IT was ten o'clock that night when the stage, or “hack,” as it was called, put Pole down in the square at Springtown. He went directly to Floyd's store, hoping to see the young man before he went to bed, but the long building was wrapped in darkness. Pole went over to the little hotel where Floyd roomed. The proprietor, Jerry Malone, and two tobacco drummers sat smoking on the veranda.

“He's jest this minute gone up to his room,” the landlord said, in response to Baker's inquiry as to the whereabouts of his friend. “It's the fust door to the right, at the top o' the steps.”

Pole went up and knocked on Floyd's door, and the young merchant called out, “Come in.”

Baker opened the door, finding the room in darkness. From the bed in the corner Floyd's voice came: “Is that you, Pole?”

“Yes, I jest got back, Nelson. I went to the store expectin' to find you at work, an' then Jerry told me you was up here.”

“Light the lamp, Pole,” Floyd said. “There are some matches on that table right under your hand.”

“Oh, I hain't got long to stay,” returned the mountaineer, “an' I don't need a light to talk by, any more'n a blind man does to write his letters. I 'lowed I'd tell you what I done down thar. I seed Floyd.”

“Oh, you did! After you left I got really interested in your venture, and I was afraid you might accidentally miss him.”

“Yes, I seed 'im.” Pole found a chair and sat down at the little table, resting his hand on it, and tilting the chair back, after his favorite method of making himself comfortable. There was a lamp on a post in front of the hotel and its light came through a window and faintly illuminated the room. Pole could see the white covering of Floyd's bed and the outline of the young man's head and shoulders against a big feather pillow.

“You say you saw him?” Floyd's voice was eager and restrained.

“Yes, an' I got news fer you, Nelson—substantial news. Henry A. Floyd is yore own uncle.”

“Good God, Pole!”—Floyd sat up in bed—“don't make any mistakes. You say he is actually—”

“I ain't makin' no mistakes,” replied Pole. “He's the only brother of yore daddy, Charles Nelson Floyd. That old cuss told me so, an' I know he was tellin' me a straight tale.”

There was silence. Floyd pulled his feet from beneath the coverings and sat up on the bedside. He seemed unable to speak, and, leaning forward in his chair, the ex-moonshiner recounted in careful detail all that had passed between him and the man he had visited. For several minutes after Pole had concluded the merchant sat without visible movement, then Pole heard him take a long, deep breath.

“Well, I hope you are satisfied with what I done,” said Pole, tentatively.

“Satisfied! Great Heavens!” cried Floyd,' “I simply don't know what to say to it—how to tell you what I feel. Pole, I'll bet I'm having the oddest experience that ever came to mortal man. I don't know how to explain it, or make you understand. When a baby's born it's too young to wonder or reflect over its advent into the world, but to-night, after all my years of life, I feel—Pole, I feel somehow as if I were suddenly born again. That dark spot on my history has been in my mind almost night and day ever since I was old enough to compare myself to others. Persons who have strong physical defects are often morbidly sensitive over them. That flaw in my life was my eternally sore point. And my mother”—Floyd's voice sank reverently—“did he say who she was?”

“No, we didn't git fur enough,” Pole returned. “You see, Nelson, I got that information by pretendin' to be sorter indifferent about you, an' ef I'd 'a' axed too many questions, the old codger 'ud 'a' suspicioned my game. Besides, as I told you, he wasn't willin' to talk perfectly free. Although yore daddy's in the grave, the old man seems to still bear a sort o' grudge agin 'im, an' that, in my opinion, accounts fer him not helpin' you out when you was a child.”

“Ah, I see,” said Floyd; “my father was wild as a young man?”

“Yes, that's the way he put it,” answered Baker; “but I wouldn't let that bother me, Nelson. Ef yore daddy'd 'a' lived longer, no doubt, he'd 'a' settled down like you have. But he passed away in a good cause. It ort to be a comfort to know he died in battle.”

“Yes, that's a comfort,” said Floyd, thoughtfully.

“An' now you've got plenty o' kin,” Pole said, with a pleasant laugh. “I come over in the hack with Colonel Price and Captain Duncan, an' you ort to 'a' heard 'em both spout about the Floyds an' the Nelsons. They say yore blood's as blue as indigo, my boy, an' that they suspected it all along, on account o' yore pluck and determination to win in ever' game you tackled. Lord, you bet they'll be round to-morrow to give you the hand o' good-fellowship an' welcome you into high life. I reckon you'll sorter cut yore mountain scrub friends.”

