no gift, no sentiment, no discrimination.
Something faintly sonorous there was in his soul, and it vibrated to the
twanging of the strings. He was far less alert to the conversation than
the others, whose listening attitudes attested their appreciation of the
importance of the moment.

"Waal," observed the moonshiner, impatiently, eying the tremulous and
tongue-tied Yerby, "hev ye fund what ye war a-huntin' fur?"

So tenacious of impressions was Nehemiah that it was the violin in those
alien hands which still focussed his attention as he stared gaspingly
about. Leander was not here; probably had never been here; and the
twanging of those strings had lured him to his fate. Well might he
contemn the festive malevolence of the violin's influence! His letter
had failed; no raider had intimidated these bluff, unafraid, burly
law-breakers, and he had put his life in jeopardy in his persistent
prosecution of his scheme. He gasped again at the thought.

"_Waal_." said the moonshiner, evidently a man of short patience, and
with a definite air of spurring on the visitor's account of himself, "we
'ain't been lookin' fur any spy lately, but I'm 'lowin' ez we hev fund
him."

His fear thus put into words so served to realize to Yerby his immediate
danger that it stood him in the stead of courage, of brains, of
invention; his flaccid muscles were suddenly again under control; he
wreathed his features with his smug artificial smile, that was like
a grimace in its best estate, and now hardly seemed more than a
contortion. But beauty in any sense was not what the observer was
prepared to expect in Nehemiah, and the moonshiner seemed to accept the
smile at its face value, and to respect its intention.

"Spies don't kem climbin' down that thar path o' yourn in full view
through the water"--for the landscape was as visible through the thin
falling sheet as if it had been the slightly corrugated glass of a
window--"do they?" Yerby asked, with a jocose intonation. "That thar
shootin'-iron o' yourn liked ter hev skeered me ter death whenst I fust
seen it."

His interlocutor pondered on this answer for a moment. He had an adviser
among his corps whose opinion he evidently valued; he exchanged a quick
glance with one of the men who was but dimly visible in the shadows
beyond the still, where there seemed to be a series of troughs leading a
rill of running water down from some farther spring and through the tub
in which the spiral worm wa