Jube went too, having volunteered in an unguarded moment—repenting of it immediately afterward, but unable to extricate himself—to show his father a certain choice coigne of vantage on the mountain above, where one could easily overlook the road and the forge, and yet be at a considerable distance. “It’s so steep a body mought slip spang down onto the roof, ef ye didn’t scotch yerse’f with a bowlder. Git ahint one o’ them bowlders,—that’s the dinctum.” The moon had sunk in the unknown world behind Chilhowee. The blackness on the earth was dense and unbroken, save that here and there the flare from some cabin that they passed revealed the vague outline of the building, the dully illuminated oblong space of the open doorway, a few zigzag lines of the rail fence close at hand thus suggesting the features of the familiar scenes which the night had annulled. Above, the stars blazed in great glory and a scintillating multiplicity, but gave little appreciable light, and the parson was glad that Jube, with his younger eyes and his active step, was with him, when they began to toil up a rugged and brambly pathless ascent. The old man struggled valiantly along,—they had passed through the Settlement, the father observing to the son, by way of keeping his word to Mrs. Donnard, that they would stop and inquire for Eli Strobe upon their homeward way, if it were not then too late,—and he was beset by the terror of meeting some one of his flock here and now, where his errand would be inexplicable. He plunged boldly among the briers; he toiled through steep stony passes; he puffed, and tugged, and made every hearty effort to swiftly betake himself out of the way of any accidental encounter. Once a sudden stir in the bushes hard by caused his heart to spring into his throat, and his quick mind to anxiously canvass some hobbling methods of explaining his position,—the next moment, the mellow clangor of a cow-bell; the creature was lying belated, perhaps, on the slope, and had moved her head, hearing their steps, and no more. He was indefinably perplexed and embarrassed by an odd, unrecognizable change in Jube. A sort of half-subdued hilarity grated on him, sundry smothered guffaws, gleeful allusions to previous capers, of which the parson had never heard and vaguely understood. Only now and then did Jube subside, with a returning realization of the identity of his companion. For the night air, the mountain wind, the secrecy, the excitement, the quivering expectancy of their errand, had begun to make themselves felt in Jube’s blood, —a rapid current, and susceptible of considerable elation and exhilaration. The spirit of adventure was astir within him, and only at times was dashed by the remembrance that the parson was—the parson.