One of these days--a perfect day--a great sensation pervaded Pine Mountain. Word went the rounds that a certain notorious horse thief, who had served out his term in the peni tentiary, had stopped at the blacksmith shop on his way home, glad enough of the prospect of being there once more; "an' ez pious in speech ez the rider, mighty nigh," said the dwellers about Pine Mountain, unfamiliar with his aspect as a penitent and discounting his repentance. It was a long story he had to tell about himself, and he enjoyed posing as the central figure in the curious crowd that had gathered about him. He seemed for the time less like a criminal than a great traveler, so strange and full of interest to the simple mountaineers were his experiences and the places he had seen. He stood leaning against the anvil, as he talked, looking out through the barn-like door upon the amplitude of the great landscape before him; its mountains so dimly, delicately blue in the distance, so deeply red and brown and yellow nearer at hand, and still closer shaded off by the dark plumy boughs of the pines on either side of the ravine above which the forge was perched. Deep in the valley, between them all, Lost Creek hied along, veining the purple haze with lines of palpitating silver. It was only when the material for personal narration was quite exhausted that he entered, though with less zest, on other themes. "Waal,--now, 'Vander Price," he drawled, shifting his great cowhide boots one above another. "I war 'stonished when I hearn ez 'Vander war in fur receivin' of stolen goods. Shucks!"--his little black eyes twinkled beneath the drooping brim of a white wool hat, and his wide, flat face seemed wider and flatter for a contemptuous grin,--"I can't onderstand how a man kin git his own cornsent ter go cornsortin' with them ez breaks inter stores and dwellin's an' sech, an' hankerin' arter store-fixin's an' store-truck. Live-stock air a differ. The beastis air temptin', partic'lar ef they air young an' hev got toler'ble paces." Perhaps a change in the faces of his audience admonished him, for he qualified: "The beastis air temptin'--_ter the ungodly_. I hev gin over sech doin's myself, 'kase we hed a toler'ble chaplain yander in the valley" (he alluded thus equivocally to his late abode), "an' I sot under the preachin' a good while. But store-truck!--shucks! Waal, the gyards 'lowed ez 'Vander war a turrible feller ter take keer on, when they war a-fetchin' him down ter Nashvul. He jes' seemed desolated. One minit he'd fairly cry ez ef every sob would take his life; an' the nex' he'd be squarin' off ez savage, an' tryin' ter hit the gyards in the head. He war ironed, hand an' foot." There was no murmur of sympathy. All listened with stolid curiosity, except Cynthia, who was leaning against the open door. The tears forced their way, and silently flowed, unheeded, down her cheeks. She fixed her brown eyes upon the man as he went on:--