“Time ter quit, ennyhow,” said the facile Jube. For the great red sunset was flaring in at the widely opened barn-like doors, and though the vermilion disk still lingered above the dusky purple mountains, the hunter’s moon, a luminous sphere, pearly and splendid, swung high in the east, with all its sentiments of solitude and alien influences, with all its brooding nocturnal fancies, as if it were alone in the sky save for its familiar the vaguely scintillating star at the zenith. “A clear night,” said Clem to himself, with a sigh, as he sat down on the log by the door. It was not the weather signs alone that gave his voice its significant intonation; it was the congruous circumstance furnished to the nocturnal enterprise. He noted presently a dark figure with a rifle on its shoulder, crossing the bridge above the narrows of the river, thrown into bold relief between the crimson sky and its lustrous red reflection in the water. The sun still gave the current a glint of gold; a rising vapor borrowed mysteries from the moon, and the figure seemed taller than normal height as it disappeared in the woods. It was not long before Clem saw another armed man approaching from down the road. The vigilantes were gathering. He rose, with a long-drawn sigh, and closed the shop for the night,—for all his cronies were gone,—and then betook himself home to his supper. He had had no very definite sentiment in regard to the organization that had charged itself with the enterprise of solving the mystery of the intrusions at the forge, and administering punishment should it be deemed required. It had seemed to him, however, natural and right enough that these enigmatical proceedings should, in the interests of public justice, be subjected to scrutiny, especially as it had been discovered that Jake Baintree, almost universally considered to have cheated the gallows, was concerned in them. Since, however, Marcella had set her face against the self-constituted judges, and had spoken of them with reprobation, his interest, his sense of injury, even his curiosity, had dwindled. He was conscious of wishing them all far enough from his premises when, after leaving his mother unsuspiciously washing the supper-dishes, thinking he had gone to his cronies at the forge, he took his way out through the tall sere grass and leafless bushes across the door-yard to the barn, where his hidden coadjutors lurked, awaiting him.