Mink listened with the wistful attention of one for whom all these things are forever past. This world of redundant interest was to be his world no more. Already it wore only the tender glamours of memory. The brown shadows and yellow lights from the lamps were shifting and shoaling, as the train jogged and lurched continually. The fluctuating gleams showed that his face was a trifle thin, perhaps; the expression of his vivid brown eyes had changed; they were desperate and hardened, but quickly glancing and even brighter and larger than before. His white wool hat was thrust on the back of his head as he leaned against the red velvet cushion, and his auburn hair, longer than ever, curled down upon the collar of his brown jeans coat. Now and then, when the deputy waxed facetious, Mink laughed aloud in sympathy. The moon was a-journeying, too, with all the train of stars. Always through the open window one could find a serene transition from the interior, with its gaudy colors, its lounging masculine figures, its wreathing tobacco smoke, and the suffusion of yellow light and alternating brown shadow. The sky was pure and blue; the young mountaineer marked the weather-signs; the wind was astir,—a breeze other than that caused by the motion of the train; he saw the trees on the hillsides waving in the sweet spontaneity of the air; he noted the shadow of the great locomotive swiftly traversing the wheat-fields, with its piles of smoke scurrying behind it, and seeming not less material. He leaned toward the window, and called to the deputy to mark how forward the crops were. And then he fell back with a white despair on his face, for the train was thundering through a forest, and the interfulgent sheen and shadow amongst the great trees had caught the woodland creature’s eye. The sylvan fragrance came to him for a moment. The fair, lonely vista lured him. How long, how long it had been since he had trodden such wilds! Rocks towered in the midst, and he was glad when they closed about the way, and the reverberating clamors of the cut drowned the groan that burst from him. And then they grew fainter, and here were the levels once more, and suddenly—the Tennessee River! How should he fail to know its splendid breadth and muscle, its majestic sinuosity as it curved! He leaned once more toward the window, catching at the sill; the man with whose hand his own was manacled complained of the strain. He dropped his hand, and once more looked out as the train, at a bated and circumspect pace, drew its slow length upon the bridge. Most of the passengers were looking out, too, under the fascination that the water of a landscape always exerts upon travelers. The moon hung above the broad vista of the dark, lustrous stream, flinging upon its surface some gigantic magical corolla, softly refulgent, to float on the water like a great white lily. The dense forests, with a deeper gloom of shadow at their roots, stood solemn and silent on either hand.