“I don’t wanter stan’ in Jake Baintree’s shoes,” he muttered, forecasting their fury if balked. His tone, though so low, was audible, so silent was the night, to the man who walked by his side. Jepson cast a glance of deep objection upon him. “His shoes air mebbe powerful safe foot-gear,” he returned. “It depends on what he be a-doin’ of, an’ what sort’n account he kin gin o’ hisself. Ye air jes’ like them men yander;” he nodded his head backward toward the barn. “They ’pear ter rate tharse’fs with a pack o’ hounds arter a wild critter what they hev got a nateral right ter pull down. They fairly yelled ez ef they had struck the trail o’ deer or bar, whenst they hearn that hammer fust tech the metal.” Clem Sanders suddenly lost his scanty self-control. “I know whar ye got all that thar fine talk from,” he flared out in jealous rage. “Powerful nice an’ perlite ter be a-comparin’ baptized Christians ter hounds an’ sech. Ye been a-talkin’ ter Marcelly Strobe. Them’s her very words.” The next moment, the tide of suspicion that had rolled in so tumultuously upon him was ebbing gradually. Once more he was to learn the irrevocability of a word given to the air. The idea that sound-waves, once astir, infinitely vibrate to perpetuate a record, albeit too subtle for mortal ear, was not even a vague theory with him, but he experienced in some sort its practical illustration. Teck Jepson had paused in the road, smitten motionless in amazement, and the inadvertent Clem saw gradually dawning in his eyes, widely opened and speculatively fixed upon him, the counterpart of the view which he himself had entertained. The inference was too plain for him to hope that it might be passed over. It was now not difficult to divine his confidences, and where they had been bestowed. It was evident, too, that with these words Marcella had received them. Jepson said nothing. He still stood where he had paused, the moonlight a burnished glitter upon the barrel of the pistol that he held in his hand. His face, white in the pallid sheen, was reflective. He gazed now, not at Clem Sanders, but beyond him, into the vague shimmer of the frost amongst the black shadows of the woods; the curled dead leaves on the ground held within their curves the fine sparkling incrustation; every bramble of the undergrowth close by the roadside showed lines of silver gleams, and through the heavy interlacing boughs of the gigantic trees above their heads, rising high into the clear air, came the crystalline scintillation of the stars. Encircling all, the mountains stood sombre and lofty, sharply defined against the sky; adown the road the heavy shadows gloomed; suddenly, athwart them a red light flared, and the sigh of the bellows breathed forth. Teck Jepson, reminded of their destination, turned abruptly from the road, which they had hitherto followed, into the undergrowth of the woods.