The anomaly of administering upon one's own estate Lorenzo Taft was permitted in some sort to experience. A definite realization of finality attended his meditations, at he sat bending over the embers in the great fireplace of the store, in the rain-clouded morning that rose upon the conclusion of his labors of removing the still and destroying all its approaches. His vocation was gone, and naught remained. He had no more affinity than a fox or a wolf for a law-abiding occupation. The possible profits that might stick to his hands in the process of the conversion of the goods upon the shelves from the wholesale ratio to the retail failed to allure him, for the store had never been aught but a "blind." The furrow was no thoroughfare. That wild gambling with the chances of the sun and wind and the rain in its season, and often out of its season, known as farming, and doubtless permitted by the law only because it insures its own punishment, was risky enough to jump with his humor, but the stakes were hopelessly inadequate. He could not look forward, and the glance backward over the shoulder needs a good conscience to commend the prospect. Now and again he lifted his heavy boot and kicked the embers together fiercely, as if at great odds with his thoughts and his own counsels. Like many another, he undervalued his success, its hairbreadth jeopardies and its difficulty of attainment, now that it was fairly secured. It seemed to him a slight thing, the device of his quick wits to insure his safety, and his satisfaction in its triumphant exploitation had already evanesced. Had it been possible to reëstablish the status of yesterday, doubtless he would have hardily risked the discovery of the still, the disclosure of Larrabee, the capture of Espey, Dan Sykes's drunken tongue, and, as a result of these, the "shootin'-irons" of the "revenuers" and the sentence of the federal court. But gunpowder as a factor in a scheme admits of no second thoughts. He even upbraided his own acumen that, in the emergency, he had sought with an eye single the safety of himself, his one remaining comrade, and the apparatus, regardless of all considerations of enmity. But now that judgment was satisfied and escape certain, vengeance clamored.