see, they say, the hills around about here are all full of moonshiners
and they believe the coming of the railroad will bring with it law and
order and that when that comes, of course, their living will be gone."

"Moonshiners?" said Barbara. "Pray, what are moonshiners?"

Her father grimly smiled again. He knew that she knew quite as well what
moonshiners were as any person in the group, but her affected ignorance
of rough things and rough men amused him.

"Distillers of corn whisky who refuse to pay their taxes to the
government," the youth replied. "The revenue officials have had dreadful
times with them, here in the Cumberland, for years. Sometimes they have
really bloody battles with them, when they try to make a raid."

"How terrible!" said Barbara, and shuddered carefully. She looked again
at Lorey, who, conscious that he was the subject of their conversation
and resentful of it, stared back boldly and defiantly. "And do you think
that he--that very young man there--can possibly have ever actually
_killed_ a man?"

The engineer laughed heartily. "That he may _possibly_ have killed a
man," said he, "there is no doubt. I don't know that he has, however,
and it is most improbable. I don't even know that he's a moonshiner."

Among the others who had left the train, which, now, had been switched
off to a crude side-track, the cars left there and the locomotive
started at the handling of dirt-dump-cars, were two tall, sunburned
strangers, whom Miss Alathea, who had noted them as she did everyone,
had classed as engineers or surveyors, but who had not, when they had