He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches. The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set, collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments. "What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing horse with considerable skill. "Something white--beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law. Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades. "Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again protested in a loud, broken voice:-- "Beckonin'--beckonin'--Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,--an' he may escape jedge an' jury,--an' he may cheat hemp,--but in the dead o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"-- "Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin' back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say." "Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur from Tems's now,--air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey. With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly up alongside once more.