
were gone, and the cry of a hawk wheeling high in the blue, the voice of
a woman calling her cow, these sounded loud in the autumnal hush.

The streams were shrunken to pools whose clear jade reaches reflected the
blazing banners above them, and offered mimic seas for the sailing of
painted argosies