Twilight was slipping down on the Big Smoky. Definiteness was annihilated, and distance a suggestion. Mountain forms lay darkening along the horizon, still flushed with the sunset. Eskaqua Cove had abysmal suggestions, and the ravines were vague glooms. Fire-flies were a-flicker in the woods. There might be a star, outpost of the night.

Dorinda, hunting for the vagrant 'crumply cow,' paused sometimes when the wandering path led to the mountain's brink, and looked down those gigantic slopes and unmeasured depths. She carried her milk-piggin, and her head was uncovered. Now and then she called with long, vague vowels, 'Soo—cow! Soo!' There was no response save the echoes, and the vibrant iteration of the katydid. Once she heard an alien sound, and she paused to listen. From the projecting spur where she stood, looking across the Cove, she could see, above the forests on the slopes, the bare, uprising dome, towering in stupendous proportions against the sky. The sound came again and yet again, and she recognised the voice of the man who was wont to go and pray in the desert places on the 'bald' of the mountain, and whom she had likened to the prophets of old. There was something indescribably wild and weird in those appealing, tempestuous tones, now rising as in frenzy, and now falling as with exhaustion—beseeching, adjuring, reproaching.

'He hev fairly beset the throne o' grace!' she said, with a sort of pity for this insistent piety. A shivering, filmy mist was slipping down over the great dome. It glittered in the last rays of the sunlight, already vanished from the world below, like an illuminated silver gauze. She was reminded of the veil of the temple, and she had a sense of intrusion.

'Prayer, though, air free for all,' she remarked, as self-justification, since she had paused to hear.

She did not linger. His voice died in the distance, and the solemnity of the impression was gradually obliterated. As she went she presently began to sing, sometimes interpolating, without a sense of interruption, her mellow call of 'Soo—cow! Soo!' until it took the resemblance of a refrain, with an abrupt crescendo. The wild roses were flowering along the paths, and the pink and white azaleas—what perfumed ways, what lavish grace and beauty! The blooms of the laurel in the darkling places were like a spangling of stars. Dew was falling—it dashed into her face from the boughs that interlaced across the unfrequented path—and still the light lingered, loath to leave. She heard the stir of some wild things in the hollow of a great tree, and then a faint, low growl. She fancied she saw a pair of bright eyes looking apprehensively at her.

'We-uns hev got a baby at our house, too, an' we don't want yourn, ma'am; much obleeged, all the same,' she said, with a laugh. But she looked back with a sort of pity for that alert maternal fear, and she never mentioned to the youngest brother, a persistent trapper, the little family of raccoons in the woods.

She had forgotten the voice raised in importunate supplication on the 'bald,' until, pursuing the path, she was led into the road, hard by a little bridge, or more properly culvert, which had rotted long ago; the vines came up through the cavities in the timbers, and a blackberry bush, with a wren's nest, flourished in their midst. The road was fain to wade through the stream; but the channel was dry now—a narrow belt of yellow sand lying in a long curving vista in the midst of the dense woods. A yoke of oxen, drawing a rude slide, paused to rest in the middle of the channel, and beside them was a man, of medium height, slender but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder, and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair, that hung down to the collar of his coat. Her singing had prepared him for her advent, but he barely raised his eyes. That quick glance was incongruous with his dullard aspect; it held a spark of fire, inspiration, frenzy—who can say?

He spoke suddenly, in a meek, drawling way, and with the air of submitting the proposition:

'I hev gin the beastises a toler'ble hard day's work, an' I'm a-favourin' 'em goin' home.'

A long pause ensued. The oxen hung down their weary heads, with the symbol of slavery upon them. The smell of ferns and damp mould was on the air. Rotting logs lay here and there, where the failing water had stranded them. The grape-vine, draping the giant oaks, swayed gently, and suggested an observation to break the silence.

'How air the moral vineyard a-thrivin'?' she asked solemnly.

He looked downcast. 'Toler'ble, I reckon.'

'I hearn tell ez thar war a right smart passel o' folks baptized over yander in Scolacutta River,' she remarked encouragingly.

'I baptized fourteen.'

She turned the warm brightness of her eyes upon him. 'They hed all fund grace!' she exclaimed.

'They 'lowed so. I hopes they'll prove it by thar works,' he said, without enthusiasm.

'Ye war a-prayin' fur 'em on the bald?' she asked, apprehending that he accounted these converts peculiarly precarious.

'Naw,' he replied, with moody sincerity; 'I war a-prayin' fur myself.'

There was another pause, longer and more awkward than before.

'What work be you-uns a-doin' of?' asked Dorinda timidly. She quailed a trifle before the uncomprehended light in his eyes. It was not of her world, she felt instinctively.

