The curiosity as to Mink’s fate grew so pronounced as the day wore on that a party of young roughs went openly to the jail and interrogated the jailer. For that functionary had returned. He showed himself at the window of his stronghold jauntily enough. He had a jovial expression, a black mustache that turned cheerfully upward,—for he laughed often and usually laughed last,—quick brown eyes, and a bushy, unkempt head; he was unshaven and in his shirt-sleeves. He seemed to care not an atom for the illogical views of his fellow-citizens. “I’m appinted by the sher’ff o’ Cherokee County ter keep folks in jail, an’ by Hokey, I’m a-goin’ ter do it.” They begged him to let them in; they had come to see him sociably,—a-visitin’, they protested. “Can’t git in hyar, ’thout ye steal a horse or kill yer gran’mother, one.” He shook his keys jocosely at them, and vanished. At noon, when the train was due at the little station, the mystery was solved. The jailer was strolling up and down the platform, grave enough for once in his life, and with apparently no purpose. Asked if he were going to Glaston he replied, with an effort at his usual manner, “Not in these clothes, if the court knows itself, an’ it rather think it do!” It was a day of doubtful moods, of sibilant gusts of wind and intervals of brooding stillness. There was a pervasive suggestion of moisture in the air, but as yet no rain. The odor of decaying leaves came from the woods on the other side of the road. The sunshine was uncertain. White clouds were silently astir in the upper regions of the atmosphere; among the distant blue ranges the intervenient valleys could be distinctly located by the mist rising from them, elusively showing, then veiling the farther heights, and anon falling like some airy cataract over a mountain side, seeming to cleave it in twain, and simulating a gap, a pass, in the impenetrabilities of the massive clifty range. The little stream that flowed along on the other side of the rails reflected the vacillating sentiments of the sky: now a cloud driving faster than its current showed upon its lustrous olive-green surface among the reflections of the crimson sumach bushes that lined its banks; and now it glittered in a burst of sunshine and emulated the azure of the changing heavens. The little town lay at a considerable distance; whether it hoped to grow up to the depot, or desired the advantages of civilization without its close contact, one might speculate in vain. Its clustering roofs were quite distinct among the thinning red and yellow and brown leaves of the trees.