u the voice from the wilderness?" demanded Hippy scowlingly.

The stranger threw back his head and laughed.

"I confess it. I am the 'seventh year' man. Couldn't resist the
temptation to give the pickaninny a scare. Oh, thank you," he added as
Nora handed a heaping plate of food to him and a tin cup full of
steaming coffee.

"You are a peddler. Is that it?" questioned Emma.

"Heavens, no! I'm a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good
mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with
nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight
I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double.
More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have
to make this camp my headquarters."

"This camp will be some miles from here by this time to-morrow," Grace
Harlowe informed him.

"So will I. So will I. No bother at all about that. Wash, come here!"

Washington would not budge, so Hippy led him over to the caller.

"Scared you, didn't I, eh? Mebby it is the seventh year, but don't let
that bother you. Here! Here's a new harmonica for you. It will make more
noise than the one you lost when I whispered in your ear out yonder. Go
on now, and behave yourself," he added, giving Wash a playful push.
"What can I do for you, folks?"

"I suppose you know this country well?" questioned Grace.

Long shrugged his shoulders.

"Sometimes I think I do, then I discover that I don't," he replied
soberly. "No one knows it. I know the people, on the surface, and know
my way around."

"Perhaps you know something about the moonshiners and the feudists?"
suggested Nora.

Jeremiah Long gave her a quick glance of inquiry.

"Take a word of advice from the Mystery Man. The less you know about
anything up here in these hills the better off you are in the end. Some
folks have made the mistake of knowing too much for their own good, and
some of them are here yet, but they ain't saying anything."

Grace thanked him and agreed that his advice was good, at the same time
speculating in her own mind over their guest. She was not wholly
satisfied that he was what he pretended to be, but what he was in
reality, she could not even guess.

In the meantime, Washington, lost in admiration of his new possession,
was drawing harmony, and some discord, from it and rolling his eyes
soulfully. In the ecstasy of the moment he had forgotten his recent
fright. Tom and the Mystery Man