He turned himself suddenly about, and started down the ladder. “Hongry Jeb,” looking after him with a keen anxiety, rose abruptly, took the candle, and, holding it above his lean, cadaverous face, vanished by slow degrees through the trap-door, feeling with his feet for each round of the ladder before he trusted his weight upon it. Harshaw lifted himself upon his elbow, watching the gradual disappearance. His face was pink once more; the flesh that had seemed ten minutes since to hang flabbily upon it was firm and full; his opaque blue eyes were bright; the last feeble, ineffective rays of the vanishing candle showed his strong white teeth between his parted red lips, and his triumphant red tongue thrust out derisively. Then he fell back on his pillow and tried to sleep. He felt, however, the pressure of the excitement; his pulses, his nerves, could not so readily accord with his calm mental conclusions, his logical inference of safety. The tension upon his alert senses was unrelaxed. The stir below-stairs made its incisive impression now, when he hardly cared to hear, as before, when he had strained every faculty to listen. He knew that it was Mrs. Marvin who had first devised the solution of the difficulty; she had already set about its execution while she advocated the measure, and insisted and argued with the men, who were disposed to canvass alternatives, and doubt, and wait. Often her shrill voice broke from the bated undertone in which they sought to conduct the conference, or she whispered huskily, with vibrant distinctness, hardly less intelligible. “Ye an’ Jeb take him,” she urged. “Let the t’others go an’ hide round ’bout the still. When the hunters git hyar they’ll find me an’ Mose an’ the chillen, an’ I’ll tell ’em my old man be gone with Mr. Harshaw, a-guidin’ him down the mounting. They’ll never know ez thar be enny moonshinin’ a-goin’ on hyar-abouts,—nuthin’ ter show fur it.” She clashed her pans and pots and kettles, in the energy of her discourse, and Harshaw lost the muttered objection. “Ef ye don’t,” she persisted, in her sibilant whisper,—“ef ye kill him, fling him off’n the bluff or sech,—they’ll find the body, sure!” A chill ran through the listener as he bent his ear. “The buzzards or the wolves will fust, an’ them men’ll track him ter our door, an’ track _ye_ ter the spot.” The rain pelted on the roof; the flames roared up the chimney; the frying meat sputtered and sizzled, and the coffee dissipated a beguiling promissory odor. One of the men—the lawyer thought it was “hongry Jeb”—suggested in a dolorous whisper that they could depend in no degree on Harshaw’s promise of secrecy. No man regarded an enforced pledge as sacred. “Them’s all _old_ offenses, ennyhows,” argued the woman. “But this hyar, what ye men air a-layin’ off ter do”— “‘Ye _men_’!” sneered her husband. “_Ye_ war the bouncin’est one o’ the whole lay-out fur doin’ of it.”