Little Buck Wolfe caught his strapping brother Oliver by the shoulders and shook him. "You've got to do it, Oliver," he said hoarsely. "I'll hide him--" he pointed to his father, and looked covertly toward the open front door--"somewhere; and when he's able to travel he can follow the rest of you to the Balsam Cone country. You've got to do it!" "Atter the way we treated you?" Oliver Wolfe's voice was almost pathetic. "You'll shorely hide him?" "I certainly will. You'd better hurry, or it'll be too late, Oliver." Not until they were gone did Little Buck Wolfe realize fully just what he had done. He had put himself into the place of an accessory to the crime of arson, and he was liable to almost as much punishment as the principals themselves! The thought was staggering to him. He began to pace the veranda floor nervously. Tot Singleton appeared before him. She understood fully. She strove to make him feel that he had but done right. "Don't feel so blue about it, Little Buck," she said to him gently. "What else could you do? Their families need them more than the prison needs them. They're as sorry now as the penitentiary ever could make them. Besides, the mountain man can't stand imprisonment for long; most of 'em wouldn't live through the fifteen years--that's what I understood Mr. Fair to say it would be. You m-mustn't worry, Little Buck!" Wolfe stepped to his father and took him by the arm. "We must go," he whispered. "Cartwright will soon be here. I must have you hidden before he comes. We must go!" "I guess," Old Buck demurred, "I'd better let Cartwright have me." "No! Let's go--for mother's sake. You must think of her, and not of yourself. You've been too unkind to her in the past." He was fairly dragging his sire toward the steps. "Quick--we must be quick. Fair may come back at any minute, and he--let's go!" Old Buck permitted his son to lead him out of the yard and away in the murky drizzle. A bleak, gray dawn was slowly breaking over the scene of black desolation when the two men arrived at a small-mouthed cavern in the side of the Big Blackfern. The elder of the pair squeezed himself through the rocky opening with some difficulty. The other placed a great flat stone over the hole, and almost ran back to the new house to tell his mother and the Masons and Tot Singleton good-by; he meant to start for the far-away Northwest immediately. [Illustration] Whitney Fair met him at the gate. Fair had discovered that every man of the escaped Wolfes had disappeared; he was purple in the face, and his small, pale-blue eyes glittered like those of an angry animal. He seized one of the lapels of Wolfe's coat and cried savagely, "You'll pay for this! You warned them, and that makes you as guilty as they are--give me the money you took from the safe!" "I didn't take any money from the safe," Wolfe replied with a level calmness that surprised even himself. "You did!" "Be careful, Mr. Fair!"