“What for?” demanded Harshaw, with an incidental manner. He too was seated at the board; one elbow was on it, and he passed his hand over his eyes and yawned as he spoke. “So as to be dead sure to get beat like hell the next time I run for anything? An informer is mighty unpopular, no matter what he has got to tell. And make the biggest kind of hole in my law practice?” “That’s a fac’,” said Jeb, impressed with the logic of this proposition. “The favor of Cherokee and Kildeer counties is the breath of my political life, and you don’t catch me a-fooling with it by letting my jaw wag too slack,” continued Harshaw. Philetus, the only member of the family that had gone to bed, slumbered peacefully in a small heap under the party-colored quilts. The dancing firelight revealed his yellow head, and again it was undistinguishable in the brown shadow. The pullet and Mose sat on a bench at one side of the fire, and the moonshiners tilted their chairs back on the hind legs, and watched the bright and leaping flames, which were particularly clear, the fire being rekindled upon a warm hearth and in a chimney already full of hot air. The occasional yawning of the group gave the only indication of the hour. The sharp-faced woman sat in her chair, with folded arms, and ever and anon gazing at her guest, who had so strangely commended himself. His clever ruse to insure being followed by his friends had induced infinite admiration of his acumen. “I reckon ef ye wanted ter go ter Congress or sech, thar wouldn’t be nuthin’ ter hender,” she said slowly, contemplating him. She was a simple woman, and he a wise man. He flushed with pleasure to hear his cherished thought in another’s words. He bore himself more jauntily at the very suggestion. He toyed with his knife and fork as he protested. “There’s a mighty long road to travel ’twixt me and Congress.” “Waal, you-uns kin make it, I’ll be bound,” she said. And he believed her. As he rose from the table, at the conclusion of the meal, he took out his purse. “Nare cent,” said Marvin hastily. “We-uns hev been obligated by yer comp’ny, an’ air powerful pleased ter part in peace.” Harshaw insisted, however, on leaving his knife for Philetus, and expressed regret that one of the blades was broken. “He can’t cut hisself with that un, nohow,” said the anxious mother, in graciously accepting it. Harshaw divined that she might have valued it more if all the blades had been in like plight. She placed it carefully on the high mantelpiece, where, it was safe to say, Philetus would not for some years be able to attain it. Harshaw never forgot that ride. As the light flickered out from the door into the black midnight, vaguely crossed with slanting lines of rain, to the rail-fence where his mare stood, saddled, the pistols in the holster, he experienced an added sense of confidence in his own methods and capacities, and an intense elation that so serious an adventure had terminated with so little injury.