If his bursting skull were admissible testimony,--but he shook his head stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a scornful boot. "Then the worse fool you-uns! Look-a-hyar!" he cried furiously, as he caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes about his legs. "Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer drunken tantrums! Murder! murder! or mighty nigh it!" He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended, as he groped bending toward it in the darkness. "Who's that? Lar'bee?" he said. "Lar'bee!" exclaimed Taft scornfully. "Lar'bee's been out'n the still ever since yestiddy evenin'." It was Sykes's drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft departed; but alack! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on. Nevertheless he blurted out:-- "Ye tole me ter watch him,"--he set his teeth in a sort of snarl, and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly spirituous,--"ter gyard him like, a dog. 'Hold fast!' ye said, 'hold fast!'" Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows. "Sykes," he said, "this is a bad business fur you, an' ye'll swing fur it, I'm a-thinkin'. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter watch nobody. I let Lar'bee out myse'f. Ye an' Copley war lef' hyar ter keep sober an' run the still; an' what do ye do? Ye murder him!" As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic voice, the young fellow's blood ran cold. "Ye murder him, an' tie him up like that, an' then do yerse'f up sorter fancy with bags an' a rope. Ye'll hev closer dealin's with a rope yit; I kin spy out that in the day that's kemin'." His eyes gleamed with a sinister smile. Sykes's knees shook. "Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed wildly. "Air--air he dead? 'Twarn't me! God A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar Lar'bee! 'Twar Lar'bee!" "Shucks!" Taft turned wearily away. "Ain't I tole ye I seen Lar'bee set out 'fore I did? Blackenin' Lar'bee won't save ye, Dan! _Drink--drink!_ I tole ye drink would ruinate ye; always brings a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n't put some water in the jug beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o' yer spree." He shook his head. "So it is! So it is!" "Oh, is he dead,--air ye sure he is dead?" cried the young fellow in a heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner. Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of anxiety.