The hiding-place of this whiskey had puzzled the revenue officers of every administration for years. They had watched her house day and night. Not one of them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse. The game had excited her imagination. She loved its daring and danger. That there was the slightest element of wrong or crime in her association with the moonshiners of her native heath had never for a moment entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey. This was the first article of the creed of the true North Carolina mountaineer. They had from the first declared that the tax levied by the Federal Government on the product of their industry was an infamous act of tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two generations. They would fight it as long as there was breath in their bodies and a single load of powder and buckshot for their rifles. Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of her soul for the shrewd and successful defiance she had given the revenue officers for so many years. She had been too cunning to even allow one of her own people to know the secret of her store house. For that reason it had never been discovered. She always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato shed or under the cabin floor until night and then alone carried it to the place she had discovered. She laughed softly at the thought of this deep hiding-place tonight. Its temperature never varied winter or summer. Not a track had ever been left at its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless some spying eye should see her enter, its existence could never be suspected. She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the door of the living-room and listened to the even, heavy breathing of the man on the couch. Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed beyond came to her keen ears. She stood for five minutes. It was not repeated. She had only imagined it. The girl was still asleep. She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf on which she had placed the battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was sufficient. She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the split-board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards. Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods. Her right hand before her to feel for underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the swift-flowing mountain brook. Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them beside a tree. She wore no stockings. The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade knee deep now without hindrance.