a hand in the game.

"Why don't ye sati'fy the boy, Yerby?" he said, brusquely. He took his
pipe out of his mouth and turned to Leander. "Naw, bub. He's jes
tradin' fur bresh whiskey, that's all; he's sorter skeery 'bout bein' a
wild-catter, an' he didn't want ye ter know it."

The point of red light, the glow of his pipe, the only exponent of
his presence in the dusky recess where he sat, shifted with a quick,
decisive motion as he restored it to his lips.

The blood rushed to Nehemiah's head; he was dizzy for a moment; he heard
his heart thump heavily; he saw, or he fancied he saw, the luminous
distention of Leander's eyes as this Goliath of his battles was thus
delivered into his hands. To meet him here proved nothing; the law was
not violated by Nehemiah in the mere knowledge that illicit whiskey was
in process of manufacture; a dozen different errands might have brought
him. But this statement put a sword, as it were, into the boy's hands,
and he dared not deny it.

"'Pears ter me," he blurted out at last, "ez ye air powerful slack with
yer jaw."

"Lee-yander ain't," coolly returned Tarbetts. "He knows all thar is ter
know 'bout we-uns--an' why air ye not ter share our per'ls?"

"I ain't likely ter tell," Leander jocosely reassured him. "But I can't
help thinkin' how it would rejice that good Christian 'oman, Cap'n
Sudley, ez war made ter set on sech a low stool 'bout my pore old
fiddle."

And thus reminded of the instrument, he picked it up, and once more,
with the bow held aloft in his hand, he dexterously twanged the strings,
and with his deft fingers rapidly and discriminatingly turned the
screws, this one up and that one down. The earnest would-be musician,
who had languished while the discussion was in progress, now plucked up
a freshened interest, and begged that the furnace door might be set ajar
to enable him to watch the process of tuning and perchance to detect its
subtle secret. No objection was made, for the still was nearly
empty, and arrangements tending to replenishment were beginning to be
inaugurated by several of the men, who were examining the mash in tubs
in the further recesses of the place. They were lighted by a lantern
which, swinging to and fro as they moved, sometimes so swiftly as to
induce a temporary fluctuation threatening eclipse, suggested in the
dusk the erratic orbit of an abnormally magnified fire-fly. It barely
glimmered, the dullest point of white light, when the rich