Then, "Birt ain't goin' ter be let ter work hyar ag'in," he said.

Byers elevated his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows in surprise.

"Ye see," said the tanner in a confidential undertone, "sence Birt hev stole that thar grant, I kin argufy ez he mought steal su'thin'

else, an' I ain't ekal ter keepin' up a spry lookout on things, an'

bein' partic'lar 'bout the count o' the hides an' sech. I can't feel easy with sech a mischeevious scamp around."

Byers made no rejoinder, and the tanner, puffing his pipe, vaguely watched the wreaths of smoke rise above his head, and whisk buoyantly about in the air, and finally skurry off into invisibility. A gentle breeze was astir in the woods, and it set the leaves to whispering. The treetoads and the locusts were trolling a chorus. So loudly vibrant, it was! So clamorously gay!

Some subtle intimation they surely had that summer was ephemeral and the season waning, for the burden of their song was, Let us now be merry. The scarlet head of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r showed brilliantly from the bare dead boughs of a chestnut-oak, which, with its clinging lichens of green and gray, was boldly projected against the azure sky. And there, the filmy moon, most dimly visible in the afternoon sunshine, swung like some lunar hallucination among the cirrus clouds.

"Ye 'lows ez I ain't doin' right by Birt?" the tanner suggested presently, with more conscience in the matter than one would have given him credit for possessing.

"I knows ye air doin' right," said Byers unexpectedly.

All at once the woodp.e.c.k.e.r was solemnly tapping--tapping.

Byers glanced up, as if to discern whence the sudden sound came, and once more bent to his work.

"Ye b'lieves, then, ez he stole that thar grant from Nate Griggs?"

asked Perkins.

"I be SURE he done it," said Byers, unequivocally.

The tanner took his pipe from his lips. "What ails ye ter say that, Andy?" he exclaimed excitedly.

Andy Byers hesitated. He mechanically pa.s.sed his fingers once or twice across the blunt, curved blade of the two-handled knife.

"Ye'll keep the secret?"

"In the sole o' my boot," said the tanner.

"Waal, I KNOWS ez Birt stole the grant. I hev been powerful changeful, though, in my thoughts bout'n it. At fust I war glad when he war suspicioned 'bout'n it, an' I war minded to go an'

inform on him an' sech, ter pay him back; 'kase I held a grudge ag'in him, believin' ez he hed dressed out that thar blackberry bush ez Mrs. Price's harnt. An' then I'd remember ez his mother war a widder-woman, an' he war nothin' but a boy, an' boys air bound ter be gamesome an' full o' jokes wunst in a while, an' I'd feel like I war bound ter furgive him 'bout the harnt. An' then ag'in I got toler'ble oneasy fur fear the Law mought hold ME 'sponsible fur knowin' 'bout Birt's crime of stealin' the grant an' yit not tellin'

on him. An' I'd take ter hopin' an' prayin' the boy would confess, so ez I wouldn't hev ter tell on him. I hev been mightily pestered in my mind lately with sech dilly-dallyin'."

Again the sudden tapping of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r filled the pause.

"Did ye SEE him steal the grant, Andy?" asked the tanner, with bated breath.

"Ez good ez seen him. I seen him slyin' round, an' I HEV FUND THE PLACE WHAR HE HEV HID IT."

And the woodp.e.c.k.e.r still was solemnly tapping, high up in the chestnut-oak tree.

CHAPTER X.

Birt, meanwhile, was trudging along in the woods, hardly seeing where he went, hardly caring.

He had not had even a vague premonition when the tanner told him that he might have the rest of the day off. He did not now want the holiday which would once have so rejoiced him, and he said as much.

And then the tanner, making the disclosure by degrees, being truly sorry to part with the boy, intimated that he need come back no more.

Birt unharnessed the mule by the sense of touch and the force of habit, for blinding tears intervened between his vision and the rusty old buckles and worn straps of leather. The animal seemed to understand that something was amiss, and now and then turned his head interrogatively. Somehow Birt was glad to feel that he left at least one friend in the tanyard, albeit the humblest, for he had always treated the beast with kindness, and he was sure the mule would miss him.

When he reached home he loitered for a time outside the fence, trying to nerve himself to witness his mother's distress. And at last his tears were dried, and he went in and told her the news.

