"An' she ought ter be the las'," said Daniel Pinnott sourly. He was the conservative one of the sons, a settled married man, and he had the married man's insistent convictions as to the propriety of demeanour and decorous home-abiding fitting for the female sex. He remembered, too, the reach of the long arm of the Revenue Department. Though a volcano may be silent, sleeping, the hot heart of the crater burns with an inextinguishable fire. He did not venture to openly oppose the determination of the paternal autocrat, but he had done his utmost to dissuade the enterprise.
The elder man made no direct rejoinder, but he nevertheless combated this spirit of negation. "Colb'ry hev been mighty dry—sence it's been a dry town," he said significantly, speaking with his pipe in the corner of his mouth. "I reckon folkses' throats thar air about ez dry ez a lime-burner's kiln."
The younger moonshiners eyed the dissentient Daniel with a degree of rancour. "I'll be bound they'll nose out our waggon powerful quick," said Tom. "We'll sell a deal o' liquor, else I'm mightily s'prised."
Old Shadrach nodded assentingly.
"It'll take a heap o' liquor ter git a prohibition town soaked through an' through. We uns hev got a week though ter finish the business. The Street Fair will show fur a week."
"An' I'm ter sing an' dance twict every day," cried Clotilda delightedly. She had listened to the colloquy of the group around the still with a very definite anxiety lest from Daniel's doubts and remonstrances a final abandonment of the project ensue. She now leaned her fluffy auburn head back against the great stalagmite and laughed with a renewal of zest and cheer as she cast up her eyes at Eugene Binley, who still stood beside her looking loweringly down at her.
There was something so aloof, so smitten, yet so menacing in his eyes that her elated spirits suddenly collapsed. It suggested the frightful pathos of a savage animal, sorely wounded and suffering, yet with an unabated ferocity. The very look numbed her joy.
"I be powerful sorry ez you uns can't be thar ter see me," she declared falteringly, suddenly drawn back from her soft conceits of anticipation to this sullen reality.
"Oh, I'll be thar," he protested with a forlorn lame joviality.
"Eujeemes will be afeared ez Clotildy will be gittin' merried ter some o' them town men whilst he be hid out in the mountings. I reckon other folks will be streck all of a heap with her puffawmin' jes the same ez that thar stranger-man," Tom observed as he lay at length.