n' heavy,
an' 'bout five mile' back Ben cast a shoe. The funeral warn't over much
'fore noon."

"Whyn't they bury him in Eskaqua, whar he died!" persisted Browdie.

"Waal, they planned ter bury him alongside his mother an' gran'dad, what
used ter live in Tanglefoot Cove. But we air wastin' time hyar, an' we
hev got none ter spare. Gee, Ben! Git up, John!"

The wagon gave a lurch; the horses, holding back in bracing attitudes
far from the pole, went teetering down the steep slant, the locked wheel
dragging heavily; the four men sat silent, two in slouching postures at
the head of the coffin; the third, with the driver, was at its foot. It
seemed drearily suggestive, the last journey of this humble mortality,
in all the splendid environment of the mountains, under the vast
expansions of the aloof skies, in the mystic light of the unnoting moon.

"Is this bona-fide?" asked Browdie, with a questioning glance at the
informer, who had at length crept forth.

"I dunno," sullenly responded the mountaineer. He had acquainted the
two officers, who were of a posse of revenue-raiders hovering in the
vicinity, with the mysterious circumstance that a freighted wagon now
and then made a midnight transit across these lonely ranges. He himself
had heard only occasionally in a wakeful hour the roll of heavy wheels,
but he interpreted this as the secret transportation of brush whisky
from the still to its market. He had thought to fix the transgression
on an old enemy of his own, long suspected of moonshining; but he was
acquainted with none of the youngsters on the wagon, at whom he had
peered cautiously from behind the rocks. His actuating motive in giving
information to the emissaries of the government had been the rancor of
an old feud, and his detection meant certain death. He had not expected
the revenue-raiders to be outnumbered by the supposed moonshiners, and
he would not fight in the open. He had no sentiment of fealty to the
law, and the officers glanced at each other in uncertainty.

"This evidently is not the wagon in question," said Browdie,
disappointed.

"I'll follow them a bit," volunteered Bonan, the younger and the more
active of the two officers. "Seems to me they'll bear watching."

Indeed, as the melancholy cortege fared down and down the steep road,
dwindling in the sheeny distance, the covert and half-suppressed
laughter of the sepulchral escort was of so keen a relish that it was
well that the scraping of