treaming from the great chimney-place, and before the
broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their out-stretched boots
steaming in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried
herbs, gourds of varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters.
The old man's gay, senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife, a
type of comely rustic age, who made much of the fact that, though
house-bound from "rheumatics," she had reared her dead daughter's "two
orphin famblies," the said daughter having married twice, neither man
"bein' of a lastin' quality," as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, "the
eldest fambly," had been guide, philosopher, and friend to the swarm of
youngsters, and even now, in the interests of peace and space and
hearing, was seeking to herd them into an adjoining room, when a sudden
stentorian hail from without rang through the splashing of the rain from
the eaves, the crash of thunder among the "balds" of the mountains, with
its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging of the wind.

"Light a tallow-dip, Meddy," cried old Kettison, excitedly. "An' fetch
the candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech
a night 'fore we bid 'em ter light an' hitch."

But these were travelers not to be gain-said--the sheriff of the county
and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his aid as
a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises. However,
the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the influence of
a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, "strong enough to walk
from here to Colbury," according to the sheriff's appreciative phrase.
He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant of his burly head
and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His hair stood up in
two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he had large, round,
grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To Meddy, staring
horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked while he
explained the object of his expedition.

"This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison.
Here is this fellow, Royston McGurny, been about here two years, and a
reward for five hundred dollars out for his arrest."

"That's Roy's fault, Sher'ff, not our'n," leered the glib old man. He,
too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. "Roy's in no wise
sociable."

"It's plumb flying in the face of the law," declared the officer. "If I
had a guide,