ers were swiftly getting to saddle again. Now and then a crack
mountain shot drew a bead upon them from the bushes; but mists were
gathering, the moon was uncertain, and the flickering beams deflected
the aim. Two or three of the horses lay dead on the river-bank, and
others carried double, ridden by men with riddled hats. They were in
full retreat, for the catastrophe on the ledge of the cliff struck
dismay to their hearts. Had the man been shot, according to the
expectation of those who resist arrest, this would be merely the logical
sequence of events. But to be hurled from, a crag into a cataract
savored of atrocity, and they dreaded the reprisals of capture.

It was soon over. The whole occurrence, charged with all the
definitiveness of fate, was scant ten minutes in transition. A laggard
hoof-beat, a faint echo amidst the silent gathering of the moonlit
mists, and the loud plaint of Hoho-hebee Falls were the only sounds that
caught Nehemiah's anxious ear when he crept out from behind the empty
barrels and tremulously took his way along the solitary ledges, ever
and anon looking askance at his shadow, that more than once startled
him with a sense of unwelcome companionship. The mists, ever thickening,
received him into their midst. However threatening to the retreat of the
raiders, they were friendly to him. Once, indeed, they parted, showing
through the gauzy involutions of their illumined folds the pale moon
high in the sky, and close at hand a horse's head just above his own,
with wild, dilated eyes and quivering nostrils. Its effect was as
detached as if it were only drawn upon a canvas; the mists rolled over
anew, and but that he heard the subdued voice of the rider urging the
animal on, and the thud of the hoofs farther away, he might have thought
this straggler from the revenue party some wild illusion born of his
terrors.

The fate of Hilary Tarbetts remained a mystery. When the stream was
dragged for his body it was deemed strange that it should not be found,
since the bowlders that lay all adown the rocky gorge so interrupted the
sweep of the current that so heavy a weight seemed likely to be caught
amongst them. Others commented on the strength and great momentum of the
flow, and for this reason it was thought that in some dark underground
channel of Hide-and-Seek Creek the moonshiner had found his sepulchre.
A story of his capture was circulated after a time; it was supposed that
he dived and swam asho