“Nor I wouldn’t neither,” bleated Jim Cal in comical antiphon.
In the light from the open doorway Creed’s face looked uneasy.
“But you don’t think—you wouldn’t—” he began and then broke off.
Old Jephthah shook his head.
“I ain’t got no blockade still,” he asserted sweepingly. “I made my last run of moonshine whiskey many a year ago. I reckon two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Creed’s dismay increased. Inexperienced boy, he had not expected to encounter such feeling in the discussion of this the one topic upon which your true mountaineer of the remote districts can never be anything but passionate, embittered, at bay.
“You name the crime of makin’ wildcat whiskey,” the old man’s deep, accusing voice went on, after a little silence. “It ain’t no crime—an’ you know it—an’ no guv’ment o’ mortal men can make a crime out’n it. As for the foolishness of it,” he dropped his chin on his breast, his black eyes looked out broodingly, his great beard rose against his lips and muffled his tones, “I reckon the foolishness of a thing is what each feller has to find out for hisself,” he said. “Daddies has been tryin’ since the time of Adam to let their knowin’ it sarve for their sons; but ef one of ’em has made the plan work yit, I ain’t heard on it. Nor the guv’ment can’t neither. A man’ll take his punishment for a meanness an’ l’arn by it; but to be jailed for what’s his right makes an outlaw of him, an’ always will. Good Lord, Creed! What set you an’ me off on this tune? Young feller, you ort to be down yon dancin’ with the gals, instead of here talking foolishness to a old man like me.”
Creed arose to his tall young height and glanced uncertainly from his host to the lighted room from which came the sounds of fiddle and stamping feet. It was a little hard for a prophet on his own mountain-top to be sent to play with the children; yet he went.