ang
to his throat. What if the dire explosive he had planned to use upon his
enemies should prove to be the death of the one being whom he loved? He
sprang toward her with the mighty impulse of desperate muscles spurred
by a panic-stricken mind and caught her, roughly, just before her foot
would have touched and spurned the game-sack.

"Stop!" he cried, in desperation.

She was amazed that he should take so great a liberty. She stopped,
perforce, but, after she had stopped, she stood there trembling with hot
anger. "Joe Lorey," she exclaimed, "you dare!"

Now he was all humility as he let his hand fall from her arm. "It was
for your sake, Madge," said he. "A stumble on that sack--it mout have
sent us both to Kingdom Come!"

She looked at him incredulously, then down at the sack. "That old
game-sack? Why, Joe, you're plumb distracted!"

"I'm in my senses, yet, I tell you," he persisted. "T'other day I went
down where they're blastin' for th' railroad. I see 'em usin'
dynamighty, down thar, an' I watched my chance an', when it come, I
slipped one o' th' bombs into that game-sack. Ef you'd chanced to kick
it--"

She was impressed. "Dynamighty bombs? Dellaw! What's dynamighty bombs?"

"It's a giant powder, a million times stronger nor mine." He reached
into the sack and, with cautious fingers, took out the cartridge and the
fuse, exhibiting them to her. "See here. I seed 'em take a bomb no
bigger nor this one, an' light a fuse like this, an' when it caught it
ennymost shook down a mounting! I seed a poor chap what war careless
with one, an' when they picked him up, why--"

"Don't, Joe!" said the girl, looking at the cartridge with the light of
horror shining in her eyes. "What you doin' with such devil's stuff?"

"I got it for th' revenuers," he said frankly. The mountaineers of the
old Cumberland, to this day, make no secret of their deadly hatred for
the agents of the government excise. "They're snoopin' 'round th'
mountings, an' if they find my still I plan to blow it into nothin', an'
them with it."

She recoiled from him. "No, no, Joe; you'd better gin th' still up, nor
do such work as that!"

"I'll never gin it up!" said he, with a set face. "It's mine; it war my
father's long before me. There's only one thing could ever make me gin
it up."

"What's that?" The girl was still spellbound by the fascination of the
dynamite which she had come so near to treading on. Her eyes were fixed
upon the cartridge i