Rufe rose precipitately. Towse, believing his petition for the papaw was about to be rewarded, leaped up too, gamboling with a display of ecstasy that might have befitted a starving creature, and an elasticity to be expected only of a rubber dog. As he uttered a shrill yelp of delight, he sprang up against Rufe, who, reeling under the shock, dropped the remnant of the papaw. Towse darted upon it, sniffed disdainfully, and returned to his capers around Rufe, evidently declining to believe that all that show of gustatory satisfaction had been elicited only by the papaw, and that Rufe had nothing else to eat. Thus the two took their way out of the tanyard; and even after they had disappeared, their progress through the underbrush was marked by an abnormal commotion among the leaves, as the saltatory skeptic of a dog insisted on more substantial favors than the succulent papaw. The tanner smoked for a time in silence. Then, "Birt ain't goin' ter be let ter work hyar ag'in," he said. Byers elevated his shaggy 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 woodpecker 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 woodpecker 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 passed his fingers once or twice across the blunt, curved blade of the two-handled knife. "Ye'll keep the secret?"