abouts."

"Ye air so," assented the sarcastic 'Gene. "Ye ain't even acquainted
with yer own clothes. Ye be a town man."

"Well, I'm not the first man who has had to hide out," Ronan parried,
seeking to justify his obvious disguise.

"Shot somebody?" asked 'Gene, with an apparent accession of interest.

"It's best for me not to tell."

"So be." 'Gene acquiesced easily. "Waal, ef ye kin put up with sech
accommodations ez our'n, I'll take ye home with me."

Ronan stood aghast. But there was no door of retreat open. He was alone
and helpless. He could not conceal the fact that the turn affairs had
taken was equally unexpected and terrifying to him, and the moonshiners,
keenly watchful, were correspondingly elated to discern that he had
surely no reinforcements within reach to nerve him to resistance or
to menace their liberty. He had evidently followed them too far, too
recklessly; perhaps without the consent and against the counsel of his
comrades, perhaps even without their knowledge of his movements and
intention.

Now and again as the wagon jogged on and on toward their distant haven,
the moonlight gradually dulling to dawn, Wyatt gave the stranger
a wondering, covert glance, vaguely, shrinkingly curious as to the
sentiments of a man vacillating between the suspicion of capture and the
recognition of a simple hospitality without significance or danger. The
man's face appealed to him, young, alert, intelligent, earnest, and
the anguish of doubt and anxiety it expressed went to his heart. In the
experience of his sylvan life as a hunter Wyatt's peculiar and subtle
temperament evolved certain fine-spun distinctions which were unique; a
trapped thing had a special appeal to his commiseration that a creature
ruthlessly slaughtered in the open was not privileged to claim. He did
not accurately and in words discriminate the differences, but he felt
that the captive had sounded all the gamut of hope and despair, shared
the gradations of an appreciated sorrow that makes all souls akin and
that even lifts the beast to the plane of brotherhood, the bond of
emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason liberated
the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly
fleeing creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of his whimsical, joyous
laughter.

He was experiencing now a similar sequence of sentiments in noting the
wild-eyed eagerness with which the captured raider took obvious heed of
every minor