stray-book ter bide hyar in the court-house all night,
Tobe? Couldn't ye gin it house-room? Thar warn't no special need fur it
to be hyar."

Tobe Gryce's face showed that for once he was at a loss. He glowered
down at the register and said nothing.

"Ez ter me," resumed that worthy, "by the law o' the land my books war
obligated ter be thar." He quoted, mournfully, "'Shall at all times be
and remain in his office.'"

He gathered up his knee again and subsided into silence.

All the freakish spirits of the air were a-loose in the wind. In fitful
gusts they rushed up the gorge, then suddenly the boughs would fall
still again, and one could hear the eerie rout a-rioting far off down
the valley. Now and then the glow of the fire would deepen, the coals
tremble, and with a gleaming, fibrous swirl, like a garment of flames,
a sudden animation would sweep over it, as if an apparition had passed,
leaving a line of flying sparks to mark its trail.

"I'm goin' home," drawled Tobe Gryce, presently. "I don't keer a frog's
toe-nail ef the whole settle-mint burns bodaciously up; 'tain't nuthin
ter me. I hev never hankered ter live in towns an' git tuk up with town
ways, an' set an' view the court-house like the apple o' my eye. We-uns
don't ketch fire down in the Cove, though mebbe we ain't so peart ez
folks ez herd tergether like sheep an' sech."

The footfalls of the little black mare annotated the silence of the
place as he rode away into the darkling woods. The groups gradually
disappeared from the porches. The few voices that sounded at long
intervals were low and drowsy. The red fire smouldered in the centre of
the place, and sometimes about it appeared so doubtful a shadow that it
could hardly argue substance. Far away a dog barked, and then all was
still.

Presently the great mountains loom aggressively along the horizon. The
black abysses, the valleys and coves, show dun-colored verges and grow
gradually distinct, and on the slopes the ash and the pine and the oak
are all lustrous with a silver rime. The mists are rising, the wind
springs up anew, the clouds set sail, and a beam slants high.

*****

"What I want ter know," said a mountaineer newly arrived on the scene,
sitting on the verge of the precipice, and dangling his long legs over
the depths beneath, "air how do folks ez live 'way down in Lonesome
Cove, an' who nobody knowed nuthin about noways, ever git 'lected
ranger o' the county, ennyhow. I ain't s'pri