The double-headed monster, chewing as he went, the action reproduced in frightful pantomime on the floor of the cavern, slowly withdrew. There was heavy breathing; the sound of falling clods and fragments of rock, and of straining bushes and roots as the descending officer clutched them. A sudden final thud announced that he had sprung upon his feet on level ground. A momentary interval, a clatter of hoofs, and the file of horsemen, with their mounted shadows erect upon the vertical cliffs of the rock-bound road, passed slowly along the wild, narrow way. Long after they had disappeared the sound of the hoof-beats intruded upon the stillness, and died away, and again smote the air with dull iteration, reverberating from distant crags of the winding road. When all was still, Mink’s mind turned again to his perplexities with a sharpened sense of the necessity of decision. The project which Alethea had suggested began to shape itself in his mind in full detail, as he lay there and thought it over. The alternative of skulking about to avoid arrest was too doubtful and limited to be contemplated. “The sheriff air a-ridin’ now,” he said, “an’ the constable too—an’ what made ’em fetch along fower other men ez a posse?” he broke off suddenly, recognizing the incongruity. His lip curled with satisfaction. “They mus’ hev been powerful ’feared o’ me,” he said, his heart swelling with self-importance, “ter think ’twould take six men ter arrest me fur a leetle job like that.” He appreciated, however, that the midnight caper at the mill had shaken all the securities of the mountain community, and it was to the immediate personal interest of every man within twenty miles that he should be dealt with as harshly as the law would allow. But if, he argued, without waiting for arrest, he should go down to-morrow,—not to old Griff (bold as he was, he hardly dared encounter the miller’s rage), but to some man of influence, some mediator, old Squire White, perhaps,—and tell what he had done, and offer in reparation to give the miller all he possessed, his mare, his gun, his hogs, might he not thus avert the more serious phases of a prosecution, or perhaps escape altogether? Turn as he might, he could see only the sacrifice of his little all as the price of his orgy. “I’d hev ter pay it ter the lawyer ter defend me; or mebbe old Griff could git it out’n me ez damages ennyhow. I can’t holp losing it. I’ll gin it up, an’ begin over, an’ make it up with Lethe,—I don’t keer a straw fur all the t’others,—an’ git married an’ be stiddy. I never war so wild nohow when me an’ her war promised. Mebbe bein’ jawed at, an’ sech, air good fur folks, an’ holped ter keep me quiet in them days,—leastwise ez quiet ez I war able ter be,” he qualified, the recollection of sundry active vagaries constraining him.