“I reckon that’ll about do for you, my pretty young men,” remarked Blatchley Turrentine as he put the last knot in the line with which he was securing Andy to a splint-bottomed chair.

His concluding words were the refrain of a familiar old ballad, and he continued to hum this as he straightened up and set his hands on his hips, regarding the twins through wickedly narrowed eyes. He was flushed with drink and inclined, as always at such times, to swagger with a sort of savage playfulness.

“Scalf, you ain’t got yo’ feller half tied,” he broke out, jerking the cord around Jeff. “Why, Lord A’mighty! I could pull myse’f a-loose from that mess o’ rope inside o’ five minutes,” and he set to work to make his cousin secure.

“Do yo’ own dirty work,” growled Scalf. “Yo’ the only one that’s a-goin’ to profit by it.”

It was after midnight. When the two boys had approached Blatch’s cabin as agreed, they had been set upon from behind, pinioned, and taken to the cave where the still was. Here they now sat bound and helpless.

“What do you aim to make out of it, Blatch?” asked Jeff, offering the first remark that had come from either of them since their capture.

“Is—uh—” Andy glanced at Scalf, and strove to keep Huldah’s name out of it—“is what we come for here yet?”

Blatch burst into a great horse laugh and slapped his thigh.

“What you come after,” he repeated enjoyingly. “Lord—Lord! What you come after! You was easy got. I counted on Jude to set you on, and I see I never counted none too much.”

“What do you aim to make out of it?” persisted Andy.

The light from the fire built at the back of the cave, whose smoke went up a cleft and entered the chimney of the cabin far above, illuminated the dark interior flickeringly. Blatch went to a jug on a shelf, noisily poured a drink into a tin cup, swallowed it, and then addressed himself to his cousins.

“Yo’ pappy ordered me off his land. My lease is up next month. I got to git out of here anyhow, and I aimed to raise a stir befo’ I went. This here town podner what I got after you-all quit me,” glancing negligently at Scalf, “has many a little frill to his plans, and he knows Dan Haley, the marshal, right well. Sometimes I misdoubt that he come up on Turkey Track to git in with me and git the reward that I’m told Haley has out for the feller that can ketch me stillin’.”

He wheeled and looked fully at Scalf with these words, and the town man made haste to turn his back, warming his hands at the blaze. Blatch laughed deep in his throat.

“Scalf’s on the make,” he asserted with grim humour. “He needed somebody to give up to Dan Haley, and as I hain’t got no likin’ for learnin’ to peg shoes in the penitentiary, I ’lowed mebbe the trade would suit you-all boys, an’ I sont over for ye.”

The twins writhed in their chairs as much as their tight bandings would permit. How simple they had been to trust the mercy of a desperate man. And they knew Blatch Turrentine. In days past, they had been on the inside, pupils and assistants in such work as this. They stole sheepish looks at each other. But the message he had sent them was yet to be explained. If Huldah was not with him, how had he known she was on the mountain at all?

“What made you send the word you did?” burst out Andy wrathfully.

Blatch had moved over by the fire.

“Oh, I hearn through old Dilsey Rust—that I’ve had a-listenin’ at key-holes and spyin’ through chinks—about Bonbright’s talk concernin’ Huldy, and I thort——”

At these words ancient Gideon Rust, posted as sentinel outside the cave’s entrance, keeping himself warily from view of the prisoners, craned forward and stared with fallen jaw, reckless of observation. Humble tenants, pensioners of Judith and the Turrentines, with these words Blatch had wantonly stripped the poor roof from above their grey heads, and turned them out defenceless, to the anger of that strong family. Come what would, he must protest.

“Now Blatch,” he whined, “you ort not to go a-namin’ names like you do. You said that Dilsey nor me, nary one, needn’t be known in this business.”

In his excitement he came fully into the light.

“I hope you-all boys understand that I didn’t aim to do ye a meanness. Yo’ pap—I—I hope he won’t hold this agin’ us. The Turrentines has been mighty good friends to Dilsey—and here’s Blatch lettin’ on to ’em like she was a spy.”

“Well, what else is she?” asked Blatch with an oath. “What else are any of ye? The last one of ye would sell yo’ own fathers and mothers. Don’t I know ye? A man’s only chance is to get ye scared of him, or give ye somebody else to tell tales on—and that’s what I’ve done.”

He turned his attention once more to Andy and Jeff, and left the old man staring aghast, plucking at his beard.

“I’ve bought me a good team, an’ I’m goin’ to move my plunder out of here,” he told them. “I’ve done picked me a fine place over yon,” jerking his head vaguely in the direction of the Far Cove. “Every stick and ravellin’ that belongs to me I’ll take, exceptin’ the run of whiskey that I’ll leave in the still here for to make the marshal shore he’s got the right thing. You might expect him any time to-morrow. Old Gid here will lead him in, or Scalf, and the testimony they stand ready to give means penitentiary to you two.”