It was hard for him nowadays to understand that simple mother of his. She did nothing that he expected. To be sure her cheek paled, her eyes looked anxious for a moment, and her hands trembled so that she carefully put down upon the table a dish which she had been wiping. But she said quite calmly, "Waal, sonny, I dunno but ye hed better take a day off from work, sure enough, an' go a-huntin'.

Thar's yer rifle, an' mebbe ye'll git a shot at a deer down yander by the lick. The chill'n haint hed no wild meat lately, 'ceptin'

squir'ls out'n Rufe's trap."

And then he began to cry out bitterly that n.o.body would give him work, and they would all starve; that the tanner believed he had stolen the grant, and was afraid to have him about the hides.

"'Tain't no differ ez long ez 'tain't the truth," said his mother philosophically. "We-uns will jes' abide by the truth."

He repeated this phrase over and over as he struggled through the tangled underbrush of the dense forest.

It was all like some terrible dream; and but for Tennessee, it would be the truth! How he blessed the little sister that her love for him and his love for her had come between him and crime at that moment of temptation.

"So powerful peart!" he muttered with glistening eyes, as he thought of her.

The grant was gone, to be sure; but he did not take it. They accused him--and falsely!

It was something to be free and abroad in the woods. He heard the wind singing in the pines. Their fine, penetrating aroma pervaded the air, and the rusty needles, covering the ground, m.u.f.fled his tread. Once he paused--was that the bleat of a fawn, away down on the mountain's slope? He heard no more, and he walked on, looking about with his old alert interest. He was refreshed, invigorated, somehow consoled, as he went. O wise mother! he wondered if she foresaw this when she sent him into the woods.

He had not before noted how the season was advancing. Here and there, in the midst of the dark green foliage, leaves shone so vividly yellow that it seemed as if upon them some fascinated sunbeam had expended all its glamours. In a dusky recess he saw the crimson sumach flaring. And the distant blue mountains, and the furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and every incident of crag or chasm--all appeared through a soft purple haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the scene. Down the ravine the "lick" shone with the l.u.s.tre of a silver lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were visible vague bobbing figures, which he recognized as the "Griggs gang," seeking upon the mountain side the gold which he had discovered.

Suddenly he heard a light crackling in the brush,--a faint footfall.

It reminded him of the deer-path close at hand. He crouched down noiselessly amongst the low growth and lifted his rifle, his eyes fixed on the point where the path disappeared in the bushes, and where he would first catch a glimpse of the approaching animal.

He heard the step again. His finger was trembling on the trigger, when down the path leisurely walked an old gentleman attired in black, a hammer in his hand, and a pair of gleaming spectacles poised placidly upon the bridge of an intellectual Roman nose. And this queer game halted in the middle of the deer-path, all unconscious of his deadly danger.

It was a wonder that the rifle was not discharged, for the panic- stricken Birt had lost control of his muscles, and his convulsive finger was still quivering on the trigger as he trembled from head to foot. He hardly dared to try to move the gun. For a moment he could not speak. He gazed in open-mouthed amazement at the unsuspecting old gentleman, who was also unaware of the far more formidable open mouth of the rifle.

"Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'?" suddenly yelled out Birt, from his hiding-place.

The startled old man jumped, with the most abrupt alacrity. In fact, despite his age and the lack of habit, he bounded as acrobatically from the ground as the expected deer could have done.

He was, it is true, a learned man; but science has no specific for sudden fright, and he jumped as ignorantly as if he did not know the difficult name of any of the muscles that so alertly exercised themselves on this occasion.

Birt rose at last to his feet and looked with a pallid face over the underbrush. "Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'," he faltered, "a-steppin' along a deer-path ez nat'ral ez ef ye war a big fat buck? I kem mighty nigh shootin' ye."

The old gentleman recovered his equilibrium, mental and physical, with marvelous rapidity.

"Ah, my young friend,"--he motioned to Birt to come nearer,--"I want to speak to you."

Birt stared. One might have inferred, from the tone, that the gentleman had expected to meet him here, whereas Birt had just had the best evidence of his senses that the encounter was a great surprise.

The boy observed his interlocutor more carefully than he had yet been able to do. He remembered all at once Rufe's queer story of meeting, down the ravine, an eccentric old man whom he was disposed to identify as Satan. As the stranger stood there in the deer-path, he looked precisely as Rufe had described him, even to the baffling glitter of his spectacles, his gray whiskers, and the curiously shaped hammer in his hand.