pparent
value of his scheme, had their full weight. He saw credulity gradually
overpowering doubt and distrust, and his heart grew light with relief.
Even their cautious demur, intimating a reserve of opinion to the effect
that they would think about it, did not daunt him now. He believed,
in the simplicity of his faith in his own craft, now once more in the
ascendant, that if they should accept his proposition he would be
free to go without further complication of his relations with wild-cat
whiskey. He could not sufficiently applaud his wits for the happy
termination of the adventure to which they had led him. He had gone no
further in the matter than he had always intended. Brush whiskey was the
commodity that addressed itself most to his sense of speculation.
For this he had always expected to ferret out some way of safely
negotiating. He had gone no further than he should have done, at all
events, a little later. He even began mentally to "figger on the price"
down to which he should be able to bring the distillers, as he accepted
a proffered seat in the circle about the still. He could neither divide
nor multiply by fractions, and it is not too much to say that he might
have been throttled on the spot if the moonshiners could have had a
mental vision of the liberties the stalwart integers were taking with
their price-current, so to speak, and the preternatural discount that
was making so free with their profits. So absorbed in this pleasing
intellectual exercise was Nehemiah that he did not observe that any one
had left the coterie; but when a stir without on the rocks intimated an
approach he was suddenly ill at ease, and this discomfort increased when
the new-comer proved to be a man who knew him.

"Waal, Nehemiah Yerby!" he exclaimed, shaking his friend's hand, "I
never knowed you-uns ter be consarned in sech ez moonshinin'. I hev
been a-neighborin' Isham hyar," he laid his heavy hand on the tall
moonshiner's shoulder, "fur ten year an' better, but I won't hev nuthin'
ter do with bresh whiskey or aidin' or abettin' in illicit 'stillin'. I
like Isham, an' Isham he likes me, an' we hev jes agreed ter disagree."

Nehemiah dared not protest nor seek to explain. He could invent no
story that would not give the lie direct to his representations to the
moonshiners. He felt that their eyes were upon him. He could only hope
that his silence did not seem to them like denial--and yet was not
tantamount to confession in t