o. Never while---- Oh, what was the use of thinking
about it? He rose impatiently, and walked through the brush at the top
of the field, slapping at the leaves with a switch that he had been
stripping.

Of a sudden he stopped and sat down on a stump.

"Goin' down with me, Mr. Baron?" called 'Gene from the top of the
loaded wagon.

"No, I think not. I'll stay and talk with Bud a while. Come up here,
Yare-brough," he added, as Frady drove off, whistling.

Bud approached, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his
shirt sleeve.

"Bud, did you know this was here?"

Von Rittenheim reached behind him and tapped something that gave forth
a sound of earthenware.

"Know what was there?"

"Come and see."

Yarebrough stepped behind the stump, upon whose top the Baron swung
around so as to keep his face in view.

"Whose jug?" asked Bud.

"I know not. I thought you might know."

Bud picked it up, disclosing a silver half-dollar upon which it had
been resting. He looked at it as if afraid, and then glanced sheepishly
at Friedrich.

"A half a gallon," remarked the German, dryly.

The mountaineer reddened and stooped for the coin.

"Wait!" commanded von Rittenheim. "Before you touch that, I want to ask
you if you would be willing that your wife should know how you ear-rned
that money?"

Yarebrough changed his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, and
then sat down suddenly, as if his legs were not equal to his support.

"Well, Ah wasn' fixin' to tell M'lissy," he acknowledged.

"Know you not that that so good little woman would r-rather be hungr-ry
than have you give her money that you gained by br-reaking the law?"

"Well, Ah wasn' fixin' to give hit to her."

"You weren't? What are you going to do with it?"

Unfortunately for the success of Friedrich's plan for Bud's moral
regeneration, Yarebrough's affection for the Baron made him reticent on
the fact of his debt to Pressley.

"For," he thought, sagely, "if Ah tell him Ah owe Pink, he'll go to
lend me the money, 'n Ah know he cain' afford hit. Would he ever 'a'
gone into sellin' blockade himself if he hadn' been as pore as a crow?"

His wit not being very ready, however, he offered no excuse, but
said,--

"Ah reckon Ah don' care to tell ye."

Friedrich laid his hand on the young man's shoulder as he sat beside
him on the ground.

"Think what it means, Bud, to do what now you do. You put yourself in
the class of wr-rongdoers instead o