who stood there, tensely listening to him, "an' yo'
keep a still."

Now Lorey again caught his rifle quickly in both hands; his face showed
new apprehension, and a terrible determination, desperate and dreadful.
If this stranger knew about the still, was it not certain that he was a
government spy and therefore worthy of quick death?

"Keerful!" he said menacingly. "Hyar in th' mountings that word's worth
your life!" The youth, with frowning brow and glittering, wolfish eyes,
stood facing Holton like an animal at bay, with what amounted to a
threat of murder on his lips.

"I'm speakin' it for your own good," the old man answered, throwing into
his voice as much of frankness as he could command. "I tell you that th'
revemooers have got word about your still."

"Then somebody's spied an' told 'em."

Here was Holton's chance. The vicious scheme came to him in a flash.
Layson he hated fiercely; this youth he hated fiercely. What plan could
be better than to set the one to hunt the other? If Lorey should kill
Layson it would remove Layson from his path and make his way clear to
the purchase of Madge Brierly's coal-lands at a small fraction of their
value. And, having killed him, Lorey would, of course, be forced to flee
the country, for the hue and cry would be far-reaching. Such a killing
never would be passed over as an ordinary mountain murder generally is
by the authorities. Thus, at once, he might be rid of the young
bluegrass gentleman he hated and the young mountaineer he feared.

"You're right," said he. "Somebody's spied an' told 'em. Somebody as
stumbled on yore still while he was huntin'."

Lorey looked at him, wide-eyed, infuriated. Instantly he quite believed
what Holton said. It dove-tailed with his own grim hate of Layson that
Layson should hate him and try to work his ruin by giving information to
the revenuers. "Somebody huntin'!" he exclaimed. "Frank Layson! Say it,
say it!"

"Promise you'll never speak my name?" said Holton. He had no wish to be
mixed up in the tragic matter, and he knew, instinctively, that if Joe
Lorey gave his word, moonshiner and lawbreaker as he was, it would be
kept to the grim end.

"I promise it, if it air th' truth you're tellin' me," said Lorey.

"It's true, then," Holton answered. "You can see for your own self that
I'm a stranger hyar. I couldn't a' knowed o' th' still exceptin' through
Frank Layson."

The simple, specious argument to Lorey was convincing. "It air