This event had a radical influence upon the future of Mark Yates. Never again did he belittle the possible impetus given the moral nature by those more trifling wrongs that always result in an increased momentum toward crime. He was the first to discover more of what Painter Brice had really intended,--had attempted,--than was immediately apparent to the countryside in general. A fragment of the door lay unburned among the charred remains of the little church in the wilderness--a fragment that carried the lock, the key. Mark’s sharp eyes fixed upon a salient point as he stood among the group that had congregated there in the sad light of the awakening day. The key was on the outside of the door, and it had been turned! The Panther had doubtless been actuated by revenge, and perhaps, had been influenced by the fear that information of the illicit distilling would be given by the parson to the revenue authorities, as a means of breaking up an element so inimical to the true progress of religion on the ridge--its denizens hitherto availing themselves of the convenience of the still to assuage any pricks of conscience they may have had in the matter, and also fearing the swift and terrible fate that inevitably overtook the informer. At all events, it was evident, that having reason to believe the minister was still within, Painter Brice had noiselessly locked the door that his unsuspecting enemy might also perish in the flames. For in the primitive fashioning of the building there was no aperture for light and air except the door--no window, save a small, glassless square above the pulpit which, in the good time coming, the congregation had hoped to glaze, to receive therefrom more light on salvation. It was so small, so high, that perhaps no other man could have slipped through it, save indeed the slim little “skimpy saint,” and it was thus that he had escaped. No vengeance followed the Panther’s brothers. “They hed ter do jes’ what Painter tole ’em, ye see,” was the explanation of this leniency. And Mark Yates was always afterward described as “a peart smart boy, ef he hedn’t holped the Brices ter fire the church-house.” The still continued to be run according to the old regulations, except there was no whisky sold to the church brethren. “That bein’ the word ez John left behind him,” said Aaron. The laws of few departed rulers are observed with the rigor which the Brices accorded to the Panther’s word. The locality came to be generally avoided, and no one cared to linger there after dark, save the three Brices, who sat as of old, in the black shadows about the still.