ayly beribboned
hat turned up attentively, as the child stood so low down among the big
booted feet of the armed moonshiners.

"Why, how easy it would hev been ter throw su'thin' over the bluff----"
the counsellor began.

"Good Lord!" Clenk exclaimed angrily, from his seat in the boat, "ain't
ye got _no_ human feelin's, Jack Drann? We-uns never went ter shed the
innercent blood nohow. We-uns war loaded fur that tricky revenuer, an'
Edward Briscoe war kilt by mistake. An' now ye ter be talkin' 'bout
heavin' the leetle, harmless deedie over the bluff!"

"What ails yer hearin'?" retorted Drann angrily. "I said _su'thin'_--his
coat, his hat--throw _su'thin'_ over, ter make folks think he war in the
accident, too--mare run away and the whole consarn flopped bodaciously
over the bluff! They will scour the kentry fur Bubby ef thar ain't
su'thin' positive ter make them _sure_ ez he be dead, too."

Jubal Clenk, so readily cast down, meditated dolorously, as he sat still
in the boat, on this signal omission in the chain of evidence. "It would
sure hev made it all 'pear a heap mo' like an accident," he said
disconsolately. Then, with suddenly renewing hopefulness, "But 't ain't
too late yet--good many hours 'fore daylight. We kin send the coat an'
hat back an' toss them over the bluff long before it is light good."

Thus it was that the moonshiners laid hold on the boy's simple
possessions, and thus it was that Archie fought and contended for his
own. He clutched at the cuffs as Copenny dragged the sleeves over his
wrists; he held on to his hat with both hands, despite the grip of the
elastic under his chin, and he stamped and screamed in a manner that he
had heretofore known to inspire awe and respect in the nursery and disarm
authority. Alack, it had lost its efficacy now! Most of the men took no
notice whatever of his callow demonstrations of wrath, though old Clenk,
with a curious duality of mental process, laughed indulgently at his
antics of infantile rage, despite his own absorptions, his sense of
danger, his smart of loss and wreck of prospects.

It was Copenny who undertook to carry the coat and rug back to the spot,
and they willingly agreed to this on the score that he knew best the
precise locality where the catastrophe had befallen. Secretly, however,
he had resolved not to rejoin his companions at a named rendezvous, for
he had bethought himself that if all fled but him, remaining in his
accustomed home, he wou