"Right smart of an idjit, now, ain't ye?" demanded Ben, hustling back, so to speak, the tears that sought to rise in his eyes.
"Waal, stranger, how's yer filly?" retorted Thad, laughing in a gaspy fashion.
There was a tone of forgiveness in the inquiry. The answer caught the same spirit.
"Middlin',—thanky,—jes' middlin'," said Ben.
And then they and "dad" fared home together by the light of the moonshiners' lantern.
BORROWING A HAMMER
On a certain bold crag that juts far over a steep wooded mountain slope a red light was seen one moonless night in June. Sometimes it glowed intensely among the gray mists which hovered above the deep and sombre valley; sometimes it faded. Its life was the breath of the bellows, for a blacksmith's shop stands close beside the road that rambles along the brink of the mountain. Generally after sunset the forge is dark and silent. So when three small boys, approaching the log hut through the gloomy woods, heard the clink! clank! clink! clank! of the hammers, and the metallic echo among the cliffs, they stopped short in astonishment.
"Thar now!" exclaimed Abner Ryder desperately; "dad's at it fur true!"
"Mebbe he'll go away arter a while, Ab," suggested Jim Gryce, another of the small boys. "Then that'll gin us our chance."