Zeke, in his new life, found little leisure for loneliness, though nightly he fell asleep with an ache of nostalgia in his heart, longing for the mountains of home and the girl who dwelt among them. But his days were filled with various activities that held his whole attention. With a mind keen and apt to receive impressions, and hungry for knowledge, he gave himself joyously to learning the details of Sutton’s tree-nail manufacture. The processes were, in fact, simple, and he mastered them with ease. Then, he was instructed more broadly in business methods, with the purpose of making him competent when he should become a manager of the projected factory in the Blue Ridge region. His time was thus so fully occupied that he had neither opportunity nor inclination for social pleasures.

He spent a week-end in his employer’s Long Island home, and surprised that gentleman mightily by the propriety of his manners, which he had acquired on the yacht. On this occasion, Sutton spoke definitely of his plans. The railroad branch north 190 from the main line was now a certainty, and the construction would soon start. At that time, Zeke would return to North Carolina, and set about securing options on the best available timber. A mill would be built, and the manufacture of tree-nails carried on. Zeke, in addition to an adequate salary, would receive a certain share of the profits. The prospect was one to delight any ambitious young man, and Zeke appreciated it to the full. But most of all he rejoiced that his success should come to him in the place he loved, where the girl waited.

Zeke had a companion, who shared with him the tiny hall-room, and kept at his side in long evening rambles through the city streets. It came about in this wise:

It was one afternoon when he had been in New York for a week, that a visitor entered, unannounced, the office where he was listening intently to Sutton’s crisp explanations of business routine. Zeke looked up at the sound of the opening door. Then, his jaw dropped, his eyes widened. Next moment, he sprang to his feet, his face radiant with welcome. His phrases, in the excitement of this meeting, were the mountaineer’s idioms, which new associations were beginning to modify in his ordinary speech.

“Why, hit’s shorely Miss Josephine!” he cried, as he advanced upon her, with outstretched hand. 191 He saw the dog, straining toward him on the leash. “An’ thet-thar man-faced dawg!”

There was a little interval of confusion, while greetings were exchanged amid the demonstrative antics of the bull-terrier. Sutton was called away presently, and then the girl explained the object of her visit.

“You never noticed it,” she said somewhat pettishly; “but one time on the yacht, I came up on deck with Chubbie. You were over by the rail. You snapped your fingers to him. I ordered him to stay with me. He wouldn’t mind. He went to you. Well, I decided right then what I’d do.”

“Why, shucks, Miss Josephine!” Zeke exclaimed, in much distress. “He jest nacherly didn’t mean nothin’ by thet.”

“He showed something by it, though,” was the retort. “He showed that he belonged to you, and not to me. So, here he is.” She held out the leash to Zeke, who took it doubtfully, only half-comprehending. As he was about to speak, a gesture checked him.

“I’m not really a bit generous in giving him to you. My dog must like me better than anyone else in the world. That’s why I really don’t want Chubbie any longer. You’re first in his heart, and I’m second. And, though I’m quite selfish about 192 it, I know I’m doing him the greatest favor in the world—that is, if you’re willing to take him.”

“I’d shore be tickled to death to have him,” Zeke admitted. “But it don’t seem right.”

“Providence seems to have arranged it that way, anyhow,” Josephine declared, airily. “Perhaps, if a surgeon operated on him for the dent you put in his skull, he might cease loving you. But nothing else seems likely to stop him.”

The dog, thrusting its cold muzzle against Zeke’s palm, whined assent. Josephine regarded her disloyal pet a little regretfully.

“He’s a good dog,” she said, softly. “He deserves to be happy.”

“Plutiny’ll be plumb tickled to see the critter I’ve wrote sech a heap about,” Zeke remarked. His eyes were suddenly grown dreamy.

“You and your Plutina!” she railed. But her voice was very kindly. When she had learned of the young man’s prospects and the nearness of his return home, she uttered a remark that puzzled Zeke.

“You don’t need to envy anyone.” There was a light almost of jealousy in the blue eyes.

“Why, I never thought o’ sech a thing!” he answered indignantly. “Why should I?”

“Why, indeed?” Josephine repeated, and she sighed. She sighed again on taking leave, when she 193 observed that the bull-terrier made no movement to accompany her, but stood steadfastly by Zeke’s side.

