Birt silently watched the group for a time in the red light of the smouldering fire and the blue flashes from without. At length he softly rose and crept noiselessly to the door; the fastening was the primitive latch with a string attached; it opened without a sound in his cautious handling, and he found himself in the pitchy darkness outside, the wild mountain wind whirling about him, and the rain descending in steady torrents. He had stumbled only a few steps from the house when he thought he indistinctly heard the door open again. He dreaded his mother's questions, but he stopped and looked back. He saw nothing. There was no sound save the roar of the wind, the dash of the rain, and the commotion among the branches of the trees. He went on once more, absorbed in his dreary reflections and the fierce anger that burned in his heart. "I'll git even with Nate Griggs," he said, over and again. "I'll git even with him yit." CHAPTER VII. When Birt reached the fence, he discovered that the bars were down. Rufe had forgotten to replace them that afternoon when he drove in the cow to be milked. Despite his absorption, Birt paused to put them up, remembering the vagrant mountain cattle that might stray in upon the corn. He found the familiar little job difficult enough, for it seemed to him that there was never before so black a night. Even looking upward, he could not see the great wind-tossed boughs of the chestnut-oak above his head. He only knew they were near, because acorns dropped upon the rail in his hands, and rebounded resonantly. But an owl, blown helplessly down the gale, was not much better off, for all its vaunted nocturnal vision. As it drifted by, on the currents of the wind, its noiseless, out- stretched wings, vainly flapping, struck Birt suddenly in the face, and frightened by the collision, it gave an odd, peevish squeak. Birt, too, was startled for a moment. Then he exclaimed irritably, "Oh, g'way owEL"--realizing what had struck him. The next moment he paused abruptly. He thought he heard, close at hand, amongst the glooms, a faint chuckle. Something--was it?-- SOMEBODY laughing in the darkness? He stood intently listening. But now he heard only the down-pour of the rain, the sonorous gusts of the wind, the multitudinous voices of the muttering leaves. He said to himself that it was fancy. "All this trouble ez I hev hed along o' Nate Griggs hev mighty nigh addled my brains." The name recalled his resolve. "I'll git even with him, though. I'll git even with him yit," he reiterated as he plodded on heavily down the path, his mind once more busy with all the details of his discovery, his misplaced confidence, and the wreck of his hopes.