f the "revenuers." This face was so individual that it
was not likely to be easily mistaken or forgotten. A wild, breezy look
it had, and a tricksy, incorporeal expression that might well befit some
fantastic, fabled thing of the woods. It was full of fine script of
elusive meanings, not registered in the lineaments of the prosaic man of
the day, though perchance of scant utility, not worth interpretation.
His full gray eyes were touched to glancing brilliancy by a moonbeam;
his long, fibrously floating brown hair was thrown backward; his
receding chin was peculiarly delicate; and though his well-knit frame
bespoke a hardy vigor, his pale cheek was soft and thin. All the rustic
grotesquery of garb and posture was cancelled by the deep shadow of a
bough, and his delicate face showed isolated in the moonlight.

Browdie silently pondered his vague suspicions for a moment. "Whar did
he die at?" he then demanded at a venture.

"At his daddy's house, fur sure. Whar else?" responded the driver. "I
hev got what's lef' of him hyar in the coffin-box. We expected ter make
it ter Shiloh buryin'-ground 'fore dark; but the road is middlin' heavy,
an' 'bout five mile' back Ben cast a shoe. The funeral warn't over much
'fore noon."

"Whyn't they bury him in Eskaqua, whar he died?" persisted Browdie.

"Waal, they planned ter bury him alongside his mother an' gran'dad, what
used ter live in Tanglefoot Cove. But we air wastin' time hyar, an' we
hev got none ter spare. Gee, Ben! Git up, John!"

The wagon gave a lurch; the horses, holding back in bracing attitudes
far from the pole, went teetering down the steep slant, the locked wheel
dragging heavily; the four men sat silent, two in slouching postures at
the head of the coffin; the third, with the driver, was at its foot. It
seemed drearily suggestive, the last journey of this humble mortality,
in all the splendid environment of the mountains, under the vast
expansions of the aloof skies, in the mystic light of the unnoting moon.

"Is this bona-fide?" asked Browdie, with a questioning glance at the
informer, who had at length crept forth.

"I dunno," sullenly responded the mountaineer. He had acquainted the two
officers, who were of a posse of revenue-raiders hovering in the
vicinity, with the mysterious circumstance that a freighted wagon now
and then made a midnight transit across these lonely ranges. He himself
had heard only occasionally in a wakeful hour the roll of heavy wheel