IX.
Amos and his steed made their way along a narrow passage, growing wider, however, and taller, but darker, and with many short turns—an embarrassment to the resisting brute's physical conformation.
Suddenly there was a vague red haze in the dark, the sound of voices, and an abrupt turn brought man and horse into a great subterranean vault, where dusky distorted figures, wreathing smoke, and a flare of red fire suggested Tartarus.
'Hy're, Amos!' cried a hospitable voice.
A weird tone repeated the words with precipitate promptness.
Again and again the abrupt echoes spoke; far down the unseen blackness of the cave a hollow whisper announced his entrance, and he seemed mysteriously welcomed by the unseen powers of the earth.
He was not an imaginative man nor observant, but the upper regions were his sphere, and he had all the acute sensitiveness incident to being out of one's element. Even after he had seated himself he noted a far, faint voice crying, 'Hy're, Amos!' in abysmal depths explored only by the sound of his name.
And here it was that old Groundhog Cayce evaded the law, and ran his still, and defied the revenue department, and maintained his right to do as he would with his own.
'Lord A'mighty, air the corn mine, or no?' he would argue. 'Air the orchard mine, or the raiders'? An' what ails me ez I can't make whisky an' apple-jack same ez in my dad's time, when him an' me run a sour mash still on the top o' the mounting in the light o' day, up'ards o' twenty year, an' never hearn o' no raider. Tell me that's agin the law, nowadays! Waal, now, who made that law? I never; an' I ain't a-goin' ter abide by it, nuther. Ez sure ez ye air born, it air jes' a Yankee trick fotched down hyar by the Fed'ral army. An' if I hed knowed they war goin' ter gin tharse'fs ter sech persecutions arter the war, I dunno how I'd hev got my consent ter fit alongside of 'em like I done fower year fur the Union.'