"Go whar? An' leave you-uns a-cuddled down hyar so snug in the groun' that the devil hisse'f will sca'cely nose ye out on the Jedgmint Day? Naw, sir. I see nuthin' but resk fur me on all sides, but less hyar 'n ennywhars. I hev stood in ez much danger ez enny of ye. I hev tuk my sheer o' the resk 'thout wingin', but I won't be kicked out like a stray dog an' gin up ter the law 'kase you-uns air 'feared 'Dolphus Ross 'lows I be a moonshiner. He can't find or hear o' me hyar. I got ez much right hyar ez you-uns, 'Renzo Taft. I own my sheer in the business, an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide." The other two moonshiners, Copley and young Dan Sykes, regarded him askance and with sullen eyes. This minority might seem to be fraught with no small danger. His chief fear lest Espey should be overtaken, and the details of his refuge with the Larrabees be elicited, involving himself and his mother as accessories to the crime, he never mentioned. It so absorbed his thoughts, however, that for a time he did not observe a symptom of the antagonism of his confrères which deeply augured its seriousness. A shaft hard by the still-room, if such the nook where the apparatus was worked might be called, which was sunk into the very deepest limits of the mine, came near relieving them of their perplexity on this score, one day. Larrabee's foot slipped in the rotting refuse of pomace on the verge while he was handling the bags of grain, and as he came heavily to the floor, barely saving himself, he saw like a flash a sudden irradiation of hope on the flushed, foolish face of the boy, a keen expectation in Taft's eyes, and even in the elderly drudge's wooden wrinkles a sort of disappointed resignation as he scrambled to his feet, that daunted him more than the immediate danger.