“I haven't any scrub friends,” said Floyd, with feeling. “I don't know that you boast of your ancestry, Pole, but you are as high above the kind of man that does as the stars are above the earth.”

“Now you are a-kiddin' me!” said Baker. He put out his hand on the table and felt something smooth and cool under his touch. He drew it to him. It was a pint flask filled with whiskey. He held it up with a laugh. “Good Lord, what are you doin' with this bug-juice?” he asked.

“Oh, you mean that bottle of rye,” said Floyd. “I've kept that for a memento of the day I swore off, Pole, five years ago. I thought as long as I could pass it day after day and never want to uncork it, that it was a sign I was safely anchored to sobriety.”

There was a little squeak like that of a frightened mouse. Pole had twisted the cork out and was holding the neck of the bottle to his nose.

“Gee whiz!” he exclaimed. “That stuff smells fine! You say it's five years old, Nelson?”

“Yes, it's almost old enough to vote,” Floyd laughed. “It was very old and mellow when I got it.”

The cork squeaked again Pole had stopped the bottle. It lay flat under his big, pulsating hand. His fingers played over it caressingly. “I wouldn't advise you to keep it under yore eye all the time, Nelson,” he said. “I tried that dodge once an' it got the best o' my determination.”

“I sometimes feel the old desire come over me,” said Floyd; “often when my mind is at rest after work, and even while I am at it, but it is never here in my room in the presence of that memento. It seems to make a man of me. I pity a drinking man, Pole. I know what he has to fight, and I feel now that if I were to lose all hope in life that I'd take to liquor as naturally as a starving man would to food.”

“I reckon,” said Pole, in a strange, stilled voice. His fingers were now tightly clasped about the bottle. There was a pause, then he slid it cautiously—very cautiously—towards him. He swallowed something that was in his throat; his eyes were fixed in a great, helpless stare on the dim figure across the room. Noiselessly the bottle was raised, and noiselessly it went down into the pocket of his coat.

“I feel like I owe you my life, Pole,” Floyd continued, earnestly. “You've done to-day what no one else could have done. If that old man had died without speaking of this matter I'd perhaps never have known the truth. Pole, you can call on me for anything you want that is in my power to give. Do you understand me, Pole, old friend?—anything—anything!”

There was silence. Pole sat staring vacantly in front of him. Floyd rose in slow surprise and came across the room. Pole stood up suddenly, his hand on the weighty pocket. Quickly he shifted to a darker portion of the room nearer the door.

“What's the matter, Pole?” Floyd asked, in surprise.

“Matter? Why, nothin', Nelson.” Baker laughed mechanically. “I was jest thinkin' that I ought to be in bed. I've told you all I kin, I guess.”

“You were so quiet just now that I thought—really, I didn't know what to think. I was telling you—”

“I know, Nelson.” Baker's unsteady hand was on the latch of the door. “Never you mind, I'll call on you if I want anything. I've got yore friendship, I reckon, an' that's enough fer me.”

He opened the door and glided out into the hall. “Good-night, Nelson.”

“Good-night, Pole, good-night. God bless you, old man!”

On the lonely road leading to his house the mountaineer stopped and drew the bottle from his pocket. “You dem little devil!” he said, playfully, holding it up before his eyes in the starlight. “Here I've gone all day in Atlanta, passin' ten 'thousand barroom doors, swearin' by all that was holy that I'd fetch Nelson Floyd his news with a sober head on my shoulders an' a steady tongue in that head; an' I rid, too, by hunkey, all the way from Darley out here with a hack-driver smellin' like a bung-hole, with two quarts under his seat an' no tellin' how many under his hide. I say I got through all that, although my jaws was achin' tell they felt like they was loose at the sockets, an' I 'lowed I'd slide safe to the home-base, when you—you crawled up under my nose in the dark like a yaller lizard, with that dern tale about yore ripe old age an' kingly flavor. 'Memento' hell!” Pole was using Floyd's word for the first time. “I'd like to know what sort of a memento you'd make outside of a man's stomach. No, Poley, I reckon you've reached yore limit.”

The mouse squeaked again. Pole chuckled. He held the flask aloft and shook it.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the countless stars winking merrily down from above, “take one with me,” and he drank.

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