ly vaguely visible, like the
furnishings of a dream. A rowboat was rocking on the ripples among the
boulders at the water's edge. As the child made the perilous descent in
the practised clasp of the grandfatherly Clenk, he could look up and see
the jagged portal of the cave he had left, high above the river, though
not so high as the great, tall deciduous trees waving their lofty boughs
on the summit of the cliffs. Certain grim, silent, gaunt figures,
grotesquely contorted in the mist, the child's wide blue eyes traced out,
as the other moonshiners climbed too down the rugged face of the crag,
all burdened with bundles of varying size and unimaginable
contents--food, clothing, or such appliances of their craft as the
hurried revenue raiders had chanced to overlook. The little boy must have
contended with fear in this awesome environment, the child of gentlest
nurture, but he thought he was going to his mother, or perchance he could
not have submitted with such docility, so uncomplainingly. Only when they
had reached the rocky marge of the water and he had been uncoiled from
the rug and set upon his feet did he lift his voice in protest.

Clenk had stepped into the boat and seated himself, the oars rattling
smartly in the rowlocks, the sound sharp on the misty air, as he laid
hold on them. "So far, so good," he exclaimed cheerily.

"Won't they be fur trackin' of _him_?" One of the moonshiners, whom
the child had not seen before, seemed disposed to rebuke this easy
optimism.

"What fur? They will think Bubby went over the bluff too," Clenk declared
definitely.

"There's nuthin' ter show fur it, though," Copenny joined the opposite
opinion.

"Nuthin' needed in that mixtry of horseflesh an' human carcass an'
splintered wood and leather," argued Clenk.

"Yes, they will hev ter gather up them remains in a shovel," acquiesced
Holvey.

The shadowy form of the doubter who had introduced the subject, thick-set,
stoop-shouldered, showed in its attitude that he was lowering and ill at
ease. "Waal, you-uns hev made a powerful botch of the simple little trick
of drawing a bead on a revenuer anyhow. Takin' one man fur another--I
never dreamed o' the beat! Copenny war so sure o' the man an' the mare!
_I_ never purtended to know either. Seems ter me ye oughter be willin'
ter lis'n ter reason now."

"Waal, let's hear reason, then," Copenny's sardonic falsetto tones rasped
on the air, and the little head under the broad white, g