revenue posse just from a
secluded cove, where his men had discovered and raided an illicit
distillery in a cavern, cutting the copper still and worm to bits,
demolishing the furnace and fermenters, the flake-stand and thumper,
destroying considerable store of mash and beer and singlings, and seizing
and making off with a barrel of the completed product. A fine and
successful adventure it might have seemed, but there were no arrests. The
moonshiners had fled the vicinity. For aught the officer had to show for
it, the "wild-cat" was a spontaneous production of the soil. He made
himself very merry over this phase of the affair, when seated at the
prettily appointed dinner table of the bungalow, and declared that
however the marshal might regard the matter, he could not call it a
"water-haul."

The repast concluded, he insisted that he must needs be immediately in
the saddle again. He scarcely stayed for a puff of an after-dinner cigar,
and when he had bidden the ladies adieu both Bayne and Briscoe went with
him to the stable, to assist in the selection of a horse suited to his
needs. Little Archie ran after them, begging to be admitted to their
company. Briscoe at once caught him up to his shoulder, and there he was
perched, wisely overlooking the choice of an animal sound and fresh and
strong as the three men made the tour from stall to stall, preceded by a
brisk negro groom, swinging a lantern to show the points of each horse
under discussion.

In three minutes the revenue officer, mounted once more, tramped out into
the shivering mists and the black night. The damp fallen leaves deadened
the sound of departing hoofs; the obscurities closed about him, and he
vanished from the scene, leaving not a trace of his transitory presence.

Briscoe lingered in the stable, finding a jovial satisfaction in the
delight of little Archie in the unaccustomed experience, for the child
had the time of his life that melancholy sombre night in the solitudes of
the great mountains. His stentorian shouts and laughter were as bluff as
if he were ten years old, and as boisterous as if he were drunk besides.
Briscoe had perched him on the back of a horse, where he feigned to ride
at breakneck speed, and his cries of "Gee!" "Dullup!" "G'long!" rang out
imperiously in the sad, murky atmosphere and echoed back, shrilly sweet,
from the great crags. The stable lantern showed him thus gallantly
mounted, against the purple and brown shadows of the