camp with their canvas-covered wagons. There they would build their fires on a charred place between stones, and heat their coffee. There they would feed their oxen or mule team, tied to the rear wheels of their wagons, with corn thrown on the ground before them. At nightfall they would crawl under the canvas cover and sleep on the corn fodder within.
Often beneath the fodder might be found a few jugs of raw corn whiskey hidden away, while the articles they had brought down for sale or barter at the village stores were placed on top in plain view. Sometimes they brought vegetables, or baskets of splints and willow withes, made by their women, or they might have a few yards of homespun towelling.
The man Frale had seen was the older brother of his friend Ferdinand Teasley, and well Frale knew that he was camped with his ox team down by the spring, where it had been his habit to wait for the cover of darkness, when he could steal forth and leave his jugs where the money might be found for them, placed on some rock or stump or fallen trunk half concealed by laurel shrubs. How often had the products of Frale's still been conveyed down the mountain by that same ox team, in that same unwieldy vehicle!
Giles Teasley's cabin and patch of soil, planted always to corn, was a long distance from his father's mill, and also from his brother's still, hence he could with the more safety dispose of their illicit drink.
In the slow but deadly sure manner of his people, he had but