nger--all the
scene swayed before him. He remembered the gracious vision that had
saluted him; he shuddered at the crime from which he was rescued. Pity
him because he knew naught of the science of optics; of the bewildering
effects of a sudden burst of light upon the delicate mechanism of the
eye; of the vagaries of illusion.

"Tobe," he said, in a solemn voice--all the echoes were bated to awed
whispers--"I hev been gin ter view a vision this night, bein' 'twar
Chris-mus Eve. An' now I want ter shake hands on it fur peace."

Then he told the whole story, regardless of the ranger's demonstrations,
albeit they were sometimes violent enough. Tobe sprang up with a snort
of rage, his eyes flashing, his thick tongue stumbling with the curses
crowding upon it, when he realized the suspicions rife against him at
the county town. But he stood with his clinched hand slowly relaxing,
and with the vague expression which one wears who looks into the past,
as he listened to the recital of Eugenia's pilgrimage in the snowy
wintry dawn. "Mighty few folks hev got a wife ez set store by 'em like
that," Luke remarked, impersonally.

The ranger's rejoinder seemed irrelevant.

"'Genie be a-goin' ter see a powerful differ arter this," he said, and
fell to musing.

Snow, fatigue, and futility destroyed the ardor of the lynching party
after a time, and they dispersed to their homes. Little was said of this
expedition afterward, and it became quite impossible to find a man
who would admit having joined it. For the story went the rounds of the
mountain that there had been a mistake as to unfair dealing on the part
of the ranger, and Luke Todd was quite content to accept from the county
treasury half the sum of the mare's appraisement--with the deduction
of the stipulated per cent.--which Tobe Gryce had paid, the receipt for
which he produced.

The gossips complained, however, that after all this was settled
according to law, Tobe wouldn't keep the mare, and insisted that Luke
should return to him the money he had paid into the treasury, half her
value, "bein' so brigaty he wouldn't own Luke Todd's beast. An' Luke
agreed ter so do; but he didn't want ter be outdone, so fur the keep o'
the filly he gin the Cunnel a heifer. An' Tobe war mighty nigh tickled
ter death fur the Cunnel ter hev a cow o' her own."

And now when December skies darken above Lonesome Cove, and the snow in
dizzying whirls sifts softly down, and the gaunt brown leafl