“No use ter take arter me kase the devil kems a-lopin’ ’round in Brumsaidge,” retorted Jube, surlily. “I hain’t hed no dealin’s with the devil.” He spoke of the Enemy familiarly; he was accustomed to hear so much of him. “Ef I war a-talkin’, ’twouldn’t hender him none from kemin’; _he_ ain’t afeard o’ _me_, I reckon.” He relapsed, however, into silence, preserving a wounded manner which was of great avail generally with his parents, and which advertised that some one had been “tromplin’ on his feelin’s,” as he was wont to phrase it. The night was wearing on: once the glittering dart of a falling star shot swiftly athwart the dark expanse. They could hear the pensive night sigh in its reverie. Jube now and again shifted his position, a few loose stones rolling beneath his feet. The tedium of the delay wore heavily upon him. Once as the clarion note of a cock rang out, with its response from the echoing crags, he ventured to say in a low voice, “Thar now!” as a reproach for the lateness of the hour. And more than once afterward he yawned with ostentatious fatigue. Differently, indeed, had the time been beguiled when he and his cronies awaited the propitious moment to throw gunpowder into the smith’s forge fire. But then the bellows was at work, with its noisy respirations, and the anvil clamored, and the behests of secrecy were not inconsistent with sound. Now the forge in the black abyss below was as silent as the grave,—as dark. No stir save that of the torrent in the deep obscurity of its channel, its current throbbing like the pulse of the night. No light in all the world,—not even at Eli Strobe’s cabin, where the watchers’ candle by the bedside had burned late; no light save the glister of the great stars. Suddenly—the parson’s hand falls with a light touch on Jube’s; a step along the road, was it? The wind—a vagrant blast—comes a-rustling down and stirs the dust; the dry, arid scent of it rises to their perch; and again a step. Distinct now, a regular advancing footfall along the road, so dark, so dark under that glittering array of all the hosts of heaven. An approach, a sound—no more! But was the echo so strong, so keen, or was the step followed closely by another? The parson’s breath came in quick gasps through his half-parted dry lips. He trembled throughout all his gaunt frame. For the footfalls had followed the road at the base of the mountain, and had paused at the door of the forge.