She was still pale and tremulous, but no longer doubts beset her. She understood the wiles of the illicit distiller, pursued so closely by the artifices of the raiders that he was prone to distrust the very consumers of his brush whiskey. They never saw his face, they knew not even his name. They had no faint suspicion where his still was hidden. They were not even dangerous as unwilling witnesses, should they be caught with the illicit liquor in their hands. The story that they had left a jug and a half-dollar in a deserted barn, and found the jug filled and the coin vanished, would inculpate no one. From the loft the distiller or his emissary could see and recognize them as they came. Alethea, having crept down the slope amongst the briers in search of the lamb, had been concealed from him. She was seized instantly by the desire to get away before he should appear. She coveted the knowledge of no such dangerous secret. She walked boldly out from the leafy covert, that he might see her in the clearing and delay till she was gone. The lamb was bleating faintly in her arms; the sheep pressed close to her side, nudging her elbow with an insistent nozzle. The last flush of the day was on her shining hair and her grave, earnest face. The path led her near the barn. She hesitated, stopped, and drew back hastily. A man was swinging himself alertly down from the loft. He caught up the coin, slipped it into his pocket, and lifted the jug with the other hand. The next moment he dropped it suddenly, with a startled exclamation. His eyes had met her eyes. There was a moment of suspense charged with mutual recognition. Then she ran hastily by, never pausing till she was far away in the deep obscurity of the woods. IV. The night came on. The dark summits of the great mountains were heavily defined against the sky. Here and there along those steep slanting lines that mark the ravines a mist hung, vaguely perceived. A point of red light might gleam in the dusky depths of Piomingo Cove where the flare of a hearth-stone flickered out. All the drowsy nocturnal voices joined in iterative unison, broken only when the marauding wolf of the Great Smoky howled upon the bald. The herders ruefully thought of the roaming yearlings, and presaged calamity. All the world was sunk in gloom, till gradually a rayonnant heralding halo, of a pallid and lustrous green, appeared above the deeply purple summits; in its midst the yellow moon slowly revealed itself, and with a visible tremulousness rose solemnly into the ascendency of the night.