g. Something moved outside the logs. They had posted their
sentry then. She groaned as she realised that what she had heard was
inadequate and insufficient. The knowledge was there to be had for a
little daring, a little cunning.

Just as she had become almost desperate enough to walk up to the place
and make pretence of being one with them, a stamp from the figure outside
the corner told her that it was a tethered mule instead of a man.
Emboldened she stole nearer, and found a spot where she could crouch by
the wall so hidden among some disused implements that she might even have
dared to let them emerge from their hiding-place and pass her. Again
Blatch was speaking.

Blatchley Turrentine had come to his uncle's house, a youth of
seventeen--a man, as mountain society reckons things. At that time Andy
and Jeff were seven-year-olds, Wade a big boy of thirteen; and even Jim
Cal, of the same years but less adventurous in nature, had been so
thoroughly dominated by the newcomer that the leadership then established
had never been relinquished. And now the artfully introduced whiskey had
done its work; these boys were quite other than those who had gone in
sober and grave less than half an hour before, their father's admonitions
and the counsels of old man Broyles and their Turrentine kindred lying
strongly upon them.

Judith heard no demur as Blatch detailed their plans.

"They's no use to go to Unc' Jep with what I've been a-tellin' ye," the
voice of natural authority proclaimed. "I tell ye Polk Sayles says he's
seen Bonbright meet Dan Haley about half way down the Side--thar whar Big
Rock Creek crosses the corner of the Sayles place--mo' than once sense
he's been on the mountain. Now with what that man knows, and with the
grudges he's got, you let him live to meet Dan Haley once mo' and even
Unc' Jep is liable to the penitentiary--but tell it to Unc' Jep an' he
won't believe ye. He's got a sort of likin' for the feller."

"That's what I say," Jim Cal seconded in a voice which had become
pot-valiant. "Pap is a old man, and we-all that air younger have obliged
to take care on him."

At any other time these pious sentiments would have brought a volley of
laughter from Blatchley, but this evening Judith judged from the sounds
that he clapped the fat man on the shoulder as he said heartily:

"Mighty right you air, James Calhoun. Unc' Jep is one of the finest men
that ever ate bread, but his day is pretty well over. Ef w