He stopped as he came up, stared at the boy, then shook his head dolefully as he gasped for breath. "Is dot you, Lafe?" he managed to groan. "Oh, my jiminy priest!" "Look out!" cried the boy. "Lie down!" Some of the men below had caught sight of them, and two or three sparks and jets of smoke told that they were being fired at. Though they were probably beyond range, it was safer behind the alders, so the two crawled out on the overhanging ledge. "I say, Foldeen, have they scooped the old band wagon? I couldn't see from here," was the boys first remark. "Dey von't get 'em my flute, anyhow," the other responded, holding proudly forth the ebony stock with its silver keys, which he had been waving so vehemently. "I don't catch me putting him in de bant vagon." Even as he spoke he clutched the boy fiercely by the arm, with a smothered exclamation of horror. The rock on which they crouched had stirred from its foundations, and as the two instinctively strove to turn themselves, it lurched outward, and went crashing down the steep declivity. CHAPTER II. LAFE RECONNOITRES THE VALLEY. On the river road below the tannery, away back in New York State, there stood for many years a small house, always surrounded in summer by sunflowers and hollyhocks and peonies that enwrapped it as in a beautiful garment. It seemed that flowers grew nowhere else as they did for the Widow Hornbeck. There was no other such show of lilacs in Juno Mills as that which early May brought for her front yard. The climbing roses which covered the whole front and side of the poor little house were only of the simple, old sorts,--the Baltimore Belle, the yellow Scotch and the ordinary pink brier,--but they bore thick clusters of delightful blossoms. And in the fall, when the frosts had nipped and blackened other people's flowers, the asters and nasturtiums and gladiolus in this wee patch appeared unhurt by the weather. When there was to be a wedding in the village, or some celebration at the church or the school-house, the children always went to the Widow Hornbeck to beg for flowers. Often they found her sitting out in her yard among the plants she loved--a mild-faced, patient little woman, with thin, bent shoulders and hair whitened before its time; and she would be poring through her spectacles over the same big Book spread open on her knees. The spectacle of Mrs. Hornbeck and her family Bible, framed like a picture in vines and flowering shrubs, grew pleasantly familiar to everybody in the district. Strangers driving past used to stop their buggies and admire the place; and they, too, seeing the white-haired owner sitting there, would feel that her presence added to the charm of the scene. The widow died suddenly one day in the autumn of 1863. She was found quite lifeless, seated as of old in the garden, with the old patient, wistful half-smile on her face, and the old Book spread open in her lap.