Once more Mink refrained from reply. He looked absently at an isolated drift of mist, gigantic of outline, reaching from the zenith to the depths of Piomingo Cove, and slowly passing down the valley between the Great Smoky and the sun-flooded Chilhowee Mountain, obscuring for the moment the red clay banks of the Scolacutta River, whose current seemed a mere silver thread twining in and out of the landscape. “Look a-hyar at the way ye go on,” said Doaks, warming to the subject, for there are few exercises so entertaining as to preach with no sense of participation in sin. “Ye went ter work at that thar silver mine in North Car’liny, an’ thar ye stayed sorter stiddy an’ peaceful till ye seen yer chance. An’ Pete Rood, he kem an’ stayed too, an’ he war sorter skeered o’ the ways,—not bein’ used ter minin’. An’ then yer minkish tricks began. Fust, when that thar feller war let down inter the shaft an’ ye hed a-holt o’ the windlass, ye drapped a few clods o’ clay in on him, an’ then a leetle gravel, an’ then mo’ clay. Then he bellered that the shaft war cavin’ in on him, an’ plead an’ prayed with ye ter wind him up quick. An’ ye wouldn’t pull. An’ when the t’other fellers run thar an’ drawed that man out he war weak enough ter drap.” “I ’member!” cried Mink, with a burst of unregenerate laughter. “He said, ‘Lemme git out’n this spindlin’ hell o’ a well!’” He sprang up, grotesquely imitating the gesture of exhaustion with which the man had stepped out of the bucket to firm ground. “Waal, it mought hev turned out a heap wus,” said Doaks, “’kase they ’lowed down yander ’bout Big Injun Mounting, whar Rood hails from, ez he hev got some sort’n heart-disease. An’ a suddint skeer mought hev killed him.” “Shucks!” said Mink, incredulously. He looked disconcerted, however, and then sat down on the rock as before. Ben Doaks went on:— “An’ that warn’t enough fur ye. When they hed Rood thar a-pumpin’ out water, all by himself all night, nuthin’ would do ye but ye must hide up thar in the Lost-Time mine in the dark o’ the midnight an’ the rain, an’ explode a lot o’ gunpowder, an’ kem a-bustin’ out at him from the mouth o’ the tunnel, wropped in a sheet an’ howlin’ like a catamount. He run mighty nigh a mile.” “Waal,” said Mink, in sturdy argument, “I ain’t ’sponsible ’kase Peter Rood air toler’ble easy skeered.” “They never hired ye ter work thar no mo’, bein’ ez that war ’bout all the use ye put yerse’f ter in the silver mine in North Car’liny.” Despite the reproof, Doaks was looking kindly at him, for the wayward Mink had evidently endeared himself in some sort to the elder herder, who was weakly conscious of not regarding his enormities with the aversion they merited. The young man’s countenance fell. His mischief differed from that of his namesake in all the sequelæ of an accusing conscience. But stay! What do we know of the mink’s midday meditations, his sober, _ex post facto_ regrets?