, and Daddy Marcum's hobbling step on the
porch again. He was standing in the middle of the floor, full in the
firelight, when the old man reached the threshold--standing in a trance,
with a cartridge-belt in his hand.

"Good fer you, Isom--"

The cry was apologetic, and stopped short.

"The critter's fersakcn," he quavered, and cowed by the boy's strange
look, the old man shrank away from him along the wall. But Isom seemed
neither to see nor hear. He caught up his rifle, and, wavering an
instant, tossed it with the belt on the bed and ran out the door. The
old man followed, dumb with amazement.

"Isom!" he called, getting his wits and his tongue at last. "Hyeh's yer
gun! Come back, I tell ye! You've fergot yer gun! Isom! Isom!"

The voice piped shrilly out into the darkness, and piped back without
answer.

A steep path, dangerous even by day, ran snakelike from the cabin down
to the water's edge. It was called Isom's path after that tragic night.
No mountaineer went down it thereafter without a firm faith that only by
the direct help of Heaven could the boy, in his flight down through the
dark, have reached the river and the other side alive. The path dropped
from ledge to ledge, and ran the brink of precipices and chasms. In a
dozen places the boy crashed through the undergrowth from one slippery
fold to the next below, catching at roots and stones, slipping past
death a score of times, and dropping on till a flood of yellow light
lashed the gloom before him. Just there the river was most narrow; the
nose of a cliff swerved the current sharply across, and on the other
side an eddy ran from it up stream. These earthly helps he had, and he
needed them.

There had been a rain-storm, and the waves swept him away like
thistle-down, and beat back at him as he fought through them and stood
choked and panting on the other shore. He did not dare stop to rest.
The Marcums, too, had crossed the river up at the ford by this time, and
were galloping towards him; and Isom started on and up. When he reached
the first bench of the spur the moon was swinging over Thunderstruck
Knob. The clouds broke as he climbed; strips of radiant sky showed
between the rolling masses, and the mountain above was light and dark
in quick succession. He had no breath when he reached the ledge that ran
below old Steve's cabin, and flinging one arm above it, he fell through
sheer exhaustion. The cabin was dark as the clump of firs behind it;
the