It was after midnight. When the two boys had approached Blatch's cabin as agreed, they had been set upon from behind, pinioned, and taken to the cave where the still was. Here they now sat bound and helpless. "What do you aim to make out of it, Blatch?" asked Jeff, offering the first remark that had come from either of them since their capture. "Is--uh--" Andy glanced at Scalf, and strove to keep Huldah's name out of it--"is what we come for here yet?" Blatch burst into a great horse laugh and slapped his thigh. "What you come after," he repeated enjoyingly. "Lord--Lord! What you come after! You was easy got. I counted on Jude to set you on, and I see I never counted none too much." "What do you aim to make out of it?" persisted Andy. The light from the fire built at the back of the cave, whose smoke went up a cleft and entered the chimney of the cabin far above, illuminated the dark interior flickeringly. Blatch went to a jug on a shelf, noisily poured a drink into a tin cup, swallowed it, and then addressed himself to his cousins. "Yo' pappy ordered me off his land. My lease is up next month. I got to git out of here anyhow, and I aimed to raise a stir befo' I went. This here town podner what I got after you-all quit me," glancing negligently at Scalf, "has many a little frill to his plans, and he knows Dan Haley, the marshal, right well. Sometimes I misdoubt that he come up on Turkey Track to git in with me and git the reward that I'm told Haley has out for the feller that can ketch me stillin'." He wheeled and looked fully at Scalf with these words, and the town man made haste to turn his back, warming his hands at the blaze. Blatch laughed deep in his throat. "Scalf's on the make," he asserted with grim humour. "He needed somebody to give up to Dan Haley, and as I hain't got no likin' for learnin' to peg shoes in the penitentiary, I 'lowed mebbe the trade would suit you-all boys, an' I sont over for ye." The twins writhed in their chairs as much as their tight bandings would permit. How simple they had been to trust the mercy of a desperate man. And they knew Blatch Turrentine. In days past, they had been on the inside, pupils and assistants in such work as this. They stole sheepish looks at each other. But the message he had sent them was yet to be explained. If Huldah was not with him, how had he known she was on the mountain at all? "What made you send the word you did?" burst out Andy wrathfully. Blatch had moved over by the fire. "Oh, I hearn through old Dilsey Rust--that I've had a-listenin' at key-holes and spyin' through chinks--about Bonbright's talk concernin' Huldy, and I thort----"