"I--I ain't never seen _him_. I--I reckon"--it seemed too terrible to contemplate--"I reckon he mus' be--daid." She had never before looked upon it in this light, and her heart sank. "Friend o' Lar'bee's?" he persisted. "I reckon so; he hed read 'bout him." "Read 'bout him? Whar? In the 'Colb'ry Gazette'?" He lowered his voice respectfully, for to him personal mention in the 'Colbury Gazette' meant fame. "Naw. In the Bible, o' course," said Sis, stiffly reproving. He stared at her in blank amaze for a moment; then he smote his leg a sounding thwack, and burst into a howl of derisive laughter. "Ye an' Lar'bee hed a pray'r-meetin', did ye? An', my son," he continued through his nose with a sanctimonious whine, turning to Joe, "did ye lead the saints in supplication, or raise the hyme-chune?" Joe responded with a fat chuckle of delighted laughter, rejoiced to see his Mentor, the professor of many novel and distasteful arts of household economy, put to ridicule and out of countenance. It was only for a moment. She turned acridly against the domestic insurgent. "_He_ tuned up arterward. Joe done _his_ quirin' arter Lar'bee war gone, an' the wind riz, an' the rain kem down. He wisht an' wisht Lar'bee hed bided. He fairly blated fur skeer!" "I never!" protested Joe in pouting indignation. "_I_ warn't 'feared o' the wind an' rain, nare one! 'T war the racket them dead ones kep' up in the Los' Time mine diggin' thar graves. This hyar house air right over the mine." Ross's great shifting wild eyes widened as he looked from one to the other. "Thar _ain't_ no dead ones diggin' thar graves!" cried Sis didactically. She must needs spend too many lonely hours here for that suggestion to be a welcome one. "Them ez dig ain't dead. Dad say jes' some boys, he reckon, a-moonshinin' or sech of a night in the Lost Time mine." Rodolphus Ross rose to his feet. He was elated, confident. He snapped his fingers noisily in the air as he took two or three of the sideway paces usually preliminary to a clog dance, which accomplishment he had acquired by viewing what he termed a "minstrel show." He had long suspected Larrabee of moonshining, and here was the _locus in quo_. He had said that Larrabee's trail had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth; with what literal reason he had not dreamed. Notwithstanding his haste, however, he must needs tarry for a fleer. "Gran'mammy Taft," he said, leering at the little girl, with her prim, antique aspect, "I never thunk ter find ye hobnobbin' with moonshiners." "Lar'bee ain't no moonshiner," she protested, with swift alarm. He joyed in her evident flutter. "Ah, gran'mammy Taft, ye kin consider yerse'f under arrest fur aidin' an' abettin' in moonshinin', ye an' all yer fambly."