Everyone laughed and looked at Milly Ayer. She blushed and bent over her book. She was one of the older girls who had sat quietly in the back rows, paying no attention to the younger ones about the fire. “Don’t mind him, Milly, he’s only your brother,” said Louis Gist. Now that Jimmy Claiborne was captured he could return to finish plucking his turkey at the fireside. “Won’t we have a grand barbecue, if the old rascal doesn’t come!” “We’ll have it even if he does come,” insisted Moses Ayer. “I guess an old toper that can stay away from his school four days at a time hasn’t much right to keep us from having a holiday. I guess he’s pretty lucky to be allowed to teach here at all.” Lewis Hoyt, who was patiently guiding Jimmy Claiborne’s hand through the evolution of his long name, looked up. “You can depend on it, Master Hempstead wouldn’t be here in Fish Creek teaching us if he wasn’t addicted to the bowl. He’s a scholar, and some day you’ll regret you didn’t appreciate what he’s tried to teach you.” “Lewis is preaching again,” cried Moses. “What’s Master Hempstead taught us except the way to the Marietta tavern?” “Who needs to go to Marietta since the Claibornes bought their new still,—except to hide himself?” asked Louis Gist. There was a sudden silence over all the room. It was so quiet that Jimmy Claiborne’s labored writing was heard, and all the older scholars exchanged glances. The Claiborne still had been a bitter subject at Fish Creek, and some of the older boys had said that it was already ruining Jimmy Claiborne. Lewis Hoyt held his hand closed over Jimmy’s as the silence fell,—a silence timed by the steady booming of the puncheon mauls at the little shipyard where the ark was building. Jimmy’s hand trembled and stopped. Lewis steadily drove it to the finishing of the name. “I wish there wasn’t a still on the whole length of the Ohio river,” Lewis said very quietly. “Come here, Louis Gist, it’s your turn to sign.” Jimmy Claiborne went back to the fire, sullen, red-faced and silent, and while the incident was soon dismissed by the others he sat looking into the fire or plucking savagely at the feathers of his turkey. He and Louis had caught them that morning, just outside the schoolhouse, in their turkey trap. Over at the shipyard the treenail hammers sounded, blending their sharp raps with the measured hollow strokes of the mauls. All the men on the creek were working on the ark which young Captain Marion Royce was building to go down to New Orleans with the spring “fresh.” Jonas Sparks, the veteran shipwright, had come down from Marietta to oversee the work. Even Gaffir Hoyt was working there, and Uncle Amasa Claiborne, half of whose scalp the Indians had taken thirty years before. And Louis Gist had told Jimmy that Marion would not let him go. Jimmy knew why. They were gradually coming to distrust him. He and Kenton and MacAfee were one party in the Fish Creek school; Moses and Lewis and Louis Gist another.