Into the happy, busy routine of Zeke’s life in New York, Uncle Dick’s telegram came with the crash of catastrophe. It was merely with innocent wondering that he opened the yellow envelope, which a messenger delivered in Sutton’s office on a pleasant summer afternoon. It was the first missive of the sort in Zeke’s experience, yet he felt no slightest chill of apprehension. His mood was too firmly joyous to be easily shaken. He merely wondered, and felt no fear whatever, as he pulled out the sheet of flimsy paper, and unfolded it, while his employer sat looking on curiously, himself already suspicious of trouble. Zeke read the typewritten words through stupidly, under the first shock uncomprehending. Then, he repeated the message aloud, as if challenging its meaning.

“Plutina been stolen,” ran the summons. “Dan Hodges done it. Need help.”

The name of Richard Siddon as the sender in itself told how desperate must be the situation, else Uncle Dick would not have summoned the suitor he had rejected. Zeke stared pitifully at Sutton. His eyes had the pathos of a stricken animal’s. For a little, he seemed dazed by the unexpectedness of this evil. Then, very soon, rage mounted blackly. 194 Sutton, listening, could not repress a shudder before the deadly hate in Zeke’s voice.

“I’ll kill Dan Hodges!” was the promise. The voice was low and even, but it roared in the ears of the listener. There was something terrifying in the stark savagery that showed in the mountaineer’s tones and in the drawn, pallid face.

But, after the one outburst, Zeke maintained an appearance of hypocritical calm. Only in the tremulousness of his voice when he thanked Sutton did he betray the depth of his feeling.

In truth, he had new reason for gratitude in this emergency to the man who already had so befriended him.

“You’ll want to start at once, of course,” Sutton said.

Zeke nodded assent.

“Well, I think I’ll go with you. Perhaps, I might help. It’ll be better for you with somebody along.”

Zeke offered a protest, but it was disregarded.

“I know Plutina,” Sutton said, earnestly, “and I know you, Zeke. I want to help. Now, I wonder—”

He fell silent for a space, thinking deeply. When he spoke again it was with curt decisiveness:

“It’s hurrying things a bit, but not too much. I’ll have you stay down there, Zeke, and get after the timber as soon as you have Plutina back.” 195

Then, as the young man regarded him in bewilderment, he explained fully:

“I’ve just heard a rumor that Grearson and Company are going to send a man down there. I’ll beat them to it. I meant to start you off in a month or so. But you’ve learned all you need to here, and it’s better to hurry, so as not to run any risk of my competitors getting in ahead. We’ll get away on the train to-night.”

So it came about that the two reached Norfolk late in the afternoon of the following day, after what had seemed to the tortured lover an eternity of listless crawling toward the mountains. Now Zeke felt no longer dismay over the rapid flight of the train, as in his first journeying, but only a fierce longing to cover the miles more swiftly. For he appreciated how great was the crisis. Plutina had written him of her part in the raid on Hodges’ still, and she had expressed in some degree the apprehensions she felt. Zeke was sure that, somehow, Plutina’s betrayal of the still had become known to the outlaw, and on this account the man had sought vengeance. The lover sickened at the thought of the form that brutal vengeance might take. Often, Sutton, covertly watchful, averted his glance that he might not see the despair on the mountaineer’s face.

The two travelers were on their way to the ferry 196 in Norfolk, when inspiration came to Zeke: He bethought him of Cyclone Brant, and the stag-hound, Jack. A few words sufficed for explanation of the matter to Sutton, who welcomed the idea of securing such assistance for the search.

“I kin git ’im, if he’s home,” Zeke declared, eagerly. “He lives in Suffolk, ’bout twenty miles toward Wilkes. I’ll try an’ git ’im on the ’phone.”

In this, he was successful, and he was greatly cheered by the anxiety displayed by Brant to be of assistance. But the detective was distressed over the delay of twelve hours that must ensue before they could get a train to North Wilkesboro’. Sutton removed this difficulty by ordering a special, which should be made up at once, and should stop at Suffolk to take on Brant and his dog. So, within the hour, the three men and the hound were rushing at rocking speed along the tortuous river course that led into the mountains. Instructions had been sent ahead, by Brant’s suggestion, to have an automobile and driver in readiness for the arrival of the party at the North Wilkesboro’ station.