'I hev ploughed some, holpin' Jonas Trice, an' hev been a-hauling wood. I tuk my rifle along,' he added, 'thinkin' I mought see suthin' ez would be tasty fur the old men's supper ez I kem home, but I forgot ter look around keen.'

There was a sudden sound along the road—a sound of quick hoof-beats. Because of the deep sand the rider was close at hand before his approach was discovered. He drew rein abruptly, and they saw that it was Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith of the Settlement.

'Hev you-uns hearn the news?' he cried excitedly, as he threw himself from the saddle.

The man, leaning on the rifle, looked up, with no question in his eyes. There was an almost monastic indifference to the world suggested in his manner.

'Thar's a mighty disturbamint at the Settlemint. Las' night this hyar Rick Tyler—what air under indictment fur a-killin' o' Joel Byers—he kem a-nosin' 'roun' the Settlemint a-tryin' ter buy powder——'

Dorinda stretched out her hand; the trees were unsteady before her; the few faint stars, no longer pulsating points of light, described a circle of dazzling gleams. She caught at the yoke on the neck of the oxen; she leaned upon the impassive beast, and then it seemed that every faculty was merged in the sense of hearing. The horse had moved away from the blacksmith, holding his head down among the boulders, and snuffing about for the water he remembered here with a disappointment almost pathetic.

'War he tuk?' demanded the preacher.

'Percisely so,' drawled the blacksmith, with a sub-current of elation in his tone.

There was a sudden change in Kelsey's manner. He turned fiery eyes upon the blacksmith. Light and life were in every line of his face. He drew himself up tense and erect; he stretched forth his hand with an accusing gesture.

''Twar you-uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy!'

'Lord, pa'son, how'd you-uns know that?' exclaimed the blacksmith. His manner combined a difference, which in civilization we recognise as respect for the cloth, with the easy familiarity, induced by the association since boyhood, of equals in age and station. 'I hedn't let on a word, hed I, D'rindy?'

The idea of an abnormal foreknowledge, mysteriously possessed, had its uncanny influences. The lonely woods were darkening about them. The stars seemed very far off. A rotting log in the midst of the dÉbris of the stream, in a wild tangle of underbrush and shelving rocks, showed fox-fire and glowed in the glooms.

'I knowed,' said Kelsey, contemptuously waiving the suggestion of miraculous forecast, 'bekase the sher'ff hain't been in the Big Smoky for two weeks, an' that thar danglin' shadder o' his'n rid off las' Monday from Jeemes's Mill in Eskaqua Cove. An' the constable o' the deestric air sick abed. So I 'lowed 'twar you-uns.'

'An' why air it me more'n enny other man at the Settlemint?' The blacksmith's blood was rising; his sensibilities descried a covert taunt which as yet his slower intelligence failed to comprehend.

'An' ye hev rid with speed fur the sher'ff—or mebbe ter overhaul the dep'ty—ter come an' jail the prisoner afore he gits away.'

'An' why me, more'n the t'others?' demanded the blacksmith.

'Yer heart air ez hard ez your anvil, Gid Fletcher,' said the mind-reader. 'Thar ain't another man on the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the gallus or the pen'tiary the frien' ez trested him, who hev done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest law. Ef the law tuk him, that's a differ.'

''Tain't fur we-uns ter jedge o' the law!' exclaimed Gid Fletcher, his logic sharpened by the anxiety of his greed and his prideful self-esteem. 'Let the law jedge o' his crime.'

'Jes' so; let the law take him, an' let the law try him. The law is ekal ter it. Ef the sheriff summons me with his posse, I'll hunt Rick Tyler through all the Big Smoky——'

'Look-a-hyar, Hi Kelsey, the Gov'nor o' Tennessee hev offered a reward o' two hundred dollars——'

'Blood-money,' interpolated the parson.

'Ye kin call it so, ef so minded; but ef it war right fur the Guv'nor ter offer it, it air right fur me ter yearn it.'

He had come very close. It was his nature and his habit to brook no resistance. He subdued the hard metals upon his anvil. His hammer disciplined the iron. The fire wrought his will. His instinct was to forge this man's opinion into the likeness of his own. His conviction was the moral swage that must shape the belief of others.

'It air lawful fur me ter yearn it,' he repeated.

'Lawful!' exclaimed the parson, with a tense, jeering laugh. 'Judas war a law-abidin' citizen. He mos' lawfully betrayed his Frien' ter the law. Them thirty pieces o' silver! Sech currency ain't out o' circulation yit!'

Quick as a flash the blacksmith's heavy hand struck the prophet in the face. The next moment his sudden anger was merged in fear. He stood, unarmed, at the mercy of an assaulted and outraged man, with a loaded rifle in his hands and all the lightnings of heaven quivering in his angry eyes.

