And then there was a sudden silence. It seemed to Rick, strangely enough, like the sudden silence that comes after prayer. He was reminded, as one of the men rose at length and the keg on which he had been sitting creaked with the motion, of the creaking benches in the little mountain church when the congregation started from their knees. And had some feeble, groping sinner's prayer filled the silence and the moral darkness!
The "executive committee" promptly recovered himself. But he made no further attempt to force the whiskey upon the boy. Under some whispered instructions which he gave the others, Rick was half-led, half-dragged through immensely long black halls of the cave, while one of the men went before, carrying the feeble lantern. When the first glimmer of daylight appeared in the distance, Rick understood that the cave had an outlet other than the one by which he had entered, and evidently miles distant from it. Thus it was that the distillers were well enabled to baffle the law that sought them.
They stopped here and blindfolded the boy. How far and where they dragged him through the snowy mountain wilderness outside, Rick never knew. He was exhausted when at length they allowed him to pause. As he heard their steps dying away in the distance, he tore the bandage from his eyes, and found that they had left him in the midst of the wagon road to make his way to Birk's Mill as best he might. When he reached it, the wintry sun was low in the western sky, and the very bones of the "pea-fowel" were picked.
On the whole, it seemed a sorry Christmas Day, as Rick could not know then—indeed, he never knew—what good results it brought forth. For among those who took the benefit of the "amnesty" extended by the Government to the moonshiners of this region, on condition that they discontinue illicit distilling for the future, was a certain long, lank, lazy-looking mountaineer, who suddenly became sober and steady and a law-abiding citizen. He had been reminded, this Christmas Day, of a broken promise to a dead mother, and this by the unflinching moral courage of a mere boy in a moment of mortal peril. Such wise, sweet, uncovenanted uses has duty, blessing alike the unconscious exemplar and him who profits by the example.