“Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland!” he shouted and the only answer was a stampede of rats from the hearth. He got up, lighted his candle, and held it low over the bed. The boy was surely gone. He pulled the quilt toward him and as he did so the big old shears that served them in their various household operations fell to the floor. The quilt had been cut through from end to end; the side containing the striped pieces had been left in its place but the blue had disappeared! He got into his clothes and hurrying out among the shadows of the moonlight night took his direction with the certainty of prescience. When he set foot upon the highroad, he began to follow by sight, for, excepting where the shadows were heaviest, he could discern the little trudging figure of Grover Cleveland, its outline marred by something slung in man-like fashion across his shoulder and by the dog following closely. He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second. Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false step”; and, like Suly, he was awed. As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but, though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat ready for a plunge if emergency called for it. They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a furlong or more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was ordered into line again. Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man put aside with his hands. At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin, built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay and stones that showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood. Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.” Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his fists. Suddenly he shouted: