The sophistications of polite society are not recognized by the medical faculty as amongst the epidemics which spread among mankind, but no contagious principle has so dispersive a quality in every feature of the malady. Given one show in Etowah Cove, and Tubal Cain Sims developed the acumen of a keen _impresario_. He saw the opportunity, counted the chances, evolved as an original idea--for the existence of such a scheme had never reached his ears--a successful starring tour around the coves and mountain settlements of the Great Smoky range. The melancholy expressed in the slow shaking of Mrs. Sims’s head aroused him from this project. “Naw,” she said; “the fool way that the folks tuk on ’bout Satan--they’d better hev the high-strikes ’count o’ thar sins--an’ thar theatenings an’ sech will purvent him. He won’t show agin. An’ I be plumb afeard,” she cried out in renewed vexation, “the man will get away from hyar ’thout viewin’ Euphemy. I’ll be bound he hev never seen the like of her!” with a joyous note of maternal pride. The pipe turned around in Tubal Sims’s mouth, and the charge of fire and ashes and tobacco fell unheeded on the floor. Like a voice in his ears the echo of that strange cry of the sleeper came to him out of the deep darkness of the stormy midnight, with the problem of its occult significance, with the terror of its possible meaning, and every other consideration slipped from his consciousness. The perception of the mental trouble expressed in the man’s face, its confirmation even in the trifle of the unbaited hook, returned to Sims, with the determination that he must know more of him or get him out of the Cove before Euphemia’s return. “The man’s dad-burned good-lookin’,” he said to himself, perceiving the fact for the first time, since it had a personal application. “An’ Phemie be powerful book-l’arned, an’ be always scornin’ the generality o’ the young cusses round about, kase she knows more ’n they do. Mebbe he knows more ’n she do.” He pondered for a moment on the improbability that daughter Euphemia’s knowledge, acquired at the little schoolhouse where the “show” had been held, was exceeded by the fund of information stored in the brain-pan of any single individual since the world began. At all events, anxiety, complications, familiar association in the sanctions of the fireside, impended. This was a man with a secret, and, innocent or guilty, a stranger to his host. He must be quick, for Mrs. Sims--transparent Mrs. Sims!--was even now evolving methods by which Euphemia might be summoned peremptorily from Piomingo Cove, and canvassing means of transportation. She chuckled even amidst her anxieties. The juggler, in all his experience,--and his conversation now and again gave intimations that he was a man of cities and had seen much folk in his time,--had never viewed aught like Euphemia, and if scheming might avail, he should not leave Etowah Cove till this crowning mercy was vouchsafed him.