f heavy weights (barrels, kegs, bags of
apples, and peaches for pomace), the loud voices and unguarded words.
When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean
air that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous
odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most
unobservant inmate, that the still was operated in a cellar, peculiarly
immune to suspicion, for a cellar is never an adjunct to the ordinary
mountain cabin. Thus the infraction of the revenue law went on securely
and continuously beneath the placid, simple, domestic life, with its
reverent care for the very aged and its tender nurture of the very
young.

It was significant, indeed, that the industry should not be
pretermitted, however, when a stranger was within the gates. The reason
to Wyatt, familiar with the moonshiners' methods and habits of thought,
was only too plain. They intended that the "revenuer" should never go
forth to tell the tale. His comrades had evidently failed to follow
his trail, either losing it in the wilderness or from ignorance of
his intention. He had put himself hopelessly into the power of
these desperate men, whom his escape or liberation would menace
with incarceration for a long term as Federal prisoners in distant
penitentiaries, if, indeed, they were not already answerable to the law
for some worse crime than illicit distilling. His murder would be the
extreme of brutal craft, so devised as to seem an accident, against the
possibility of future investigation.

The reflection turned Wyatt deathly cold, he who could not bear unmoved
the plea of a wild thing's eye. He sturdily sought to pull himself
together. It was none of his decree; it was none of his deed, he argued.
The older moonshiners, who managed all the details of the enterprise,
would direct the event with absolute authority and the immutability of
fate. But whatever should be done, he revolted from any knowledge of
it, as from any share in the act. He had risen to leave the place, all
strange of aspect now, metamorphosed,--various disorderly details of
the prohibited industry ever and anon surging up from the still-room
below,--when a hoarse voice took cognizance of his intention with a
remonstrance.

"Why, Watt Wyatt, _ye_ can't go out in the cove. Ye air dead! Ye will
let that t'other revenue-raider ye seen into the secret o' the bresh
whisky in our wagon ef ye air viewed about whenst 'Gene hev spread the
report