rveyor gazed after him much mystified.

"What is that old fox slyin' round after? He ain't studyin' 'bout no
saw-mill, inquirin' round about all the out-o'-the-way water-power in
the ken-try fifty mile from where he b'longs. He's a heap likelier to
be goin' ter start a wild-cat still in them wild places--git his whiskey
cheap ter sell in his store."

He shook his head sagely once for all, for the surveyor's mind was of
the type prompt in reaching conclusions, and he was difficult to divert
from his convictions.

A feature of the development of craft to a certain degree is the
persuasion that this endowment is not shared. A fine world it would
be if the Nehemiah Yerbys were as clever as they think themselves, and
their neighbors as dull. He readily convinced himself that he had given
no intimation that his objects and motives were other than he professed,
and with unimpaired energy he went to work upon the lines which he had
marked out for himself. A fine chase Hide-and-Seek Creek led him, to be
sure, and it tried his enthusiasms to the uttermost. What affinity
this brawling vagrant had for the briers and the rocks and the tangled
fastnesses! Seldom, indeed, could he press in to its banks and look
down upon its dimpled, laughing, heedless face without the sacrifice of
fragments of flesh and garments left impaled upon the sharp spikes
of the budding shrubs. Often it so intrenched itself amidst the dense
woods, and the rocks and chasms of its craggy banks, that approach was
impossible, and he followed it for miles only by the sound of its wild,
sweet, woodland voice. And this, too, was of a wayward fancy; now, in
turbulent glee among the rocks, riotously chanting aloud, challenging
the echoes, and waking far and near the forest quiet; and again it
was merely a low, restful murmur, intimating deep, serene pools and
a dallying of the currents, lapsed in the fulness of content. Then
Nehemiah Yerby would be beset with fears that he would lose this
whisper, and his progress was slight; he would pause to listen, hearing
nothing; would turn to right, to left; would take his way back
through the labyrinth of the laurel to catch a thread of sound, a mere
crystalline tremor, and once more follow this transient lure. As the
stream came down a gorge at a swifter pace and in a succession of
leaps--a glassy cataract visible here and there, airily sporting with
rainbows, affiliating with ferns and moss and marshy growths, the
bounding