er foolin'! Quit yer
foolin'!"

But none had stayed to listen. A general frantic rout ensued. The
possibility of ventriloquism was unknown to their limited experience.
All had heard the voice and those who had distinguished the words and
their seeming source needed no argument. In either case the result was
the same. Within ten minutes the grounds of the famous barbecue and bran
dance were deserted. The cumbrous wagons, all too slow, were wending
with such speed as their drivers could coerce the ox-teams to make along
the woodland road homeward, while happier wights on horseback galloped
past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a grewsome premonition of
being hindmost in a flight that to the simple minds of the mountaineers
had a pursuer of direful reality.

The state of a candidate is rarely enviable until the event is cast and
the postulant is merged into the elect, but on the day signalized by
the barbecue, the bran dance, and the rout the unfortunate aspirants
for public favor felt that they had experienced the extremest spite
of fate; for although they realized in their superior education and
sophistication that the panic-stricken rural crowd had been tricked by
some clever ventriloquist, the political orators were left with only the
winds and waters and wilderness on which to waste their eloquence, and
the wisdom of their exclusive method of saving the country.

*****

Brent Kayle's talent for eluding the common doom of man to eat his bread
in the sweat of his face was peculiarly marked. He was the eldest of
seven sons, ranging in age from eleven to twenty years, including one
pair of twins. The parents had been greatly pitied for the exorbitant
exactions of rearing this large family during its immaturity, but now,
the labor of farm, barnyard and woodpile, distributed among so many
stalwart fellows of the same home and interest was light and the result
ample. Perhaps none of them realized how little of this abundance was
compassed by Brent's exertions--how many days he spent dawdling on the
river bank idly experimenting with the echoes--how often, even when he
affected to work, he left the plow in the furrow while he followed till
sunset the flight of successive birds through the adjacent pastures,
imitating as he went the fresh mid-air cry, whistling in so vibrant
a bird-voice, so signally clear and dulcet, yet so keen despite its
sweetness, that his brothers at the plow-handles sought in vain to
disting