elds; his
old stoop-shouldered back had bent yet more under the toil that had
brought his crop to this perfection, with the aid of the children whose
labor was scarcely worth the strenuosity requisite to control their
callow wiles.

"Shucks! He's a guerilla--he is!" retorted the blacksmith. "Accountable
ter nobody! Hyar ter-day an' thar ter-morrer. Rides light. Two leetle
Parrott guns is the most weight he carries."

The idiot's eyes began to widen with slow and baffled speculation.
"Whut--w-whut ails him ter take arter Tanglefoot? W-w--" his great loose
lips trembled with unformed words as he gazed his eager inquiry from one
to another. Under normal circumstances it would have remained
contemptuously unanswered, but in these days in Tanglefoot Cove a man,
though a simpleton, was yet a man, and inherently commanded respect.

"A bird o' the air mus' hev carried the matter that Tolhurst's troops
hed rid inter Tanglefoot Cove by mistake fur Greenbrier, whar they war
ter cross ter jine the Fed'rals nigh the Cohuttas. An' that guerilla,
Ackert, hed been ridin' a hundred mile at a hand-gallop ter overhaul
him, an' knowin' thar warn't but one outlet to Tanglefoot Cove, he
expected ter capshur the Feds as they kem out agin. So he sot himself
ter ambush Tolhurst, an' waited fur him up thar amongst the pines an'
the laurel--an' he _waited_--an' _waited_! But Tolhurst never came! So
whenst the guerilla war sure he hed escaped by ways unknownst he set out
ter race him down ter the Cohutty Mountings. But Tolhurst had j'ined the
main body o' the Federal Army, an' now Ackert is showing a clean pair o'
heels comin' back. But he be goin' ter take time ter raid the Cove--his
hurry will wait fur that! Somebody in Tanglefoot--the Lord only knows
who--showed Tolhurst that underground way out ter Greenbrier Cove,
through a sorter cave or tunnel in the mountings."

"Now--now--neighbor--_that's_ guesswork," remonstrated the miller, in
behalf of Tanglefoot Cove repudiating the responsibility. Perhaps the
semi-mercantile occupation of measuring toll sharpens the faculties
beyond natural endowments, and he began to perceive a certain connection
between cause and effect inimical to personal interest.

"Waal, that is the way they went, sartain sure," protested the
blacksmith. "I tracked 'em, the ground bein' moist, kase I wanted ter
view the marks o' their horses' hoofs. They hev got some powerful
triflin' blacksmiths in the army--farriers, th