Gid Fletcher had hardly time to draw the breath he thought his last, when the prophet slowly turned the other cheek.

'In the name of the Master,' he said, with all the dignity of his calling.

As the blacksmith mounted his horse and rode away, he felt that the parson's rifle-ball would be preferable to the gross slur that he had incurred. His reputation, moral and spiritual, was annihilated; and he held this dear, for piety, or its simulacrum, on the primitive Big Smoky, is the point of honour. What a text! What an illustration of iniquity he would furnish for the sermons, foretelling wrath and vengeance, that sometimes shook the Big Smoky to its foundations! He was cast down and indignant too.

'Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin' up sech a pious mouth, an' a-turnin' the t'other cheek, an' sech, ter me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff in many a free-handed fight, an' hev drawed his shootin'-irons on folks agin an' agin! An' he fairly tuk the dep'ty, at that thar disturbamint at the meet'n'-house, by the scruff o' the neck, an' shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin', an' drapped him out'n the door. An' now ter be a-turnin' the t'other cheek! An' thar's that thar D'rindy, a-seein' it all, an' a-lookin' at it ez wide-eyed ez a cat in the dark.'

Dorinda went home planning a rescue. Against the law this probably was, she thought. 'Ef it air—it oughtn't ter be,' she concluded arbitrarily. 'It don't hurt nobody.' How serious it was—a felony—she did not know, nor did she care. She went on sturdily, debating within herself how best to tell the news. With an intuitive knowledge of human nature, she reckoned on the prejudice aroused by the recital of the blacksmith's assault upon the preacher, and the forbearance of the man of God. She began to count those who would be likely to attempt the enterprise when it should be suggested. There were the five men at home, all bold, reckless, antagonistic to the law, and at odds with the sheriff. She paused, with a frightened face and a wild gesture, as if to ward off an unforeseen danger. Send them to meet him! Never, never would she lift her hand or raise her voice to aid in fulfilling that grimly prophesied death on the muzzle of the old rifle-barrel. She trembled at the thought of her precipitancy. His life was in her hand. With a constraining moral sense she felt that it was she who had placed it in jeopardy, and that she held it in trust.

She was cold, shivering. There was a change in the temperature; perhaps hail had fallen somewhere near, for the rare air had icy suggestions. She was seldom out so late, and was glad to see, high on the slope, the light that was wont to shine like a star into the dark depths of Eskaqua Cove. The white mists gathered around it; a circle of pearly light encompassed it, like Saturn's ring. As she came nearer, the roof of the house defined itself, with its oblique ridge-pole against the sky, and its clay and stick chimney, also built in defiance of rectangles, and its little porch, the curtaining hop-vines, dripping, dripping, with dew. In the corner of the rail fence was the 'crumply cow,' chewing her cud.

The radiance of firelight streamed out through the open door, around which was grouped a number of shadows, of intent and wistful aspect. These were the hounds, and they crowded about her ecstatically as she came up on the porch.

She paused at the door, and looked in with melancholy eyes. The light fell on her face, still damp with the dew, giving its gentle curves a subdued glister, like marble; the dark blue of her dress heightened its fairness. A sudden smile broke upon it as she leaned forward. There were three men, Ab, Pete, and Ben, seated around the fire; but she was looking at none of them, and they silently followed her gaze. Only one pair of eyes met hers—the eyes of a fat young person, wonderfully muscular for the tender age of three, who sat in the chimney-corner in a little wooden chair, and preserved the important and impassive air of a domestic magnate. This was hardly impaired by his ill-defined, infantile features, his large tow-head, his stolid blue eyes, his feminine garb of blue-checked cotton, short enough to disclose sturdy white calves and two feet with the usual complement of toes. He looked at her in grave recognition but made no sign.

'Jacob,' she softly drawled, 'whyn't ye go ter bed?'

But Jacob was indisposed to conversation on this theme; he said nothing.

'Whyn't you-uns git him ter bed?' she asked of the assemblage at large. 'He'll git stunted, a-settin' up so late in the night.'

'Waal,' said one of the huge jeans-clad mountaineers, taking his pipe from his mouth, and scrutinizing the subject of conversation, 'I 'low it takes more'n three full-grown men ter git that thar survigrus buzzard ter bed when he don't want ter go thar, an' we warn't a-goin' ter resk it.'

'I did ax him ter go ter bed, D'rindy,' said another of the bearded giants, 'but he 'lowed he wouldn't. I never see a critter so pompered ez Jacob; he ain't got no medjure o' respec' fur nobody.'

