"You are a peddler. Is that it?" questioned Emma. "Heavens, no! I'm a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this camp my headquarters." "This camp will be some miles from here by this time to-morrow," Grace Harlowe informed him. "So will I. So will I. No bother at all about that. Wash, come here!" Washington would not budge, so Hippy led him over to the caller. "Scared you, didn't I, eh? Mebby it is the seventh year, but don't let that bother you. Here! Here's a new harmonica for you. It will make more noise than the one you lost when I whispered in your ear out yonder. Go on now, and behave yourself," he added, giving Wash a playful push. "What can I do for you, folks?" "I suppose you know this country well?" questioned Grace. Long shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes I think I do, then I discover that I don't," he replied soberly. "No one knows it. I know the people, on the surface, and know my way around." "Perhaps you know something about the moonshiners and the feudists?" suggested Nora. Jeremiah Long gave her a quick glance of inquiry. "Take a word of advice from the Mystery Man. The less you know about anything up here in these hills the better off you are in the end. Some folks have made the mistake of knowing too much for their own good, and some of them are here yet, but they ain't saying anything." Grace thanked him and agreed that his advice was good, at the same time speculating in her own mind over their guest. She was not wholly satisfied that he was what he pretended to be, but what he was in reality, she could not even guess. In the meantime, Washington, lost in admiration of his new possession, was drawing harmony, and some discord, from it and rolling his eyes soulfully. In the ecstasy of the moment he had forgotten his recent fright. Tom and the Mystery Man were engaged in conversation, Hippy now and then interjecting a question, for the topic under discussion was the tract of land owned by Hippy, though not since Emma's remark had any reference been made to Hippy's ownership of it. The guest's talk was largely about the lay of the land there and its possibilities. "I'll see you folks if you are going there," he promised finally. "I shall be in that section of the range about three weeks from now, and maybe I can do you some good." "Thank you," smiled Grace. "We shall be pleased to see you then or at any other time. Mr. Gray leaves to-morrow morning for the Cumberlands where he has business, and we hope to join him, or rather to have him join us, in about that time. I think--" "Hulloa the camp!" shouted a voice from the bushes on the opposite side of the camp from that by which Mr. Long had entered.