Lorenzo Taft's plans were very perfectly calculated and adjusted to the probabilities. There had been no rift in his judgment. Nowhere could he find fault or flaw in his reasoning. A lucky chance had fired the hotel, and freed his hands from the smirch of the firebrand and the possible penalties of arson. The moving of the great monument of boundary had thrown the only available site for the hotel on the Kenniston tract well within Cap'n Lucy's lines when the land was processioned, and thus the summer swallow must needs alight elsewhere, and the commercial interests of moonshining would thereby be promoted. Each detail had fallen out exactly as he had planned. Success seemed the essential sequence. Only Espey's frantic fear of arrest had precipitated all the untoward events which had advanced parallel after parallel, and forced him to his last defenses. And these one might think were most sagacious and adequate. The foolish drunken boy, whose tongue might work mischief, was within the hour hustled out of the country. Every trace of the forbidden vocation was demolished beyond the possibility of detection. If Larrabee should seek revenge by informing, he could prove naught, not even his own complicity. It would seem but the groundless accusation of malice. And Taft had even taken time by the forelock by avowing his former illegal practices, his prison record, his familiarity with the motives and manœuvres of moonshiners, and insidiously casting suspicion on Larrabee, ascribing to him an adequate motive for moving the Big Hollow Boulder, in the eyes of the law a felony. No possible flaw in his reasoning from the premises from which he argued. He had guarded himself logically, boldly, with great perspicacity, from enmity, from revenge. It never for one moment occurred to him to devise protection from good will! Kenniston and Ross, even in the excitement of the emergency, and the tumultuous tide of Larrabee's eager explanations when he suddenly burst in upon them as they sat smoking together after breakfast, could but take heed of the subtler sub-current of significance in his disclosure. More than once they exchanged glances charged with a meaning deeper than he wot of. "Thar's a shaft," he cried, "an old air-shaft, a-nigh that thar tunnel! Ef ye'll rig up a windlass, or let yer men put me down with a rope, I'll find Taft, an' the t'others too, ef they be thar yit." "You'll drown yourself, or fall, or suffocate with gas," Kenniston said tentatively, looking about for his hat, and pausing to cast a keen glance at Larrabee. "I'll resk it--I'll resk it--fur him and Espey too--an' I dunno what my mother would do ef old grand-daddy Haight war ter kem ter sech an e-end! Oh, I'll resk it! An' Taft, he ain't a bad man when all's said. Taft's mighty clever sometimes." "I think he's the worst man I ever saw," said Kenniston, as he flung away his cigar.