He marked with secret fear how the suggestion fared. Larrabee, who had begun again to read by the knifelike gleam from the crevice of the furnace door, caught upon the page on his knee, as he sat close beside it, looked up with a keen, pondering face, his finger still on the line along which it was wont to guide his wavering comprehension. Surely he found no thoughts in its wake responsive to the idea now astir in his active, untaught brain. Law-breaking is a progressive evil. If he had not been engaged in the crime of illicit distilling,--which has, however, its apologists from the mere standpoint of economics, who plead the inherent right of a man to use his own corn and fruit to serve his own advantage,--this further iniquity of the destruction of the property of another could not have found lodgment in his consideration, for he was not naturally a cruel man, nor wicked. But in the depths of the earth, working at an unlawful vocation, in jeopardy of his liberty and in fear of his life, viewing the world only in transient glimpses in the midst of a backwoods community, and sustaining in effect an assumed character, that of a slothful farmer, an ignorant man's mind, however good the native essence, is not likely to develop fairly; and he may read the New Testament, as indeed those wiser and better than he have done, as a matter of literary interest and excitement, with not a thought of personal application. The half-drunken boy pulled himself out of his semi-recumbent position on the floor. "That's the dinctum, by Gawd!" he exclaimed, his solemn red face swollen and somnolent of expression. "Burn him out! Burn him out! Make _him_ move! Kindle up a leetle hell around him!" He broke out with a wild, hiccoughing laugh, singing in a queer falsetto,-- "'Ladybug, Ladybug, fly to yer home! Yer house is on fire'"-- ending in a shrill cackle of derision and a quavering whoop. "Shet up, sonny!" said Copley, the veteran moonshiner, who seldom interfered save upon a question of work. Even he turned from the examination of the fermentation of a tub of mash which had been in question, his lantern in his hand, and a slow smile of discovery in the perplexed, anxious wrinkles of his wooden face. "I reckon our fire would last ez long ez his buildin' timber." There was not a protest from among them. Lorenzo Taft, more dismayed than he could at once realize, again marveled how they had taken the sudden alarm. "Ye ain't never tole me yit how it air ez you-uns fund out, sence I been gone this evenin', ez thar war a stranger in the Cove, an' how ye knowed 'twar this hyar Kenn'ston down at Tems's." There was a sudden volley of laughter, and Larrabee closed his book with a bang of triumph. "Our turn now! Jack, _he_ wants ter hear the news!" he called out to Espey. "Ye mought ez well s'arch the hen-house fur teeth ez ter kem hyar ter we-uns, 'way down in the ground, axin' fur news!" protested Jack sarcastically.