may be extracted a very powerful narcotic. In England prejudice against
it was for a long time very strong, especially among the poor.

[Begun in HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE No. 47, September 21.]

"MOONSHINERS."

BY E. H. MILLER.

CHAPTER II.

CONNY FINDS A HOME.

Two days afterward, when the doctor went out for his horse, he found
Conny sitting astride the block, his lap filled with sweet white clover,
which he was feeding to Prince with one hand, while with the other he
stroked the beautiful head that was bent down to him. He dropped to his
feet on seeing the doctor, and made a bow, grave and stiff, but not at
all bashful.

"I have come to live with you, sir," he said.

"Indeed," laughed the doctor; "and what do you suppose I want of you?"

"I don't know, sir; but my feyther always told me, if he died, I was not
to stay on the mountain, but go to some good man who would teach me to
work."

"And how do you know I am a good man?" asked the doctor, looking keenly
at the boy. "You have never seen me but once."

"I have seen you often. I saw you when you mended the rabbit's leg. Jock
Riley broke it with his big cart-whip."

"And where were you, pray?"

"Up in a tree, lying along a limb. And I was in the big tamarack when
you climbed up the hill for the little flower. I often wanted to know
why you cared to get it. My feyther thought perhaps it was good for
medicine; but when I told him you only took one, he said then he
couldn't tell; it might be you were crazed."

The doctor laughed heartily. It was by no means the first time his
passion for botanizing had been called a _craze_.

"Well, Conny," said he, "go into the house and get your breakfast, and
when I come back we will talk this matter over."

He stopped for a word of explanation with his wife, and drove away,
leaving Conny on the door-step, with a substantial slice of bread and
meat in his hands, and a bowl of milk beside him, while little Betty
peeped shyly at him through the window.

It gave the doctor a curious sensation to think, as he rode through the
solitary woods, of the little watcher stretched along a mossy limb, or
peering out from a treetop, like some strange, wild creature.

"He must have been set to keep guard by the moon-shiners," he thought.
"I wonder if they suspected I meant them mischief?" And then like a
flash came another thought: "They have sent him to me now as a spy to
find out if I have any secret business for the