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“Oh, I sent Jack thar ter tell him better whenst he drove ter mill ter-day ter git the meal fer the mash. Jack made yer dad understand ’bout yer sudden demise.”

“Oh, yeh,” interposed the glib Jack; “an’ he said ez he couldn’t abide sech jokes.”

“Shucks!” cried the filial Wyatt. “Dad war full fresky himself in his young days; I hev hearn his old frien’s say so.”

“I tried ter slick things over,” said the diplomatic Jack. “I ‘lowed young folks war giddy by nature. I ‘lowed ‘t war jes a flash o’ fun. An’ he say: ‘Flash o’ fun be con-sarned! My son is more like a flash o’ lightning; ez suddint an’ mischeevious an’ totally ondesirable.'”

The reproach obviously struck home, for Wyatt maintained a disconsolate silence for a time. At length, apparently goaded by his thoughts to attempt a defense, he remonstrated:

“Nobody ever war dead less of his own free will. I never elected ter be a harnt. ‘Gene Barker hed no right ter nominate me fer the dear departed, nohow.”

One of the uncouth younger fellows, his shoulders laden with a sack of meal, paused on his way from the porch to the trap-door to look up from beneath his burden with a sly grin as he said, “‘Gene war wishin’ it war true, that’s why.”

“‘Count o’ Minta Elladine Riggs,” gaily chimed in another.

“But ‘Gene needn’t gredge Watt foothold on this yearth fer sech; she ain’t keerin’ whether Watt lives or dies,” another contributed to the rough, rallying fun.

But Wyatt was of sensitive fibre. He had flushed angrily; his eyes were alight; a bitter retort was trembling on his lips when one of the elder Barkers, discriminating the elements of an uncontrollable fracas, seized on the alternative.

“Could you-uns sure be back hyar by daybreak, Watt!” he asked, fixing the young fellow with a stern eye.

“No ‘spectable ghost roams around arter sun-up,” cried Wyatt, fairly jovial at the prospect of liberation.

“Ye mus’ be heedful not ter be viewed,” the senior admonished him.

“I be goin’ ter slip about keerful like a reg’lar, stiddy-goin’ harnt, an’ eavesdrop a bit. It’s worth livin’ a hard life ter view how a feller’s friends will take his demise.”

“I reckon ye kin make out ter meet the wagin kemin’ back from the cross-roads’ store. It went out this evenin’ with that coffin full of jugs that ye lef’ las’ night under the church-house, whenst ‘Gene seen you-uns war suspicioned. They will hev time ter git ter the cross-roads with the whisky on’ back little arter midnight, special’ ez we-uns hev got the raider that spied out the job hyar fast by the leg.”

The mere mention of the young prisoner rendered Wyatt the more eager to be gone, to be out of sight and sound. But he had no agency in the disaster, he urged against some inward clamor of protest; the catastrophe was the logical result of the fool-hardiness of the officer in following these desperate men with no backing, with no power to apprehend or hold, relying on his flimsy disguise, and risking delivering himself into their hands, fettered as he was with the knowledge of his discovery of their secret.

“It’s nothin’ ter me, nohow,” Wyatt was continually repeating to himself, though when he sprang through the door he could scarcely draw his breath because of some mysterious, invisible clutch at his throat.

He sought to ascribe this symptom to the density of the pervasive fog without, that impenetrably cloaked all the world; one might wonder how a man could find his way through the opaque white vapor. It was, however, an accustomed medium to the young mountaineer, and his feet, too, had something of that unclassified muscular instinct, apart from reason, which guides in an oft-trodden path. Once he came to a halt, from no uncertainty of locality, but to gaze apprehensively through the blank, white mists over a shuddering shoulder. “I wonder ef thar be any other harnts aloose ter-night, a-boguing through the fog an’ the moon,” he speculated. Presently he went on again, shaking his head sagely. “I ain’t wantin’ ter collogue with sech,” he averred cautiously.