His precious book he read no more by the light of the furnace flicker, after this. Not that he now brooded over his cares, but his watchfulness never flagged. Whether the accident suggested the idea to Taft, or whether it were the flimsy fiction of the inimical atmosphere and his own alert apprehensiveness, Larrabee thought that he was given several opportunities to take leave inadvertently of the world. Once, in cleaning a pistol said to be unloaded, the ball in the last chamber whizzed sharply by his head. Again and again he was set to handle the heavy bags of grain on the slippery verge of the shaft. After a time a new cause of alarm was developed. Despite his crafty vigilance in his determination to remain at all hazards, he did not notice, until it became very marked, their unwillingness that he should leave the still at all, and Taft's expertness in disallowing every pretext. The truth dawned upon him at last, with its most valid reason. Although they would be glad were he to quit the country, yet, since his permanent absence could not be compassed, any chance excursion into the Cove or neighborhood was fraught with danger, as he might be seen, identified as Larrabee, and followed by the man who had spotted him as a moonshiner to Taft's house, where, spending days and nights, the mystery would soon be unfolded. Larrabee came upon this discovery with a suffocating sense as of a prisoner. Instantly he was possessed by a wild urgency for the outer air and the freedom beyond that seemed as if its own impetus might break through the barriers of a thousand feet of the solid ground. He almost felt the wind blow in the strength of his keen desire; and when he set himself instantly to compass his deliverance, eagerness outran tact in his first demonstration. "Hello, 'Renzo," he said in a cheerful, incidental voice, strikingly at variance with the gruff tones that had of late served him in the absolutely essential colloquies between them touching the work.