had so paved his way for an investigation--and then he wheeled suddenly in his saddle. The bushes had rustled gently behind him and out from them stepped an extraordinary human shape--wearing a coon-skin cap, belted with two rows of big cartridges, carrying a big Winchester over one shoulder and a circular tube of brass in his left hand. With his right leg straight, his left thigh drawn into the hollow of his saddle and his left hand on the rump of his horse, Hale simply stared, his eyes dropping by and by from the pale-blue eyes and stubbly red beard of the stranger, down past the cartridge-belts to the man's feet, on which were moccasins--with the heels forward! Into what sort of a world had he dropped! “So nary a soul can tell which way I'm going,” said the red-haired stranger, with a grin that loosed a hollow chuckle far behind it. “Would you mind telling me what difference it can make to me which way you are going?” Every moment he was expecting the stranger to ask his name, but again that chuckle came. “It makes a mighty sight o' difference to some folks.” “But none to me.” “I hain't wearin' 'em fer you. I know YOU.” “Oh, you do.” The stranger suddenly lowered his Winchester and turned his face, with his ear cocked like an animal. There was some noise on the spur above. “Nothin' but a hickory nut,” said the chuckle again. But Hale had been studying that strange face. One side of it was calm, kindly, philosophic, benevolent; but, when the other was turned, a curious twitch of the muscles at the left side of the mouth showed the teeth and made a snarl there that was wolfish. “Yes, and I know you,” he said slowly. Self-satisfaction, straightway, was ardent in the face. “I knowed you would git to know me in time, if you didn't now.” This was the Red Fox of the mountains, of whom he had heard so much--“yarb” doctor and Swedenborgian preacher; revenue officer and, some said, cold-blooded murderer. He would walk twenty miles to preach, or would start at any hour of the day or night to minister to the sick, and would charge for neither service. At other hours he would be searching for moonshine stills, or watching his enemies in the valley from some mountain top, with that huge spy-glass--Hale could see now that the brass tube was a telescope--that he might slip down and unawares take a pot-shot at them. The Red Fox communicated with spirits, had visions and superhuman powers of locomotion--stepping mysteriously from the bushes, people said, to walk at the traveller's side and as mysteriously disappearing into them again, to be heard of in a few hours an incredible distance away. “I've been watchin' ye from up thar,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I seed ye go up the creek, and then the bushes hid ye. I know what you was after--but did you see any signs up thar of anything you wasn't looking fer?” Hale laughed. “Well, I've been in these mountains long enough not to tell you, if I had.” The Red Fox chuckled.