The three men talked but little during the trip. The tenseness of suspense held them in thrall, and, for the most part, they sat in grim silence, staring out of the windows at the swiftly flitting panorama of moonlit landscape, wherein the fertile level areas changed to narrowing valleys, and these, in turn, 197 to wild gorges, where the river ran in bellowing riot beneath lofty ramparts of stone. Sutton’s thoughts veered from pity for his young friend to keen calculation of profits to come from the locust timber of the slopes. Cyclone Brant mused on his past adventurings in these wilds. From time to time, he pulled at the ears of the stag-hound, which sat on its haunches in the aisle, balancing its big bulk elastically against the erratic joltings of the car, and regarding its master with patient adoration in the reddened eyes.

Zeke, too, had the single comfort of a dog’s faithful fondness. The bull-terrier crouched on the seat beside its master. The squat-featured face was thrust forward, with the heavy jaw resting on Zeke’s lap. Often, the dog whined, with a soft, whimpering note. It was as if the creature knew its master’s grief, and wished to tell its sympathy. There was a curious help to the young man’s courage in the eager, caressing thrusts of the cold nose against his palm. And he had need of every help, even the least, for, in this period of inactivity, the spirit within him was near to fainting. Because he knew fully the depraved nature of Hodges, he could not blind himself to the frightful peril of Plutina in the outlaw’s power. The girl’s plight was one to inspire horror in any decent breast; to the lover, worshiping her as something ineffably holy, 198 the possibility of her pollution by the brute who had stolen her away was a thing too monstrous for belief, yet not to be denied. He strove to drive the hideous thought from his mind, but, ever, it crept again into his consciousness. The sickness of his soul found its only relief in bursts of fury against the cause of this wickedness. His manhood asserted itself in a primitive lust to torture and to destroy.

There were intervals of softer emotion, when he lived again the sweet raptures of hours alone with Plutina in the mountain solitude. But the moods of retrospection were short, perforce. They weakened him too greatly. The very heart seemed to flow from him like water, as memories crowded. The contrast of the present was too hideous for endurance. Again, the ghastly despair—the black rage, the whining of the dog, and the thrust of the cold muzzle to distract for a moment. Then, once more, the agonizing round.

The grinding of brakes, as the train drew to a standstill at North Wilkesboro’, came as a poignant relief to the three travelers. Even the dogs seemed to relax from strain, and a covert hostility, which had marked their first meeting, vanished while they sniffed at each other in inquisitive, friendly fashion.

The automobile was in waiting. Zeke jumped in beside the driver. The bull-terrier was held firmly between his legs. Sutton, Brant and the hound established 199 themselves in the tonneau. Within a minute after the stopping of the train, the car was rolling rapidly over the highway toward Joines’ mill. The chauffeur made the best speed possible under Zeke’s urging, and the run was short.

Beyond the mill, the trail branching off the main road was rough and narrow, traversed only by horsemen and the clumsy vehicles of the mountaineers. No automobile had ever passed over it, and the party had planned to secure mounts at the mill, and to continue the journey on horseback. Zeke, however, realized the advantage in continuing by machine, were this possible, and he suggested it to the driver. The man was doubtful, but, too, he was an enthusiast in his work, and the opportunity of thus climbing the mountains, where no other car had been, appealed strongly to his ambition. In the end, he consented, with a prudent stipulation concerning possible damages. So, without pause, the automobile shot forward past mill and store, and went clambering along the trail toward the northern coves. The driver ran cautiously enough, despite Zeke’s impatience, but, at the best, the trip was a strain on the men and on the mechanism that bore them, for the car lurched and bounced over the uneven surface, and more than once was near to being overturned. Their ultimate safety was due, in great measure, to Zeke himself. Familiar with 200 every foot of the way, he was able to advise the chauffeur of the more dangerous points. Neither Sutton nor Brant had uttered a word of protest against undertaking the perils of this final stage, but both breathed a sigh of relief, when, at last, the car stopped in the clearing before the Siddon cabin, and the journey was safely done.

The wooden wheels of the poplar clock in the cabin were whirring for the striking of midnight, when their noise was overborne by the grotesque, unfamiliar honkings of an automobile horn. With the second of the three blasts, the cabin’s door swung open, and in the light of it was silhouetted the tall form of Uncle Dick.

“Zeke!” he called; and his voice was a little broken.

Then, with instinctive delicacy of feeling, he stepped aside, as the young man sprang up the steps, and he stood silent, while mother and son were folded in each other’s arms, murmuring endearments. But, when Zeke at last turned to face the old man, Uncle Dick’s hand went out to a powerful clasp that told how profoundly he was moved.

“I’m glad ye’ve come, boy,” he said, simply. And Zeke knew that the old distrust and suspicion were gone forever, and in their stead were come affection and faith.