nestle close to the pasty-faced Holvey,
who had not yet recovered the normal glow of complexion, and to stick his
yellow head under the moonshiner's arm for warmth while he steered the
craft. Indeed, when the boat was at length run into one of the small,
untenanted islands and the party disembarked, the little boy began to
chirp genially and to laugh for joy as a fire was kindled amidst the
rocks and brush of the interior, invisible from the shores. He basked in
the blaze and grew pink and gay, and even sought to initiate a game of
peek-a-boo from behind his white mittens with one of the ruffians; and
although a bit dashed when the surly, absorbed eyes stared unresponsively
at him, he plucked up spirit to ask if they were going to have supper,
and to say that he wanted some, and that he was a very good boy.

"Breakfast, Bub--this is the 'tother end of the day," Clenk explained,
preparing to broil slices of meat on the coals. There was soon a
johnny-cake baked on a board set up before the flames, but the pork was
evidently a new proposition to the small captive, and although he eyed it
greedily he could make no compact with it. Now and again he licked with a
grimace of distaste the unsavory chunk given him, and desisted, to watch
with averse curiosity the working jaws of the men and the motion of the
muscles in their temples as they hastily gobbled the coarse fare which
they cut with their clasp-knives. The fire duplicated their number with
their shadows, and occasionally he eyed these semblances speculatively as
they stretched on the sandy ground or skulked in the underbrush behind
their unconscious principals. Once or twice he lifted his own arm with an
alert gesture in imitative energy, and looked over his shoulder at his
squat little image, to note its obedience to his behest. One might have
thought he had put the greater part of the fat meat in smears about his
rosy cheeks and fresh baby lips, and certainly the pleated bosom of his
immaculate linen suit had received a generous remembrance. The remnant
was still in his hand when he began to nod in the drowsy influences of
the heat of the fire; he had collapsed into insensibility long before the
coals were raked apart to dull and die. He had no knowledge of the fact
when he was borne away by Holvey, who had been delegated to assume charge
of him, and who sulked in disaffection under the responsibility and his
doubts of the success of their plan.

Once more in the boa