attitude of alert listening. Then slipping quietly to the ground, he
hitched his horse in the concealment of a deep gulch and melted out of
sight into the thicket. Soon he sat crouched on his heels, invisible in
the tangled laurel. His place of vantage overlooked a foot-path so
little traveled as to be hardly discernible, but shortly a figure came
into view around a hulking head of rock, and Ratler Webb's smile
broadened to a grin of satisfaction. The figure was tall and spare and
it stooped as it plodded up the ascent under the weight of a heavy sack
upon its shoulders. The observer did not move or make a sound until the
other man had been for several minutes out of sight. He was engaged in
reflection.

"So, thet's how ther land lays," he ruminated. "Bear Cat Stacy's totin'
thet gryste over to Bud Jason's tub-mill on Little Ivy despite ther
fact thet thar's numerous bigger mills nigher to his house. Thet sack's
full of _sprouted_ corn, and he dasn't turn it in at no _reg'lar_ mill.
Them Stacys air jest about blockadin' up thet spring-branch."

He spat at a toad which blinked beadily up at him and then, rising from
his cramped posture, he commented, "I hain't plumb dead sartin yet, but
I aims ter be afore sun-up ter-morrer."

Bear Cat Stacy might have crossed the ridge that afternoon by a less
devious route than the one he followed. In so doing he would have saved
much weariness of leg and ache of burdened shoulder, but Ratler Webb's
summing up had been correct, and though honest corn may follow the
highways, sprouted grain must go by blinder trails.

When he reached the backbone of the heights, he eased the jute sack
from his shoulders to the ground and stretched the cramp out of his
arms. Sweat dripped from his face and streamed down the brown throat
where his coarse shirt stood open. He had carried a dead weight of
seventy pounds across a mountain, and must carry back another as heavy.

Now he wiped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and stood looking away
with a sudden distraction of dreaminess. A few more steps would take
him again into the steamy swelter of woods where no breath of breeze
stirred the still leafage, and even in the open spaces the afternoon
was torridly hot. But here he could sweep with his eyes league upon
league of a vast panorama where sky and peak mingled in a glory of
purple haze. Unaccountably the whole beauty of it smote him with a
sense of undefined appreciation and grateful wonderment.