For early rising was one of the virtues inculcated in old Mrs. Jiniway's rule of life. Cornelia Taft was awake betimes the following morning,--a dawn full of rain, of gray mist veiling the mountains, of low clouds, of heavy, windless air. She saw its melancholy gleams through the crevices of the clapboards of the roof above her head and the batten shutter close by her bed. She knew that these fugitive glimmers were brighter than the dull day slowly breaking without, from the contrast with the deep tones of intervenient shadow. She lay looking at them for a time with this thought in her mind, and then she leaned forward and opened the shutter. It was as she had fancied: the dusk was almost visible, like a brown mist that seemed subtle and elusive, and always vaguely withdrew whenever the eye would fain dwell upon it. A great elm grew just without the window and hung high above the roof. Its leaves were all lustrous and deeply green with the moisture; the graceful bole and branches were darker and more definite than their wont. A bird's-nest was in a crotch. She turned her head to hear the sleepy chirp of nestlings. She wondered that Joe had not rifled it,--only because he had not observed it, she felt sure. "That boy don't take notice o' nuthin'," she commented acridly upon her senior. The next moment her own powers of observation were brought into play. She heard steps, voices, a loud laugh, and before she could experience either fear or surprise very definitely two or three men passed out of the house, under the elm-tree, and down the road, vanishing in the mist. She recognized one of them as the man who had so suddenly appeared in the store the day before; another she had never seen; the third was very young and very drunk. Despite the sanctimonious atmosphere that had characterized Mrs. Jiniway's domicile, the doings of the unregenerate had always been commented upon with the freedom affected by those who are subject neither to the temptation nor the transgression. Few gossips were better informed upon current affairs than she and her youthful charge; and it might be safe to say that, to all intents and purposes, a United States marshal knew no more about the revenue laws as applied to illicit distilling than did Miss Cornelia Taft. Her small mind received a great enlightenment as she watched the young moonshiner reel down the road with his two companions, and then she leaned forward and softly and deftly closed the shutter as before. IV.