Before the sun was up, and while the transparent jewels still trembled on the damp face of the wilderness, Lem was on the last half of his climb. He forged onward, his head aflutter with a multiplicity of anticipation that precedes the sight of a long absent home. Presently he espied a thin column of smoke aloft, which he knew issued from his own cherished habitat. He pulsed with a savage delight. With the pungent odors of a horde of familiar, endeared growing things in his nostrils, he throbbed with the salient, rabid joy of an escaped jungle animal back again to its own. In a vortex of ecstasy he viewed the wild, enchanting scenes developing through a film of early morning mist. CHAPTER XXX THE SHOOTING OF PETER BURTON When finally Lem reached the narrow twist where the trail jutted out and clung to the dew-damp breast of the mountain, he halted and dropping his torn shoes, which he had carried in his hand the past hour, he gazed along the ragged channel of a blind gulch that bit into the base of the mountain. The tree-fringed mouth of this gulch framed a picture below that entranced him. Upheld on the grass-grown palm of the distant clearing, he saw the squatty outlines of the meeting-house. Like a blow from a bludgeon the tragic details of that unforgettable tragedy hissed and rankled anew in his brain;--that red, accursed half-hour amid the naked shadows of a lugubrious dusk, with death at his elbow; the cry of the panther in his ears, and a ghost that breathed and scowled and cursed over him. Motionless, he looked at that wooden magnet below with a rapt, breathless stare. When he seized his damaged shoes and started onward, two stinging tears, hot with the acme of bitterness, fell off his chin, through his open shirt-front, and rolled across the white scars that dappled his breast. When he made the next turn he was in full view of the cabin. He saw the blue-black martins, swirling around and chattering over their box. He heard the crowing of the cocks, and the see-saw music of the guineas behind the log barn. He saw the red steers reluctant to leave their warm wallow in the be-dewed stable yard. He placed his fingers to his mouth and gave two shrill whistles. In an instant his father's spotted hound bounded from behind the cabin, followed by four other obstreperous dogs. While the dogs were yapping and mobbing him with their boisterous welcome, Slab appeared at the cabin door, followed by Bud half-dressed. "Hallaluyah! hallaluyah! hallaluyah!" shouted the old negro, gesticulating joyously and shambling pell-mell down the descent. On the backward path to the cabin there followed a noisy and gladsome reunion. Hanging to his brother's arm, Buddy kept crying crazily: "Lem hain't daid--Lem hain't daid--air yo', Lem?"