A wonderful thing was happening in the woods,—the familiar miracle of dawn. The vast forests were slowly asserting dim outlines of bole and branch, lodgment for the mist which clothed them in light and fleecy illusions of foliage. A gray revelation of light, rather the sheer values of distinctness than a realized medium, was unfolding before the eye. The serried slants of rain fell at wider intervals, and the equestrian form of Jeb became visible,—lank, lean, soaked with rain, his old white hat shedding the water from its brim in rivulets upon his straight and straggling hair. As he jogged along on the little mule, whose long ears seemed alternately to whisk off the shades of night, he seemed a forlornly inadequate individual to have had a “diff’unce with the governmint.” “Jim’s what reminded me of how I war fixed in life,” he went on, more cheerfully. “An’ this hyar whole trip air what reminded me o’ Jim. I guided him—mus’ hev been fourteen year ago, or mo’—through jes’ sech a rainy night ez this, an’ through these hyar very woods—naw, sir! more towards the peak o’ Thunderhead.” “I dunno ez ye hev got enny call ter be so durned pertic’lar ’bout the percise spot,” said Marvin, significantly. “That’s a fac’,” said Jeb, good-naturedly. “I guided him through the mountings an’ over the line inter the old North State.” “What in hell did he want to go there for, in the rain and the dead of the night?” asked Harshaw. His breath was quick; he felt that he panted on the brink of a discovery. Now plunge! “’Kase, stranger, he war obleeged ter, sorter like you-uns,” said Jeb enigmatically. He looked back over his shoulder, with perhaps some stirring doubt, some vague suspicion, at the man who followed; but Harshaw, now lifting a hand to thrust a branch from across the path, now adjusting the bridle about the mare’s head, seemed so careless, so casual, in his curiosity that Jeb was reassured as to the innocuousness of his gossip, and went on.