"He air 'bidin' down at old Lucy Tems's house; an' ez ye sot out ter go thar this evenin', ye air 'bleeged ter hev viewed him," persisted Larrabee. "Oh, I viewed him," said Lorenzo Taft, the steadiness of his fixed gaze beginning to waver somewhat as he sought to assume a more incidental manner, in the midst of his amazement to hear the details of his visit to the Tems cabin from these "moles o' the yearth," miles away in the rain and the mist and the darkness, and locked up in the denser medium of the depths of the solid ground. "I'll tell ye his name," continued Larrabee, his eyes still smiling, but the curves of his mouth fierce, and his breath coming fast. "His name is Kenn'ston, or sech." A wild, confusing fear of supernatural agency in this knowledge had begun to pervade Taft's consciousness. Then he caught himself suddenly. "Ye mus' hev hearn on _him_ whenst _he_ war hyar afore," he said. "Hyar afore!" exclaimed the anxious-eyed men in concert. "He be the man ez 'lows ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove, or sech like. Ye mus' hev hearn 'bout him." A silence ensued. "That war 'way las' year," the elder moonshiner said at last. "He 'pears ter go powerful slow," said the boy, disaffected and incredulous. As the grizzled elderly distiller pondered on the matter, the perplexed wrinkles and lines of his worn face were painful to see. "Ye be right sure he ain't no revenuer nor nuthin'?" he asked anxiously, subordinating his own judgment. "Great Gosh, naw!" exclaimed Taft, with a resonant, confident note. This idea, so at variance with his knowledge of Kenniston's plans, had not occurred to him. He broke out into a sonorous laugh at the fears which for the first time he comprehended. "Revenuer!" he cried contemptuously. "Moonshining would be a powerful slick bizness ef revenuers war sech ez him!" The sense of relief induced a slackening of the tension among the others. They too laughed, albeit a trifle constrainedly, and glanced consciously from one to the other. But Larrabee turned the Testament back and forth doubtfully in his hands, and asked suddenly, without looking up, "Then, why n't ye tell 'bout him a-fust, ef ye didn't want us not ter know 'bout him,--jes' ez news?" Taft was silent for an instant. But the sense of partial success is a prophetic element in the completion of triumph, and, with an irreflective dash at the nearest means of exculpation without full disclosure, he replied precipitately:-- "News! I didn't count _him_ no news. Sech ez him don't count much whenst a man's a-goin' a-courtin'." The silence with which this was received was expressive of extreme surprise. The crackle of the furnace fuel, the roar of the flames, the rush of the air along one of the unseen shafts near by that had some immediate communication with the outer atmosphere, and sustained a strong current through the connecting drift, even the continuous dripping from the worm, each made itself conspicuous in the absence of other sound.