through the seams of the rotting floor.

Bear Cat Stacy stood before the hearth alone and seemingly unarmed. He
had thrown aside his coat and his arms were folded across a chest still
strongly arched. His eyes were boring into the visitor with a
gimlet-like and disconcerting penetration.

"Wa'al," came his crisp interrogation, "what does ye want of me?"

"I wanted to talk things over with you, Stacy," began the revenuer, and
the younger man cut him short with an incisive interruption.

"Don't call me Stacy. Call me Bear Cat. Folks round hyar gave me thet
name in derision, but I aims ter make hit ther best knowed an' ther
wust feared name in ther hills. I aims ter be knowed by hit
henceforth."

"All right, Bear Cat. You and I are doing the same thing--from
different angles." The visitor paused and drew closer to the fire. He
talked with a difficult assumption of ease, pointing out that since
Bear Cat had recognized and declared war on the curse of illicit
distilling, he should feel a new sympathy for the man upon whom the
government imposed a kindred duty. He had hoped that Bear Cat would
make matters easier by joining in the talk, but as he went on, he
became uncomfortably aware that the conversation was a monologue--and a
strained one.

Stacy stood gazing at him with eyes that seemed to punch holes in his
sham of attitude. When the revenuer paused silence lay upon the place
until he himself broke it.

Finally Tapper reached a lame conclusion, but he had not yet dared to
suggest the thing he had come to broach, the arrangement whereby the
two of them were to divide territory, and swap betrayals of confidence.

"Air ye done talkin' now?" The question came with the restrained
iciness of dammed-up anger.

"Well--I guess so. Until you answer what I've already said."

"Then I'll answer ye right speedily. I'm bustin' stills like a man
blasts up rock thet bars a road: ter make way fer highways an' schools.
_You_ raid stills like Kinnard Towers' men commit murder--fer hire. I
reckon thar hain't no common ground thet we two kin stand on. Ye lives
by treachery an' blood money. Yore saint air Judas Iscariot an' yore
God air Gain. I hunts open, an'--though ye won't skeercely comprehend
my meanin'--thar's a dream back of what I'm doin'--a big dream."

Mark Tapper flushed brick red, and rose.

"Bear Cat," he said slowly. "Your father lies in jail waiting trial. I
can do a heap to help him--and a heap to hurt him. You'