With such ideas Madge had been, to some extent, imbued. With feud
feeling she was quite in sympathy--had not she lost her loved ones
through its awful work? Could she ever have revenge on those who had
thus bereaved her through any means save similar assassination?

And certainly the revenuers were her enemies, for they were the foemen
of her friends. If this young man should be a revenuer she might have
done a harm incalculable by guiding him along the secret mountain byways
which they had been travelling.

Her heart was in her throat from worry, for an instant. Had she, whose
very soul was fiercely loyal to the mountains and their people, been the
one to show an enemy the way into their citadel? Had she, bound
especially to Joe Lorey, not only by the ties of lifelong friendship but
by that other comradeship which had grown out of mutual wrongs and
mutual hatred of Ben Lindsay (not dimmed, a whit, by the mere fact that,
terrified, he had, years ago fled from the mountains), done Joe the
greatest wrong of all by leading this fine stranger to the very
entrance of his hidden still? _Was_ he a revenuer in disguise?

The magnitude of her possible indiscretion filled her with alarm. That
crashing in the bushes back of them might have been made by some
associate of his, who had trailed them at a distance, ready to give
assistance, if needs be, or, in case all things went right and the
bolder man who had gone first and fallen into the great luck of an
acquaintance with her had no need of help, to corroborate his
observations, help him to scheme the way by which to make attack upon
the still when the time for it should come.