he gave the others, Rick was half-led, half-dragged
through immensely long black halls of the cave, while one of the men
went before, carrying the feeble lantern. When the first glimmer of
daylight appeared in the distance, Rick understood that the cave had an
outlet other than the one by which he had entered, and evidently miles
distant from it. Thus it was that the distillers were well enabled to
baffle the law that sought them.

They stopped here and blindfolded the boy. How far and where they
dragged him through the snowy mountain wilderness outside, Rick never
knew. He was exhausted when at length they allowed him to pause. As he
heard their steps dying away in the distance, he tore the bandage from
his eyes, and found that they had left him in the midst of the wagon
road to make his way to Birk's Mill as best he might. When he reached
it, the wintry sun was low in the western sky, and the very bones of the
"pea-fow_el_" were picked.

On the whole, it seemed a sorry Christmas Day, as Rick could not know
then--indeed, he never knew--what good results it brought forth. For
among those who took the benefit of the "amnesty" extended by the
Government to the moonshiners of this region, on condition that they
discontinue illicit distilling for the future, was a certain long, lank,
lazy-looking mountaineer, who suddenly became sober and steady and a
law-abiding citizen. He had been reminded, this Christmas Day, of a
broken promise to a dead mother, and this by the unflinching moral
courage of a mere boy in a moment of mortal peril. Such wise, sweet,
uncovenanted uses has duty, blessing alike the unconscious exemplar and
him who profits by the example.

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Young Mountaineers, by Charles Egbert Craddock

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