en they fust kem in."

And thus it was that when the Coggins were presently brought before the
justice, they were exonerated of all complicity in the crime for which
Brierwood and his accomplice were afterward arrested, tried, and
sentenced to the State Prison.

Jim doubts whether the promised "good word" was ever spoken on his
behalf to the witches, who were represented as making personal inquiries
about him, because he suspects that the two robbers were themselves the
only evil spirits roaming the woods that night.

ON A HIGHER LEVEL

As Jack Dunn stood in the door of his home on a great crag of Persimmon
Ridge and loaded his old rifle, his eyes rested upon a vast and imposing
array of mountains filling the landscape. All are heavily wooded, all
are alike, save that in one the long horizontal line of the summit is
broken by a sudden vertical ascent, and thence the mountain seems to
take up life on a higher level, for it sinks no more and passes out of
sight.

This abrupt rise is called "Elijah's Step,"--named, perhaps, in honor of
some neighboring farmer who first explored it; but the ignorant boy
believed that here the prophet had stepped into his waiting fiery
chariot.

He knew of no foreign lands,--no Syria, no Palestine. He had no dream of
the world that lay beyond those misty, azure hills. Indistinctly he had
caught the old story from the nasal drawl of the circuit-rider, and he
thought that here, among these wild Tennessee mountains, Elijah had
lived and had not died.

There came suddenly from the valley the baying of a pack of hounds in
full cry, and when the crags caught the sound and tossed it from
mountain to mountain, when more delicate echoes on a higher key rang out
from the deep ravines, there was a wonderful exhilaration in this sylvan
minstrelsy. The young fellow looked wistful as he heard it, then he
frowned heavily.

"Them thar Saunders men hev gone off an' left me," he said reproachfully
to some one within the log cabin. "Hyar I be kept a-choppin' wood an' a
pullin' fodder till they hev hed time ter git up a deer. It 'pears ter
me ez I mought hev been let ter put off that thar work till I war
through huntin'."

He was a tall young fellow, with a frank, freckled face and auburn hair;
stalwart, too. Judging from his appearance, he could chop wood and pull
fodder to some purpose.

A heavy, middle-aged man emerged from the house, and stood regarding his
son with grim disfavor. "An'