"Yes, stranger; haulin' late, from Eskaqua—a needcessity."
"What's yer cargo?" asked Browdie, seeming only ordinarily inquisitive.
A sepulchral cadence was in the driver's voice, and the disguised raiders noted that the three other men on the wagon had preserved, throughout, a solemn silence. "What we-uns mus' all be one day, stranger—a corpus."
Browdie was stultified for a moment. Then, sustaining his assumed character, he said: "I hope it be nobody I know. I be fairly well acquainted in Eskaqua, though I hail from down in Lonesome Cove. Who be dead?"
There was palpably a moment's hesitation before the spokesman replied: "Watt Wyatt; died day 'fore yestiddy."
At the words, one of the silent men in the wagon turned his face suddenly, with such obvious amazement depicted upon it that it arrested the attention of the "revenuers." This face was so individual that it was not likely to be easily mistaken or forgotten. A wild, breezy look it had, and a tricksy, incorporeal expression that might well befit some fantastic, fabled thing of the woods. It was full of fine script of elusive meanings, not registered in the lineaments of the prosaic man of the day, though perchance of scant utility, not worth interpretation. His full gray eyes were touched to glancing brilliancy by a moonbeam; his long, fibrously floating brown hair was thrown backward; his receding chin was peculiarly delicate; and though his well-knit frame bespoke a hardy vigor, his pale cheek was soft and thin. All the rustic grotesquery of garb and posture was cancelled by the deep shadow of a bough, and his delicate face showed isolated in the moonlight.
Browdie silently pondered his vague suspicions for a moment. "Whar did he die at?" he then demanded at a venture.
"At his daddy's house, fur sure. Whar else?" responded the driver. "I hev got what's lef' of him hyar in the coffin-box. We expected ter make it ter Shiloh buryin'-ground 'fore dark; but the road is middlin' heavy, an' 'bout five mile' back Ben cast a shoe. The funeral warn't over much 'fore noon."
"Whyn't they bury him in Eskaqua, whar he died?" persisted Browdie.
"Waal, they planned ter bury him alongside his mother an' gran'dad, what used ter live in Tanglefoot Cove. But we air wastin' time hyar, an' we hev got none ter spare. Gee, Ben! Git up, John!"