t, the chill of the dank river atmosphere awakened
little Archie. He sent forth a peevish, imperative call, "Mamma!" so
shrill and constraining, reaching so far across the dark water, that a
hand before his lips smothered its iteration in his throat. "Bee-have!"
Holvey hissed in his ear, and as the child struggled into a sitting
posture his involuntary bleat, "Mamma!" was so meekened by fear and
plaintive recollection and submissive helplessness that it could scarcely
have been distinguished a boat's length distant.

The moon was down, but the morning star was in the sky, splendid,
eloquent, charged with a subtle message expressed in no other sidereal
scintillation, heralding not only the dawn, but palpitant with the
prophecy and the assurance of eternal day. There was a sense of light
about the eastern mountains, albeit so heavily looming. And suddenly, all
at once, the faces of the shadowy men who had borne him hither were fully
revealed, and as he sat and shivered in his thin little dress he eyed
them, first one for a long time, and then another, and he shivered
throughout with a fear more chilly than the cold. Perhaps it was well for
the equilibrium of his reason that fear so acute could not continue. He
presently began to cough, and when he sought to reply to a question he
could only wheeze. An infantile captive wields certain coercions to fair
treatment peculiar to nonage. The moonshiners had suddenly before their
eyes the menace of croup or pneumonia, and, to do them justice, the
destruction of the child had not been part of their project. There ensued
gruff criminations and recriminations among them before the baby was
rolled up in a foul old horse-blanket, and a dose of the pure moonshine
whisky, tempered with river water, was poured down his throat. It may
have been the slumber induced by this potent elixir, or it may have been
the effects of fever, but he was not conscious when they reached the
forks of the Tennessee and were pulling up the Oconalufty River. He only
knew vaguely when once more they had disembarked, though now and then he
sought vainly to rouse himself to the incidents of a long march. Finally
he was still and silent so long in old Clenk's arms as to excite
immediate fears. Now and again as they forged along at the extreme limit
of their endurance they took the time to shake up the poor baby and seek
by suggestion to induce him to say that he felt better. But his head had
begun to roll heavily