Brayton in Hazlan, and the two Steves, as they were known, drew
promptly. Marcum was in the dust when the smoke cleared away;
and now, after three months in bed, he was just out again. He had
come down to the mill to see Isom. This was the miller's first
chance for remonstrance, and, as usual, he began to lay it down
that every man who had taken a human life must sooner or later
pay for it with his own. It was an old story to Isom, and, with a
shake of impatience, he turned out the door of the mill, and left old
Gabe droning on under his dusty hat to Steve, who, being heavy
with "moonshine," dropped asleep.

Outside the sun was warm, the flood was calling from the dam,
and the boy's petulance was gone at once. For a moment he stood
on the rude platform watching the tide; then he let one bare foot
into the water, and, with a shiver of delight, dropped from the
boards. In a moment his clothes were on the ground behind a
laurel thicket, and his slim white body was flashing like a faun
through the reeds and bushes up stream. A hundred yards away
the creek made a great loop about a wet thicket of pine and
rhododendron, and he turned across the bushy neck. Creeping
through the gnarled bodies of rhododendron, he dropped suddenly
behind the pine, and lay flat in the black earth. Ten yards through
the dusk before him was the half-bent figure of a man letting an
old army haversack slip from one shoulder; and Isom watched him
hide it with a rifle under a bush, and go noiselessly on towards the
road. It was Crump, Eli Crump, who had been a spy for the
Lewallens in the old feud and who was spying now for old Steve
Brayton. It was the second time Isom had seen him lurking about,
and the boy's impulse was to hurry back to the mill. But it was still
peace, and without his gun Crump was not dangerous; so Isom