ver finding something for me to do if I offered a word about comin' up
here to see how Ben was getting on. That made me curious. So I snuck off
from the house and come up here one day." Jorde's eyes turned toward the
ground. "When I come up on Ben I couldn't believe my own eyes. My boy
had a fire goin' not under just one but a half dozen tubs! What's left
of them are over yonder." He jerked a thumb toward the brush covered
ravine. "My boy Ben was stirring around not with the wood fork like he
had been learnt, but with a shovel!" Jorde lifted scandalized eyes. "A
rusty shovel, at that! He was talking in a big way to his helper--a
strange man to me. I come to find out he was a friend of Effie's from
Cartersville."

Jorde pondered a while. "Come to find out, to make a long story short,
Ben was cheatin' them that bought his whiskey, tellin' them it was a
year old when he knew in reason he'd just run it off maybe the night
before. Ben Foley was sellin' pizen!" Old Jorde Foley's voice trembled.
"That's all it was that he was makin'. Pizen that he forced to ferment
with stuff that Effie's friend, who used to work in the coal mines,
brought here. And Ben sellin' that pizen that burnt the stummick and the
brains out of men that drunk it. Hi gad!"--old Foley spat vehemently--"I
never raised my son to be no such thief! It was that Jezebel Effie that
led my boy to the sin of thievin'. She wanted more cash money than he
could earn honest with makin' good whiskey."

It was Ben's fear of prison, old Jorde explained bluntly, that caused
him to run from the law, and running he had stumbled and thereby stopped
a bullet.

"What the law didn't bust to pieces of them tubs and shovels and such, I
did," Jorde added with a note of satisfaction. For a moment he lapsed
into silence, then added gravely, "Ben just nat'erly disgraced us
Foleys." The father hung his head in shame. "Why, Cynthie would turn
over in her grave if she knew of him thievin' and runnin'--runnin' from
the law! It's such as that Jezebel with her carryin's on, temptin' men
to thievin' that's put an end to makin'--makin' good whiskey in these
Dug Down Mountains here in Georgia. Put an end to sellin' good pure
whiskey for an honest price like me and mine used to make."

3. PRODUCTS OF THE SOIL

TIMBER

The individualism of the mountaineer has not made of him a scientific
inventor, but this marked trait of char