It was still all vibrant with the twanging drone of the cicada and the windy note of the booming frogs. The air, damp and of clarified freshness, was pervaded with indeterminate fragrance, the blent perfume of some flower and the pungent aroma of weed and shrub and the balsamic fir. A cluster of great trees rose just outside of the little shell, and though many a star shone down in the interstices of the black fibrous foliage, Larrabee led the way out beyond them and into an open space. It was nearer the other cottages instead of farther away, as Kenniston had half expected. The suspicion, the half-dormant fear, the doubt in his mind, were giving place anew to his determination to keep his hand on this man, to win his confidence or to surprise his secret. All those genial arts of ingratiation at his command were once more brought into play. It was he who introduced the subject of their mission, as they paused on a slight eminence, with a clear view of the great fields of heaven before them. "Now which is the star that you want to know more about?" he demanded, lifting the glass with a free gesture, and adjusting it to his eye. "Don't ye see nuthin' oncommon?" the mountaineer asked, in a tense voice. The strained tone struck Kenniston's attention, and he lowered the glass and looked through the baffling darkness at his companion, whose form could only be discriminated by some fine sense from the surrounding darkness by an effect of solidity, given one could hardly say how. Kenniston, the glass swaying useless in his hand, gazed upward once more. "No, I can't say I do," he replied wonderingly. Larrabee suddenly came up close to him, taking him by the arm. "Now, hyar, todes the east, an' yit a leetle todes the north, sorter slanchwise todes Big Injun Mounting, setting a mite ter the west from that, an' plumb west from Chilhowee, a bright, bright star,--with," he added, in a surprised tone, as if he had not before discerned this, "a sorter silver shine onto it."