Kenniston folded his arms as he tilted himself back in his chair, and resigned the conversation to its unique leadership. The ceaseless motion of the falling lines of rain gave a spurious effect of motion to the great monastic forms of the mountains cowled with mists and robed in dreary hue, seeming continually in sad processional along the horizon. The ochreous pools near at hand had lost all capacity for reflection, although the dark green branches of the firs here and there bent above them, and the gray rain dripping from the fibrous fringes upon the unquiet tremulous surface took its color, and was seen no more. His returning glance met Taft's eye as he was about to speak, and somehow in that momentary contact a quiet understanding was established between them. "The reason, I reckon, they didn't want Mr. Kenniston ter build his hotel hyar war 'kase 'twould bring too many strangers round." "An' what's the objection to strangers?" asked Kenniston anxiously. It was not merely a retrospective interest that the question served. He asked for the future. "Waal, I reckon they hed some moonshinin' or sech on hand," returned Taft coolly. "Thar, now! what did I tell ye?" vociferated Rodolphus Ross, appealing to Kenniston. "An' I'll bet this hyar Larrabee war one of 'em." Taft nodded, and Kenniston meditatively eyed the dull flashes from the stove, recollecting the strange conversation of Larrabee here, and his sudden significant betrayal of secret knowledge of the origin of the fire when it was mentioned. "Strangers air powerful onhealthy fur the moonshinin' business," said Taft, as a sort of corollary of his former statement. "Speak from experience?" sneered Rodolphus Ross. "I do so," declared Taft unequivocally. Then turning to Kenniston, "I sarved a prison term fur illicit distillin' whenst I war a young man. I 'lowed, like all these other young muskrats, ez I could do what I pleased with my own corn an' apples. But whenst I traveled all through six or seben States goin' to the North, an' seen this big kentry an' sech, I knowed I warn't ekal ter runnin' agin its laws; an' whether thar's reason in 'em or no, I ondertook ter keep 'em arterward." This unexpected confession disconcerted Ross in some sort. He silently eyed Taft, whose criminal experience seemed rather an error of an unripe judgment than the turpitude of law-breaking, and his candor in admitting it bluntly did not detract from the serious impression he had evidently made upon Kenniston. With Ross nothing was serious long. There was a sudden breaking up of the gloss of intentness in his round dark eyes, and as they shifted they fell upon the poker of the stove, and he once more thrust it through the bars and rattled it smartly. "I oughter say," said Taft, meditatively sucking his pipestem, "that 'twar Espey ez fust 'lowed ter burn ye out. 'Burn his shanty!' he say."