"Mother," said he, after a while, when his wife came forward between the well-filled pails, "I don't believe in harnts burnin' houses, but thar must 'a' been some spirit information pre-ju-dicial to Hiram Kitchen that I never could git through my head. The last thing I did afore I rode off to preach Granny Taylor's funeral sermon was to go up on the hill yonder an' satisfy myself that everything was quiet around Hiram's. I never let on to the postmaster that there was any Yankee prisoners around, an' if he knew of hit, he kept hit to hisself. Hit certainly looks, mother, as if the spirits had a hand in hit, an' a bad business hit was."
"That's hit, Larkin, son," said Aunt Lucy, who leaned on her staff by the fence among the great purple cabbage-heads. "When there's mischief goin' on ye can depend on hit the harnts has a hand in hit. An' hit's a fair mountain, too," she continued, shading her eyes with her hand and gazing up at the wooded mass of Whiteside, behind which the sun was rising. "Hit's fair to view, an' innocent-appearin', but there's few has set foot on the top o' hit."
The mountain, which harbored no spirits other than the guileless souls of the three deluded soldiers, was indeed fair to look upon, towering above its fellows and above the sweet valley of Cashiers. A curtain of purple haze softened the rich greens of the forest which clothed the mountain on the valley side, and now, after the rain, white clouds of vapor were beginning to puff out as if huge concealed boilers were generating steam behind the trees.
CHAPTER XV
THE GOLDEN MILL
Three years have come and gone since the forge was built, and the three misguided patriots, still loyal to their vow and to the thirty-three stars on their dear old flag, are sitting together in the fair sunlight of a Sabbath morning on the steps of the golden mill. Tumbler the bear, very shaggy and faded as to his mangy coat, is sleeping comfortably on the dusty path that winds away to the house. Coleman's tawny and curly beard and the black hair on Bromley's face have grown long and thick, and the down which beforetime was on Philip's lip and chin now flares out from his neck and jaws like a weak red flame. Philip sits a little apart from the others, with the telescope in its leathern case strapped on his back, and there is a look of sadness in his face and in his wandering, downcast eyes.
Three years have wrought great changes in the plateau. The harvests have been abundant, and at a little distance from where the men sit purple grapes hang in great clusters from the vines which have been grown from cuttings of that solitary plant which overhung the branch on the July day when they first came down its bank with the captain of the troopers and Andy the guide.
The building of the mill has been a work of time, and it is not yet a month since Bromley emptied the first yellow grist into the flaring hopper. Two long years were spent in shaping the upper and the nether stones, and the new mill was rightly called "golden," for five thousand guineas from the mints of George the Fourth and good Queen Vic. were melted in the forge and beaten into straps and bolts and rings and bands for the wooden machinery. Gold glistens in the joints of the dripping-wheel, and gleams in the darkness at the bottom of the hopper, where the half of a priceless cavalry boot-leg distributes the corn between the grinding-stones. The hopper itself is rimmed with gold, and the circular wooden box, rough hewn, that covers the stones is bolted and belted with the metal elsewhere called precious; and from the half-roof of oak shingles to the slab floor, gold without stint enriches and solidifies the structure. It plates the handle and caps the top of the pole that shifts the water on to the wheel, and the half-door which shuts out Tumbler the bear swings on golden hinges and shuts with a golden hasp.
