“Ter git out,--that’s all; ter git out o’ hyar!” exclaimed Tubal Sims, sickened with a ghastly horror of the presentment of the scene they had left, the walls that harbored it, the roof that sheltered it. Oh for the free pure mountain air, the wild untrodden lengths of the mountain wilderness, fresh with the sun and the dew, and the vigor of natural growths, and the sweet scent of woodland ways! As he cast up his eyes to the high window above the staircase he could have cried out aloud to see the bars, and he gazed at the door in a desperation that started the drops on his brow and brought the blood to his face, as if the intensity of his emotion had been some strong physical effort. “What did you get in here for, then?” demanded the sheriff. “Most folks have to be fetched.” Tubal Cain Sim’s heart failed him. Could it be possible that he had ever designed a fate like this for the man who had slept under his roof; who had eaten his bread; who had refused to maintain secrecy against him; who considered him and his claims, when his own, his very own, passed them by? He could not realize it. He refused to credit his cherished scheme; he felt that if once away from the paralyzing sight of the place, invention would rouse itself anew. Some other device would serve to rid the Cove of the man, and to frustrate his elopement with Euphemia. Tubal Sims was sure he could compass a new plan if once more he were free in the clear and open air. The eagle eye of the sheriff marked the alert turning of Sims’s head toward the door. “What did you come here for, then?” he again demanded. With hot eyes glancing hither and thither like a wild thing’s in a trap, Tubal Sims replied, with the inspiration of the moment, “I wanted ter view the man I hev voted fur so often an’ so constant.” Now, the sheriff, like many other great men in their several places, had his vanity, and it is not hard to convince one who has been before the public eye that he fills that orb to the exclusion of any less worthy object. That Tubal Cain Sims should have journeyed fully thirty-five miles from the mountains to contemplate the resplendent dignity of the sheriff in his oft-resumed incumbency seemed possibly no disproportionate tribute to Enott Blake’s estimate of his own merits. But this view, however flattering, was hardly compatible with the lordly manner in which the old mountaineer had beaten upon the door of the jail, and the imperative tones with which he had summoned forth the servant of the public who owed his high estate to the suffrages of him aided by the likes of him.