She pushed cautiously down to the edge of the rocks where the bushes grew scatteringly, pretending to herself that she wanted a bit of wild geranium that flourished in a crevice far below the top. Setting down her pail she threw herself on her face, her arms over the edge, and reached. But the fingers hung suspended, opened in air, her mouth open too, and she listened greedily to faint sounds of men's voices. "I'll bet it's old Ab Foeman's hideout that nobody but him and the Cherokees knowed of," she muttered to herself. "Some one's found it and--Lord, look at that!" From the bushes below her, coming apparently out of the living rock itself, crept Andy, and then Jeff Turrentine. Now she could see the narrow, door-like opening of the cave which had given them up, and realised how, from below, it passed for a mere depression in the rock. Huldah drew back silently, inch by inch, and instinctively pulled her black calico sunbonnet over her red curls as she crouched down among the huckleberry bushes. When she looked again Andy and Jeff had disappeared, but she could see the head and shoulders of a man who still lay at the cave's mouth--and that man was Blatch Turrentine! At first she shuddered, thinking that she had come upon the dead body; then she noted a tiny trail of smoke, and, by craning a little farther around, saw that Blatchley lay at ease with a pipe in his mouth, smoking. "The triflin', low-down, lyin' hound!" she muttered to herself. "I'm a-goin' this very minute and tell Creed Bonbright." She hesitated, glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the Turrentine cabin, then bent dubiously and set up her overturned bucket. Not a berry had spilled from it, yet the sight of its mishap gave her an idea. Quietly slipping through the bushes till she was far enough away to dare run, she hurried home to the cabin. "Iley," she gasped, as soon as she put her head in at the door, "I upsot my berry pail and lost most of the fruit. Can you make out with that?" and she set the little bucket on the table. "I reckon I'll have to, ef you've got so work-brickle ye won't pick any more," returned Iley. "I would--I'd git ye all ye need," protested Huldah with unexpected meekness, "but I'm jest obliged to go over to--" she had all but said Creed Bonbright's, but she caught herself in time and concluded lamely. "I jest have obliged to run down to Clianthy Lusk's and see can she let me have her crochet needle for to finish up my shawl."