uncouth younger fellows, his shoulders laden with a sack of
meal, paused on his way from the porch to the trap-door to look up from
beneath his burden with a sly grin as he said, "'Gene war wishin' it war
true, that's why."

"'Count o' Minta Elladine Riggs," gaily chimed in another.

"But 'Gene needn't gredge Watt foot-hold on this yearth fer sech; _she_
ain't keerin' whether Watt lives or dies," another contributed to the
rough, rallying fun.

But Wyatt was of sensitive fibre. He had flushed angrily; his eyes were
alight; a bitter retort was trembling on his lips when one of the elder
Barkers, discriminating the elements of an uncontrollable fracas, seized
on the alternative.

"Could you-uns _sure_ be back hyar by day-break, Watt?" he asked, fixing
the young fellow with a stern eye.

"No 'spectable ghost roams around arter sun-up," cried Wyatt, fairly
jovial at the prospect of liberation.

"Ye mus' be heedful not ter be viewed," the senior admonished him.

"I be goin' ter slip about keerful like a reg'lar, stiddy-goin' harnt,
an' eavesdrop a bit. It's worth livin' a hard life ter view how a
feller's friends will take his demise."

"I reckon ye kin make out ter meet the wagin kemin' back from the
cross-roads' store. It went out this evenin' with that coffin full of
jugs that ye lef' las' night under the church-house, whenst 'Gene seen
you-uns war suspicioned. They will hev time ter git ter the cross-roads
with the whisky on' back little arter midnight, special' ez we-uns hev
got the raider that spied out the job hyar fast by the leg."

The mere mention of the young prisoner rendered Wyatt the more eager to
be gone, to be out of sight and sound. But he had no agency in the
disaster, he urged against some inward clamor of protest; the
catastrophe was the logical result of the foolhardiness of the officer
in following these desperate men with no backing, with no power to
apprehend or hold, relying on his flimsy disguise, and risking
delivering himself into their hands, fettered as he was with the
knowledge of his discovery of their secret.

"It's nothin' ter _me_, nohow," Wyatt was continually repeating to
himself, though when he sprang through the door he could scarcely draw
his breath because of some mysterious, invisible clutch at his throat.

He sought to ascribe this symptom to the density of the pervasive fog
without, that impenetrably cloaked all the world; one might wonder how a
man could find his way