Thus adjured the intruder closed the door, placed the jug on the floor, and looked about with an embarrassed hesitation of manner. The flare from the furnace, which Aaron Brice had opened to pile in fresh wood, illumined the newcomer’s face and long, loose-jointed figure and showed the semicircle of mountaineers seated in their rush-bottomed chairs about the still. None of them spoke. Never before since the still-house was built had a visitor stood upon the puncheon floor that one of the hospitable Brices did not scuttle for a chair, that the dip was not eagerly snuffed in the vain hope of irradiating the guest, that the genial though mutilated pitcher filled with whisky was not ungrudgingly presented. No chair was offered now, and the broken-nosed pitcher with its ardent contents was motionless on the head of a barrel. It was a strange change, and as the broad red glare fell on their stolid faces and blankly inexpressive attitudes the guest looked from one to the other with an increasing surprise and a rising dismay. The light was full for a moment upon Mark Yates’s shock of yellow hair, gray eyes, and muscular, well-knit figure, as he, too, sat mute among his hosts. He was not to be mistaken, and once seen was not easily forgotten. The next instant the furnace door clashed, and the room fell back into its habitual gloom. One might note only the gurgle of the spring water--telling of the wonders of the rock-barricaded earth below and the reflected glories of the sky above--only the hilarious song of the still, the continuous trickle from the worm, the all-pervading spirituous odors, and the shadowy outlines of the massive figures of the mountaineers. The Brices evidently could not be relied upon to break the awkward silence. The newcomer, mustering heart of grace, took up his testimony in a languid nasal drawl, trying to speak and to appear as if he had noticed nothing remarkable in his reception. “I hev come, Aaron,” he said, “ter git another two gallons o’ that thar whisky ez I hed from you-uns, an’ I hev brung the balance of the money I owed ye on that, an’ enough ter pay for the jugful, too. Hyar is a haffen dollar fur the old score, an’--” “That thar eends it,” said Aaron, pocketing the tendered fifty cents. “We air even, an’ ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar, Mose Carter.” “Wha--what did ye say, Aaron? I hain’t got the rights ’zactly o’ what ye said.” And Carter peered in great amaze through the gloom at his host, who was carefully filling a pipe. As Aaron stooped to get a coal from the furnace one of the others spoke. “He said ez ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar. An’ it air a true word.” The flare from the furnace again momentarily illumined the room, and as the door clashed it again fell back into the uncertain shadow.