The subject of these strictures gazed unconcernedly, first at one speaker, then at the other. Dorinda still looked at him, her face transfigured by its tender smile. But she was fain to exert her authority. 'Waal, Jacob,' she said decisively, 'ye mus' gin yer cornsent ter go ter bed, arter a while.'

Jacob calmly nodded. He expected to go to bed some time that night.

The hounds had taken advantage of Dorinda's entrance to creep into the room and adjust themselves among the family group about the fire. One of them, near Jacob, lured by the tempting plumpness, put out a long, red tongue, and gave a furtive lick to his fat white leg. The little mountaineer promptly doubled his plucky fist, and administered a sharp blow on the black nose of the offender, whose yelp of repentant pain attracted attention to the canine intruders. Ab Cayce rose to his feet with an oath. There was a shrill chorus of anguish as he actively kicked them out with his great cowhide boots.

'Git out'n hyar, ye dad-burned beastises! I hev druv ye out fifty times sence sundown; now stay druv!'

He emphasized the lesson with several gratuitous kicks after the room and the porch were fairly cleared. But before he was again seated the dogs were once more clustered about the door, with intent bobbing heads and glistening eyes that peered in wistfully, with a longing for the society of their human friends, and a pathetic anxiety to be accounted of the family circle.

There was more stir than usual in the interval between supper and bedtime. During the three memorable days that Dorinda had sojourned in Tuckaleechee Cove, Miranda Jane's ineffective administration had resulted in domestic chaos in several departments. The lantern by which the cow was to be milked was nowhere to be found. The filly-like Miranda Jane, with her tousled mane and black forelock hanging over her eyes, was greatly distraught in the effort to remember where it had been put and for what it had been last used, and was 'plumb beat out and beset,' she declared, as she cantered in and cantered out, and took much exercise in the search, to little purpose. One of the men rose presently, and addressed himself to the effort. He found it at last, and handed it to Dorinda without a word. He did not offer to milk the cow—as essentially a feminine task, in the mountains, as to sew or knit. When she came back she sat down among them in the chair usually occupied by her grandmother—who had in her turn gone on a visit to 'Aunt Jerushy' in Tuckaleechee Cove—and as she busied herself in putting on her needles a sizable stocking for Jacob she did not join in the fragmentary conversation.

Ab Cayce, the eldest, talked fitfully as he smoked his pipe—a lank, lantern-jawed man, with a small, gleaming eye and a ragged beard. The youngest of the brothers, Solomon, was like him, except that his long chin, of the style familiarly denominated jimber-jawed, was still smooth and boyish, and, big-boned as he was, he lacked in weight and somewhat in height the proportions of the senior. Peter was the contentious member of the family. He was wont to bicker in solitary disaffection, until he seemed to disprove the adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. He was afflicted with a stammer, and at every obstruction his voice broke out with startling shrillness, several keys higher than the tone with which the sentence commenced. He was loose-jointed and had a shambling gait; his hair seemed never to have outgrown the bleached, colourless tone so common among the children of the mountains, and it hung in long locks of a dreary drab about his sun-embrowned face. His teeth were irregular, and protruded slightly. 'Ez hard-favored ez Pete Cayce,' was a proverb on the Big Smoky. His wrangles about the amount of seed necessary to sow to the acre, and his objurgation concerning the horse he had been ploughing with that day, filled the evening.

'Thar ain't a durned fool on the Big Smoky ez dunno that thar sayin' 'bout'n the beastises:—

Outside, the rising wind wandered fitfully through the Great Smoky, like a spirit of unrest. The surging trees in the wooded vastness on every side filled the air with the turbulent sound of their commotion. The fire smouldered on the hearth. The room was visible in the warm glow: the walls, rich and mellow with the alternate dark shade of the hewn logs and the dull yellow of the 'daubin''; the great frame of the warping-bars, hung about with scarlet and blue and saffron yarn; the brilliant strings of red pepper, swinging from the rafters. The spinning-wheel, near the open door, revolved slightly, with a stealthy motion, when the wind touched it, as though some invisible woodland thing had half a mind for uncanny industrial experiments.

Dorinda told her news at last, in few words and with what composure she could command. As the listeners broke into surprised ejaculations and comments, she sat gazing silently at the fire. Should she speak the thought nearest to her heart? Should she suggest a rescue? She was torn by contending terrors—fears for them, for the man in his primitive shackles at the Settlement, for the enemy whose life she felt she had jeopardized. She had a wild vision—half in hope, half in anguish—of her brothers, in the saddle, armed to the teeth and riding like the wind. They had not moved of their own accord. Should she urge them to go?

Oh, never had the long days on the Big Smoky, never had all the years that had visibly rolled from east to west with the changing seasons, brought her so much of life as the last few hours—such intensity of emotion, such swiftness of thought, such baffling perplexity, such woe!