[Illustration: ANDY TELLS THE STORY OF THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.] "These unjust suspicions of murder and robbery against an innocent man continued to rankle in the minds of the valley folks for more than two years, until a most surprisin' event took place on the mountain, to the great disappointment and annoyance of those gossips who had been loudest in their charges against Jo-siah Woodring. Hit happened that two bear-hunters from the settlement found themselves belated in the neighborhood of this very bridge one September night, and, bein' worn out with the chase, they sat down to rest in the shadow of an old chestnut, where they soon fell asleep. They awoke just before mid-night, and were about to start on down the mountain when they heard footsteps coming up the trail, and presently, dark as the night was, they saw a man with a keg on his shoulder a-walkin' toward the bridge. The man was Jo-siah; and after restin' his burden on a stump and wipin' the sweat from his forehead, he shouldered hit again and tramped on over the bridge. "The hunters were bold men and well armed, and, having had a good rest, they followed the man at a safe distance until he came to the ledge of rocks which you-all will view for yourselves by sun-up, and there he was met by a man with a ladder, who stood out on the rocks above. The hunters noticed that the stranger was a small man, and just then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and they knew him for the little old man who was supposed to have been murdered. "When the hunters told what they'd seen on the mountain, you may believe," said Andy, "there was right smart excitement in Cashiers, and some disappointment to find that Jo-siah was neither a murderer nor a robber. They went on hating him all the same for driving two steers to his cart and for having deceived them so long about the man on the mountain, and then they started the story that he was feedin' his prisoner on whisky, and that it was only a slow murder, after all. After that, one day, when Jo-siah had gone away to market, half a dozen of the valley men, with the two hunters to guide them, went up the mountain for the purpose of liberating that poor prisoner o' Jo-siah's. "They carried a ladder along, and when they had climbed up the ledge they found a little log shelter not fit for a sheep-hovel; and as for the prisoner, he kept out of their way, for it was a pretty big place, with plenty of trees and rocks to hide among. Well, as the years went on, Jo-siah brought back less and less of suspicious packages in his cart when he came up from the low country; but it was known that he still went up the mountain on certain dark nights with a keg on his shoulder. The strange old man himself was seen at a distance from time to time, but at last his existence on the mountain came to be a settled fact, and the people ceased to worry about him.