t there was not much delay on the part of the guests. The
women were dying to question Sis, and Woodward was anxious to be alone;
and so they said "Good night," the earnestness and quaint simplicity of
the old women carrying Woodward back to the days of his childhood, when
his grandmother leaned tenderly over his little bed, and whispered:
"Good night, dear heart, and pleasant dreams."

Shortly afterward the lights were put out, and, presumably, those under
Teague Poteet's roof addressed themselves to slumber. But what of the
news that Sis had given to the winds? There was no slumber for it until
it had fulfilled its mission. Where did it go, and what was its burden?
Three sharp blasts upon a horn, thrice repeated; then an interval; then
three more thrice repeated. Up, up the mountain the signal climbed; now
faltering, now falling, but always climbing; sending echoes before it,
and leaving echoes behind it, but climbing, climbing; now fainting and
dying away, but climbing, climbing, until it reached Pullium's Summit,
the smallest thread of sound. Two men were sitting talking in front of
a cabin. The eldest placed one hand upon the shoulder of his companion,
and flung the other to his ear. Faint and far, but clear and strenuous,
came the signal. The men listened even after it had died away. The
leaves of the tall chestnuts whipped each other gently, and the breeze
that had borne the signal seemed to stay in the tops of the mountain
pines as if awaiting further orders; and it had not long to wait.

The man who had held his hand to his ear slapped his companion on the
back, and cried, "Poteet's!" and that was news enough for the other,
who rose, stretched himself lazily, and passed into the cabin. He came
out with a horn--an exaggerated trumpet made of tin,--and with this to
his lips he repeated to the waiting breeze, and to the echoes that were
glad to be aroused, the news that had come from Poteet's. Across the
broad plateau of Pullium's Summit the wild tidings flew, until,
reaching the western verge of the mountain, they dived down into
Prather's Mill Road--a vast gorge which takes its name from the freak
of a drunken mountaineer, who declared he would follow the stream that
rushed through it until he found a mill, and was never heard of again.

The news from Poteet's was not so easily lost. It dropped over the
sheer walls of the chasm, three hundred feet down, and refused to be
drowned out by the rush and roar of the