Mark was aware that they had taken his warning, although with no appreciation of his motive in giving it. He could imagine the contemptuous anger against him with which they looked significantly at one another as they sat in the dusky shadows around the still, and he knew that his sudden outburst into song must seem to them bravado--an intimation that he did not care for having been summarily ejected from the still-house, when in reality, only the recollection of it sent the color flaming to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. This was not for the mere matter of pride, either; but for disappointment, for fled illusions, for the realization that he had placed a false valuation on these men. He had been flattered that they had cared for his friendship, and reciprocally had valued him more than others; they had relished and invited his companionship; they had treated him almost as one of themselves. And although he saw much gambling and drinking, sometimes resulting in brawls and furious fights, against which his moral sense revolted, he felt sure that their dissipation was transitory; they would all straighten out and settle down--when they themselves were older. In truth, he could hardly have conceived that this manifestation of to-night was the true identity of the friends to whom he had attached himself--that their souls, their hearts, their minds, were of a piece with the texture of their daily lives, as sooner or later the event would show. In the disuse of good impulses and honest qualities they grow lax and weak. They are the moral muscles of the spiritual being, and, like the muscles of the physical body, they must needs be exercised and trained to serve the best interests of the soul. “Yo-he! Yo-ho!” sang poor Mark, as he plunged into the forest, keeping in the wood trail, called courteously a road, partly by the memory of his horse, and partly by the keen sight of his gray eyes. He lapsed presently into silence, for he had no heart for singing, and he jogged on dispirited, gloomy, reflective, through the rugged ways of the wilderness. It was fully two hours before he emerged into the more open country about his mother’s house; as he reached the bank of the stream he glanced up, toward the bridge--the faintest suggestion of two parallel lines across the instarred sky. A great light flashed through the heavens, followed by a comet-like sweep of fiery sparks. “That thar air the ’leven o’clock train, I reckon,” said Mark, making his cautious way among the bowlders and fragments of fallen rock to the door of the house. The horse plucked up spirit to neigh gleefully at the sight of his shanty and the thought of his supper. The sound brought Mrs. Yates to the window of the cabin. “Air that ye a-comin’, Mark?” she asked. “It air me an’ Cockleburr,” replied her son, with an effort to be cheerful too, and to cast away gloomy thoughts in the relief of being once more at home. “Air ye ez drunk ez or’nary?” demanded his mother.