the writer would not answer
for consequences,--it gave assurance that he was alive and well, and
might even hope to see friends and home and freedom once more. In vain
the sheriff of the county expostulated with Mrs. Sneed, representing
that the law was the proper liberator of Persimmon Sneed, and that the
payment of money would encourage crime. The contradictory man's wife
was ready to commit crime, if necessary, in this cause, and would have
cheerfully cracked the bank in Colbury. And certainly this seemed
almost unavoidable at one time, for to possess herself of this sum of
her husband's hoard his signature was essential. The poor woman, in
her limp sunbonnet and best calico dress, clung to the grating of the
teller's window, and presented in futile succession her husband's
bank-book, his returned checks, and even his brand-new check-book,
each with a gush of tears, while the perplexed official remonstrated,
and explained, and rejected each persuasion in turn, passing them all
back beneath the grating, and alas! keeping the money on his side of
those inexorable bars. It seemed to poor Mrs. Sneed that the bank was
of opinion that Persimmon corporally was of slight consequence, the
institution having the true value of the man on deposit. To
accommodate matters, however, and that the poor woman should not be
weeping daily and indefinitely on the maddened teller's window, an
intermediary money-lender was found, who, having vainly sought to
induce the bank to render itself responsible, then Mrs. Sneed, who had
naught of her own, then a number of friends, who deemed the whole
enterprise an effort at robbery and seemed to consider Persimmon a
good riddance, took heart of grace and made the plunge at a rate of
interest which was calculated to cloy his palate forever after. The
money forthwith went a roundabout way according to the directions of
the letter.

It came to its destination in this wise.

Con Hite's distilling enterprise was on so small a scale that one
might have imagined it to be altogether outside the purview of the
law, which, it is said, does not take note _de minimis_. One of those
grottoes under a beetling cliff, hardly caves, called in the region
"rock houses," sufficed to contain the small copper and its
appurtenances, himself and his partner and the occasional jolly guest.
It was approached from above rather than from below, by a winding way,
beside the cliff between great boulders, which was so steep a