"Yep, they's another," she repeated after him, with her dark eyes fixed on his face, as though she might be able to read what was passing in his mind, and in this way was prepared to hear his new disclosure.
Thad knew what his comrade meant to say. It was a big risk, but he believed it could be carried through. This girl was no ordinary creature; she had latent possibilities slumbering beneath the surface in her nature, that, as yet, had never been called upon to show themselves. Besides, the girl was grateful to them for what they had done.
"You haven't forgotten what happened here some years ago, Polly," Bob went on. "My father led a party of revenue men into these mountains, meaning to destroy the secret Stills. He never came back. Those who were with him said that he had been shot down in a fierce fight with the moonshiners; and that he had died almost instantly. You haven't forgotten that terrible time, Polly, have you?"
"I reckons not," she muttered, stirring uneasily.
"Well, somehow I never could get myself to believe that my father was really dead. I had one of the revenue men in my pay, and he used to write me every week or so. It was through him I first heard the rumor that the moonshiners were said to have a prisoner up at your father's Still, who was kept constantly under guard, and made to work. They even said he was a revenue man; and that it was a part of the moonshiners' revenge to make him help manufacture the mountain dew, so as to pay up for the quantities he had destroyed in his raids. You've heard more or less about this, too, haven't you, Polly?"
"Sure I has, Bob Quail," replied the girl.
"Polly, somehow I just can't get it out of my head that this mysterious prisoner of the mountains might be my own father; that he was badly wounded, and not killed in that fight; that the moonshiners nursed him back to health; and ever since he's been kept under guard. Do you know if that is so? I ask you to tell me, because it would mean a great deal to me, and to my poor mother at home in the North."
"I jest can't say as to thet," she answered, soberly; "I done hears a heap 'bout some man as they has kep' a long time up thar, adoin' of the chores, an' never without a gun clost to his head; but I ain't never seed him. I gives ye my word on thet, Bob Quail."
