when he was magistrate, and his eyes were half closed. Isom rode away
without a word. From the dark of the mill old Gabe turned to look after
him again.

"I'm afeerd he's a-gittin' feverish agin. Hit looks like he's convicted;
but"--he knew the wavering nature of the boy--"I don't know--I don't
know."

Going home an hour later, the old man saw several mountaineers climbing
the path towards Steve Marcum's cabin; it meant the brewing of mischief;
and when he stopped at his own gate, he saw at the bend of the road a
figure creep from the bushes on one side into the bushes on the other.

It looked like Crump.

III.

IT was Crump, and fifty yards behind him was Isom, slipping through the
brush after him--Isom's evil spirit--old Gabe, Raines, "conviction,"
blood-penalty, forgotten, all lost in the passion of a chase which has
no parallel when the game is man.

Straight up the ravine Crump went along a path which led to Steve
Marcum's cabin. There was a clump of rhododendron at the head of the
ravine, and near Steve's cabin. About this hour Marcum would be chopping
wood for supper, or sitting out in his porch in easy range from the
thicket. Crump's plan was plain: he was about his revenge early, and
Isom was exultant.

"Oh, no, Eli, you won't git Steve this time. Oh, naw!"

The bushes were soon so thick that he could no longer follow Crump by
sight, and every few yards he had to stop to listen, and then steal on
like a mountain-cat towards the leaves rustling ahead of him. Half-way
up the ravine Crump turned to the right and stopped. Puzzled, Isom
pushed so close that the spy, standing irresolute on the edge of
the path, whirled around. The boy sank to his face, and in a moment
footsteps started and grew faint; Crump had darted across the path, and
was running through the undergrowth up the spur. Isom rose and hurried
after him; and when, panting hard, he reached the top, the spy's
skulking figure was sliding from Steve's house and towards the Breathitt
road; and with a hot, puzzled face, the boy went down after it.

On a little knob just over a sudden turn in the road Crump stopped, and
looking sharply about him, laid his gun down. Just in front of him were
two rocks, waist-high, with a crevice between them. Drawing a long knife
from his pocket, he climbed upon them, and began to cut carefully away
the spreading top of a bush that grew on the other side. Isom crawled
down towards him like a lizard, from tre