Proximity to running water is the first requisite for ’shining, but the need of good cover runs it a close second. It was in hammock that Tim was most at home and there he would have preferred to locate the still. He had yielded to his partner’s dislike of crossing the swamp to get to water. The Georgian admitted they had been on the right side for comfort but the wrong for safety. He had last seen Tim at the edge of the swamp, about to cross, with Cooter close on his heels and Cooter’s henchman heading him off from the safe refuge of the hammock.

“He’s shore drowned or shot, one,” the boy lamented.

Tim’s wife said: “Give him ’til late evenin’ afore you raises up a fuss, lookin’ for him.”

At two o’clock in the afternoon Tim walked in.

He was scarcely recognizable. His face and hands were swollen out of shape. The Mongolian cast of his heavy-lidded eyes was accentuated, and he looked like a puffy scarlet Chinaman. He was soaked with sweat from his long walk. The front of his blue shirt and blue pin-check pants was stained with dark muck.

“Hi-yah!” he said and went to the water-bucket.

He drained the gourd dipper several times. He looked at the last empty bottom.

“I drinkt more water then,” he remarked, “than I’ve drinkt ary week.”

He picked up a slab of corn bread and a piece of white bacon from the remains on the table and sat down in a cowhide-bottomed chair by the clay fireplace. He looked around with interest to see who was present. He ignored all questions and remarks as he ate, concentratedly but without greed. When he had finished he opened the snuff-box on the pine mantel and rolled a generous pinch inside his lips. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. The two Cracker friends hitched closer and spat in the fireplace.

Tim nodded at us severally.

“I orter allus let my conscience be my guide,” he announced solemnly.

The Georgia boy fidgeted, scuffling his feet on the deerskin rug.

“Didn’t I say I was oneasy, yestiddy mornin’ afore we sets out for the still?”

The boy nodded.

“That was my conscience a-tellin’ me to lay low!

“We’d done set the mash that night and gone back to git us a piece o’ sleep,” he explained for the general benefit. “When I waiked up at crack o’ day I felt kind o’ froggy. Not scairt, jest froggy. And I says to myself, iffen I still feels that-a-way when we gits there, I ain’t goin’ to turn into no still.

“My conscience had tol’ me ’twa’n’t no place for a still. No trees around the water, jest a plumb naked pond.” He frowned sternly at his partner. “I’ve had me a ground-hog still like that one, in open country, but I’ve had me some watchment.”