ll innocence,
had stuffed the horn with rags. The prank had thus, in a way, cost two
lives--one, that of "Young" Dick Siddon. The owner of the raided still
had been Dan Hodges, and him Plutina despised and hated with a
virulence not at all Christian, but very human. She had all the
old-time mountaineer's antipathy for the extortion, as it was
esteemed, of the Federal Government, and her father's death had
naturally inflamed her against those responsible for it. Yet, her
loathing of Hodges caused her to regret that the man himself had
escaped capture thus far, though twice his still had been destroyed,
once within the year.

[Illustration:
_Claudia Kimball Young under the direction of Louis J. Selznick._
A MOUNTAIN "STILL."]

A high, jutting wall of rock hid the stream where it bent sharply a
little way from Plutina's shelter. Presently, she became aware that
Hodges had paused thus beyond the range of her vision, and was busy
there. She heard the blows of the ax. General distrust of the man
stirred up in her a brisk curiosity concerning the nature of his
action in this place. On a previous day, she had observed that the
limpid waters of the brook had been sullied by the milky refuse from a
still somewhere in the reaches above. Now, the presence of Dan Hodges
was sufficient to prove the hidden still his. But the fact did not
explain his business here. That it was something evil, she could not
doubt, for the man and his gang were almost outlaws among their own
people. They were known, though unpunished, thieves, as well as
"moonshiners," and there were whispers of more dreadful things--of
slain men vanished into the unsounded depths of the Devil's Cauldron.
The gorge of the community--careless as it had been of some laws in
the past, and too ready to administer justice according to its own
code--had risen against the vicious living of the gang that accepted
Hodges as chief. It seemed to Plutina that duty conspired with
curiosity to set her spying on the man.

The espionage, though toilsome enough, was not otherwise difficult.
Toward the bend, the banks rose sharply on both sides of the stream,
forming a tiny canon for the channel. The steep slope on the east
side, where the girl now ascended, was closely overgrown with laurel
and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset
to force her way--the more since she must move with what noiselessness
she might. But her strength and skill compassed the aff