"I reckons not," she muttered, stirring uneasily.
"Well, somehow I never could get myself to believe that my father was really dead. I had one of the revenue men in my pay, and he used to write me every week or so. It was through him I first heard the rumor that the moonshiners were said to have a prisoner up at your father's Still, who was kept constantly under guard, and made to work. They even said he was a revenue man; and that it was a part of the moonshiners' revenge to make him help manufacture the mountain dew, so as to pay up for the quantities he had destroyed in his raids. You've heard more or less about this, too, haven't you, Polly?"
"Sure I has, Bob Quail," replied the girl.
"Polly, somehow I just can't get it out of my head that this mysterious prisoner of the mountains might be my own father; that he was badly wounded, and not killed in that fight; that the moonshiners nursed him back to health; and ever since he's been kept under guard. Do you know if that is so? I ask you to tell me, because it would mean a great deal to me, and to my poor mother at home in the North."
Polly shook her head in the negative.
"I jest can't say as to thet," she answered, soberly; "I done hears a heap 'bout some man as they has kep' a long time up thar, adoin' of the chores, an' never without a gun clost to his head; but I ain't never seed him. I gives ye my word on thet, Bob Quail."
"But Polly, you could see him if you tried real hard, couldn't you?" the boy went on, in an anxious tone.
She looked at him. The eager expression on poor Bob's face would have moved a heart of stone; and Polly was surely deeply touched.
"I reckons I cud," she answered, steadily; while in her black eyes stole a glow that gave Thad a curious feeling; for he began to believe that they had after all come upon an unexpected and valuable ally, right in the household of the chief enemy.
"Think what it means to me, Polly," Bob suggested, knowing how best to appeal to her sympathies. "Put yourself in my place, and tell me what you would do if it was your own father who was held a prisoner, and you had long believed him dead? Do you blame me for coming back to these mountains to try and learn the truth; and if it should turn out to be all I dream it may, of attempting in some way to bring about his release. Would you blame me, Polly?"