“I reckon you-all won’t deny that you have made many a run of blockaded whiskey right here in this cave,” put in Scalf, nervously.

“That’s so—that’s so, boys, I’ve seed ye many a time,” whimpered Gideon Rust, almost beside himself with terror. “I hope ye won’t hold it ag’in us that we he’ped to have ye took instead of Blatch here. Blatch is a hard man to deal with—he’s been too much fer me—and hit wouldn’t do you all no manner of good ef he was took along with ye. I don’t see that yo’ any worse off ef he goes free.”

The twins looked at each other and forebore to reply. Blatch moved over to Scalf, and after some muttered parley with the town partner strode away into the dark. Scalf himself waited only long enough to be sure that Blatch had left, then slipped away, posting the old man down the path as lookout.

Alone in the cave, it was long before either boy spoke. Then came a rush of angry comment and bitter reflection which interrogated the situation from all sides, tending always to the conclusion that it was mighty hard, when a man had given up his evil courses, when he had just joined the church and was about to get married, to have the whole ugly score to pay. They sat cramped and miserable in their splint-bottomed chairs and the hours wore away till dawn in this dismal converse. Pappy was right—he was mighty right. If they ever got out of this—But there, Blatch wasn’t apt to make a failure.

It was broad daylight when at last Blatch Turrentine brought his team up and as close to the cave’s mouth as he dared. It was loaded already with a considerable amount of furniture and clothing from the cabin, and he climbed down the steep approach to take from the cave the jugged whiskey, and the keg or two which was aging there. His eyes were reddened; but the dark flush which had been on his face had now given place to a curious pallor. There was a new element in his mood, a different note in his bearing, a suggestion of furtive hurry and anxiety.

He was not afraid of the marshal. Haley could not be on the mountain before noon. But he had left that behind in the little log stable from which his team came that cried haste to his going.

Gord Bosang from whom he was to buy the horses was a man somewhat of Blatch’s own ilk. Cavalierly called out of bed after midnight and offered only a partial cash payment—all that Blatch had been able to raise—he had angrily refused to let the team be taken off the place. Turrentine’s situation was desperate. He must have the horses. In the quarrel that followed, he struck to clear this obstacle from his path; but whether he had left a dead man lying back there on the hay—whether it was a possible charge of murder he was now fleeing from—he had not stopped to find out. He had got back to his cabin with all haste, pitched his ready belongings into the wagon, and now he came down to the still to get the last, and see that all there was working out right.

As his foot reached the opening he uttered a loud exclamation, then leaped into the cave. Both chairs were empty, the ropes lying cut beside them. He sprang back to the rude doorway and gave the usual signal—the screech-owl’s cry. It was inappropriate at this time, yet he could not risk less, and he sent it forth again and again.

Getting no answer he ventured cautiously to call Gideon Rust’s name, and when this failed he looked about him and came to a decision. The boys were gone. The fat was in the fire. Yet—he returned to it—the marshal could not be there before noon. He had time to remove the whiskey if he worked hard enough. He glanced at the still. The worm and appurtenances were of value. He had saved money for nearly two years to buy the new copper-work. He wondered if he might empty and take it also.

For half an hour he toiled desperately, carrying filled jugs up the steep and hiding them carefully in his loaded wagon. The kegs he could not move alone, and set to work jugging the fluid from them. Sweat poured down his face, to which, though he drank repeatedly from the tin cup, no flush returned. His teeth were set continually on his under lip. His breath came heavily as he lifted and stooped. In the midst of his labours a slight noise at the cave entrance brought him to his feet, staring in terror. The sight of trembling Gideon Rust in the opening reassured him.

“Come in here, you old davil, and help me jug this whiskey,” he cried out. “Whar’s Scalf? How come you an’ him to let them boys git away? What do you reckon I’m a-goin’ to do to you for it?”

“Why, is them fellers gone?” quavered the old man, craning his neck to look gingerly in. “I never seen nothin’ movin’ up here, but—they was a gal or so come norratin’ past on the path; I ’lowed when I seed calicker that it mought be Huldy, you named her so free.”

“Well, shut yo’ fool mouth and get yo’se’f to work,” ordered Blatch. “I’ve got to be out o’ this.”

He turned his back on old Gid and forgot him.

“Ef I thort I had time I’d take my still with me,” he ruminated, going close to it and laying a fond touch upon the copper-work. “I’m a mind to try it.”

“Hands up, Turrentine!” came a short sharp order from outside. Blatch whirled like a flash, and looked past Gideon Rust in the doorway. Over the old man’s shaking shoulders, he saw the levelled rifles of the marshal and his posse.

“Thar,” whispered ancient Gideon fairly weeping, as they closed in on Turrentine and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists, “now mebbe ye won’t name a pore old woman’s name so free, ef you have bought her to yo’ will, and set her to spy on them that’s been good friends to her.”