pped suddenly behind
the pine, and lay flat in the black earth. Ten yards through the
dusk before him was the half-bent figure of a man letting an old army
haversack slip from one shoulder; and Isom watched him hide it with
a rifle under a bush, and go noiselessly on towards the road. It was
Crump, Eli Crump, who had been a spy for the Lewallens in the old feud
and who was spying now for old Steve Brayton. It was the second time
Isom had seen him lurking about, and the boy's impulse was to hurry back
to the mill. But it was still peace, and without his gun Crump was not
dangerous; so Isom rose and ran on, and, splashing into the angry little
stream, shot away like a roll of birch bark through the tawny crest of
a big wave. He had done the feat a hundred times; he knew every rock and
eddy in flood-time, and he floated through them and slipped like an eel
into the mill-pond. Old Gabe was waiting for him.

"Whut ye mean, boy," he said, sharply, "reskin' the fever an' ager this
way? No wonder folks thinks ye air half crazy. Git inter them clothes
now 'n' come in hyeh. You'll ketch yer death o' cold swimmin' this way
atter a fresh."

The boy was shivering when he took his seat at the funnel, but he did
not mind that; some day he meant to swim over that dam. Steve still lay
motionless in the corner near him, and Isom lifted the slouched hat
and began tickling his lips with a straw. Steve was beyond the point of
tickling, and Isom dropped the hat back and turned to tell the miller
what he had seen in the thicket. The dim interior darkened just then,
and Crump stood in the door. Old Gabe stared hard at him without a word
of welcome, but Crump shuffled to a chair unasked, and sat like a toad
astride it, with his knees close up under his arms, and his wizened face
in his hands.

Meeting Isom's angry glance, he shifted his own uneasily.

"Seed the new preacher comm' 'long today?" he asked. Drawing one dirty
finger across his forehead, "Got a long scar 'cross hyeh."

The miller shook his head.

"Well, he's a-comm'. I've been waitin' fer him up the road, but I reckon
I got to git 'cross the river purty soon now."

Crump had been living over in Breathitt since the old feud. He had been
"convicted" over there by Sherd Raines, a preacher from the Jellico
Hills, and he had grown pious. Indeed, he had been trailing after Raines
from place to place, and he was following the circuit-rider now to the
scene of his own deviltry--Hazla