"I ain't never without it, Bill, shorely," the old woman told him. "I plants my tobacker afore I plants my bread cawn. We hain't got no fire to light our pipes with, though." "Good excuse fo' a-goin' out to Buck's still," said Grandpap Singleton. He fished a blackened clay pipe from a trousers pocket. "The tobacker, Jane." She took a dry twist of homegrown tobacco from a pocket in her faded calico dress, and passed it to him. He courteously filled her pipe first. Then they went limping out the side of the Big Blackfern, these two, over ground carpeted softly with leaves of brilliant saffron, pale yellow, mottled scarlet, deep red, and several shades of brown. Neither spoke, for each was saddened by a keen realization that it was autumn for them in more ways than one. After fifteen minutes of traveling thus, they entered a narrow and deep, dark gash filled with hemlocks and laurel, through which flowed a very small, clear stream of water. "Why, the still it hain't far from the fambly buryin'-ground, is it, Jane?" observed Grandpap Singleton as they stepped into a path that wound its way dimly through the undergrowth. "Which is jest as it should be, Bill, honey," returned Granny Wolfe, her voice heavy with meaning. "Heh! Yes, Jane," her companion agreed. [Illustration] Old Buck Wolfe was in no good humor that afternoon. For one thing, he had been absentmindedly allowed a "run" to boil over, and the whisky tasted like pickled beets. The decrepit pair found him on his knees before the crude little stone-walled furnace; he was lustily blowing the fire to make it catch to fresh wood. Another run was on. Grandpap Singleton walked up silently, to all appearances unaware that he was on forbidden land. He bent stiffly over and scooped a live coal into the bowl of his pipe. A few puffs lighted the tobacco for him, and he passed the coal to the pipe of the old woman. Then he very calmly seated himself on a downward-turned mash tub. "Buck," he said seriously to the moonshiner, who had been eyeing him hard, "whar are ye a-goin' to when ye die?" "I am a-goin' to a place," very readily, "which is knowed as a three-by-seven, a grave, a hole in the ground, a last restin'-place, and a last ditch, whar I'll rot down to plain dirt." He sat back on his heels, and stared at Grandpap Singleton in open defiance. "Oh, no, Buck," and the aged mountaineer shook his snowy-white head emphatically. "You hain't a-goin' to stop thar. No, sirree. Ef you hain't quick to blaze a new trail, Buck, you're a-goin' as straight to Hell as a honey-bee to its comb." "How do _you_ know?" snapped Old Buck Wolfe. The Prophet took his worn Bible from under his arm, put it flat on his outstretched left hand, and touched it with a shaking forefinger as each word was formed on his lips. "I knows it by the Word o' God, sir." After a silent moment, he continued, "Buck Wolfe, in some ways you're a most pow'ful smart man."