Somehow the void about the circle was not without melancholy intimations, the normal incident of departure, whether it be regretted or cause for gratulation. Perhaps because of the sudden disordered quiet and loneliness in the quitted scene, the unoccupied mind must needs always reach forward into the unknown journeyings, meeting in speculation the varied events denied to the home-abiding. Larrabee sat still for a time in the low red glow of the furnace fire, exchanging now and again an incidental comment with his companions on the subject of the journey and its chances. The intervals of silence grew longer; the shadows gathered and deepened; the younger man's head occasionally nodded grotesquely in sleep, but more than once, as Larrabee was about to rise to his feet, he saw in the obscurity the large bloodshot eyes opened and fixed soberly upon him. He had waited long; long for the certainty that Taft would not return on some forgotten errand; long for the drunken sleep that must needs overcome the inimical vigilance of the young moonshiner. He could wait no longer. With an abrupt, shrill cry like that of a savage panther, he flung himself upon his elder companion. Copley was a man of powerful physique, and his every muscle was developed by the heavy labor in which it was exercised. In his undiminished strength his age gave no advantage to his adversary, whose slight bulk he might have flung from him with a single arm but for the surprise and suddenness of the attack in which he was borne to the ground. All Larrabee's strength hardly sufficed to hold him there for a moment. There was a fierce struggle; a pistol ball whizzed by Larrabee's head, and the narrow precincts were filled with the echoes and with Copley's hoarse calls upon Sykes for help. The young fellow rose in response, stupidly echoing the cries of his own name, took one tottering step forward, and fell like a log, flabby, nerveless, helpless, on the floor. Larrabee wondered afterward that it could all be so quickly done. It was by virtue of surprise, desperation, sleight of hand, deftness, and quickness rather than by strength or courage. A meal bag served as a gag, and a rope, used in transporting the heavy barrels up the steep incline to the store, to pinion the arms and shackle the feet. Larrabee was almost exhausted by the capture of the first prisoner, and it was perhaps auspicious for his freedom that the young drunkard, beyond an ill-directed blow or two, could make no resistance. The rope was made fast around the solid masonry of the furnace; and as Larrabee contemplated his work, he felt sure that the two prisoners, one yet vainly struggling, the other already sleeping the sleep of the very drunk, would find no means of deliverance till Taft's return the next day.