His mind flashed back to his father's rebuke and his answer: "Ye says I lay drunk. Thet's true an' hit's a shameful thing fer a man ter admit.... But hit's a thing I've got ter fight out fer myself." A great indignation against his father's misunderstanding possessed him. He must fight in his own way! Even Blossom had only asked him not to drink "too much." When it needed only an hour more for the coming of dawn, his face grew darkly sullen. "Hit's hell thet I've got ter spend my whole life a-brewin' ther stuff ergin my will--takin' chances of ther jail-house fer hit--an' yit I kain't have a drink when I'm wet ter ther bone," he growled. Going as if drawn by a power stronger than his own volition, he moved balkingly yet with inevitable progress once more to the bucket. He half filled the cup--raised it--and this time gulped it down greedily and recklessly to the bottom. Immediately his chilled veins began to glow with an ardent gratefulness. The stars seemed brighter and the little voices of the night became sweeter. The iron-bound gates of imagination swung wide to a pageantry of dreams, and as he crouched in the reeking underbrush, he half forgot his discontent. Repeatedly he dipped and drained the cup. He was still on duty, but now he watched with a diminished vigilance. Gradually his senses became more blunt. The waking dreams were vaguer, too, and more absurd. He still tended the fire under the kettle--but he laughed scornfully at the foolish need of keeping his face always in the shadow. Then suddenly he dropped down close to the dark earth, let the cup splash into the bucket, and thrust forward his rifle. His ears had caught a sound which might have been a raccoon stirring in the brush--or a fox slipping covertly through the fallen hemlock top. But there was no repetition, so he laughed again and with the first pallid hint of dawn on the ridges he shook the shoulder of his sleeping companion. Then he himself sank down in the heavy torpor of exhaustion and drunkenness. At the same time, because it would soon be light, the living creature which had made the sound began creeping away, and in doing so it avoided any other alarms. It was the figure of a man who had learned what he came there to determine. When Lone Stacy plodded up to his still-house some hours later, he exchanged nods with the squat mountaineer whom he found waiting. "Whar's Turner?" was his brief inquiry and the reply matched it in taciturnity. "In thar--a-layin' drunk." The father went over and looked scowlingly down at the prostrate figure stretched awkwardly in open-mouthed stupor. "I reckon," he announced succinctly, "thar hain't nothin' fer hit but ter suffer him ter sleep hit off." With the toe of his boot Lone Stacy stirred the insensate body which sprawled there; all its youthful vitality stilled into grotesque stagnation. But when the hired man, Lee, was out of sight the bearded face twitched with a spasm of distress.