in sudden relief. "He don't sense nuthin'! He's
too little to talk. He can't tell wuth shucks! We will jes' leave him
hyar in the road, an' the folks that find what's down thar in the valley
will find him too. I wonder somebody ain't passed a'ready. An' sure
we-uns oughter be a-travellin'."

But Holvey revolted against this offhand assumption of confidence. He
made a supplemental effort on his own account. "Why don't ye tell yer
name, Bubby?" he asked cajolingly.

"'Tause," the child answered abruptly, "I tan't talk."

Copenny burst into sudden sardonic laughter, with wondrous little mirth
in the tones, and the other miscreants were obviously disconcerted and
disconsolate, while the small schemer, whose craft had failed midway,
looked affrighted and marvelling from one to another, at a loss to
interpret the mischance.

"Dadburn it!" said the mercurial Clenk, as depressed now as a moment
earlier he had been easily elated. "We-uns will jes' hev ter take him
along of us an' keep him till he furgits all about it."

"An' when will ye be sure o' that?" sneered Copenny. "He is as tricky as
a young fox."

Half stunned by the tremendous import of the tragedy he had witnessed,
the child scarcely entered into its true significance in his concern for
his own plight. He realized that he was being riven from his friends, his
own, and made a feeble outcry and futile resistance, now protesting that
he would tell nothing, and now piteously assuring his captors that he
could not talk, while they gathered him up in the rug, which covered head
and feet, even the flaunting finery of his big, white beaver hat.

In the arms of the grandfatherly Clenk he was carried along the
bridle-path in the dulling sunset, and presently dusk was descending on
the austere mountain wilderness; the unmeasured darkness began to pervade
it, and silence was its tenant. As the party went further and further
into the woods, the struggles of the child grew fitful; soon he was
still, and at last--for even Care must needs have pity for his callow
estate--he was asleep, forgetting in slumber for a time all the horror
that he had seen and suffered.

But when he came to himself he was a shivering, whimpering bundle of
homesick grief. He wanted his mother--he would listen to naught but
assurances that they were going to her right away--right away! It was a
strange place wherein he found himself--all dark, save for flaring
torches. He could not understand his sur