Before the stranger came with his unusual hissing machinery or pumps, and his more unusual something that was produced apparently from water, or air, or just nothing at all, it had been used in other ways. He remembered hearing Cousin Bill say it had been a sawmill, that logs had been floated down to it in the spring when the water was high. But now there were no more logs and no sawmill.

Johnny’s eyes strayed through the open door and up to the crest of the rocky ridge known as Stone Mountain. “Worth exploring,” he told himself. “Caves up there I’ve heard,—and bears. Sometimes the natives hunt them. Boy! Fellow’d have to watch out!” Johnny heaved a sigh of contentment. He loved these slow-going mountain people, loved the mountains as well. In the spring when all the little streams, and the big ones too, went rushing and roaring by, when the birds sang to the tune of those rushing waters and white dogwood blossoms lay like snow banks against the hills, that was wonderful!

In the autumn when leaves turned to red and gold, when chestnut burs were opening and the coon hunter’s dogs bayed from the hills, that was grand too.

Yes, Johnny liked it all. But this mystery of the old mill promised to make his stay doubly interesting. “Just think of an old man coming down into these hills and setting up a mill for creating something of real value out of water and air,” he murmured. “Gold from the sky, almost. But I’m going to find out about it.”

Once again his thoughts swung back to mountain scenes. His cousin Bill, who was a young man with a family, had moved down here and set up a small store. Bill was doing very well. Johnny was always welcome. He clerked in the store, made trips like this to the mill and helped in every way he could.

“Somebody told me there was a cave up there along the ridge,” he said to Ballard, as the boy came shuffling back into the mill room.

“Yep. There is. Regular good one!” he answered. “Lot of these white icicles in it. Look like icicles but not really icicles you know.”

“Stalactites and stalagmites,” Johnny suggested.

“That what you call ’em?” Ballard stared. “Looks like there might be an easier name to say. But they’re there anyway. Want to go up there? Don’t have to go back right away do you? I’ll be through in less than an hour. Then we’ll go up.”

“We—ll,” Johnny reflected for a moment. “Just so I get back by early candle light. I guess it will be all right.” Just at that moment had there been any mountain imps about, and if there were such creatures as imps, we might imagine one whispering to Johnny: “As if you’d ever get back by early candle light!” But there are no imps, so there was no whisper.

As Johnny stood there a feeling of uneasiness, not to say of guilt, crept over him. At first he was at a loss to know what it was all about. Then, like a sudden bang from a squirrel hunter’s gun, it came to him.

“Ran away!” he exclaimed in an undertone. “Ran away. That’s what I did.”

Yes, that was just what he had done. The call of the Cumberlands had been too much for him. The whisper of breezes among the hilltops, the chatter of squirrels in the chestnut trees, the gleam of water in deep pools where sly old black bass lurk, had been too strong for him. He had run away.

Run away from what? The strangest thing! Not from his home. Johnny had no home except the home of his grandfather at old Hillcrest. There he was free to come and go as he chose. He had not run away from his job either, at present he had no job. He had run away from a promise.

In Hillcrest, the little home city of his grandfather, there was a college, not a large college, but a very fine one. The students were a sturdy hard-working lot, the professors wise and friendly.

No, Johnny had not promised to attend college. “College is fine for some people,” Johnny had said. “Fine for a lot of fellows, but not for me. Imagine me sitting still for a whole hour listening to a lecture on Plato or the fifth nerve of a frog. Some people are born for action. That’s me. I can’t sit still.”

Action. Yes, that was the word, and it was action Johnny had promised. He had told Coach Dizney that he would get out and scout around among the nearby small cities for good football material. The coach had a good team—almost. He was short two or three good players. More than all else he needed a left half-back. Johnny had promised to find him that particular player.

“And I failed!” Johnny groaned.

So he had. Johnny did not play football. He was handicapped by a bad knee that doubled up under him as soon as he ran fifty yards. But Johnny knew a good player when he saw one. Johnny was a lightweight boxer of no mean reputation. He could put a man through a series of action that told him very quickly what he would be worth behind the line of scrimmage. Even Coach Dizney admitted that it was uncanny the way Johnny picked them. He had sent Johnny out to scout, then had hurried away for a vacation in the north woods. Johnny had scouted faithfully for two weeks with no results worthy of mention. Then the call of the mountains had got him.

“I failed him,” he groaned. “Failed the good old coach.”

He was full of self reproach but the lure of the hills held him. Oh well, there were still two full weeks before college opened. He’d have a breathing spell here in the Cumberlands. Then he’d go back and pick ’em. Oh! Wouldn’t he though?

A half hour later all guilty thoughts were banished by Ballard’s cheerful drawl: “All right now, we can go. Buck Howard’s here. He’ll tend the mill. Your corn will all be ground by the time we get back.” These mountain mills, like the mills of the gods, grind slow but they grind exceeding fine. Cousin Bill made a nice profit by trading “brought on” groceries, sugar, baking-powder, and spices for corn. He had the corn ground at this mill then shipped it out to special customers who liked this fine ground corn meal.

“Here’s little Bex Brice,” Ballard said. “He wants to go along. Real name’s Bexter, but we call him Bex. Old as I am, Bex is, but you forgot to grow, didn’t you Bex?”

The short, sturdy-looking, freckled faced boy grinned and said, “I reckon.” Then they were away.

“I suppose you know every rock up here,” said Johnny, as they went scrambling up and up, over an all but perpendicular trail.

“Mebby I do,” Ballard admitted. “But Bex knows ’em better. He’s a regular mountain goat, Bex is.”

“Saw a bear up here day before yesterday,” Bex put in eagerly. “Regular big one. Scared me half to death.”

“Sure nuf?” Ballard paused to stare. “Must have come over the mountains.”

Without quite forgetting the bear, they struggled on up the rocky slope. Johnny was thinking, “Suppose we get back into the cave and the bear comes after us?” He did not quite know the answer to this. To ask, however, might be showing what these folks called “the white feather,” so he did not ask.

Instead he began wondering again what that old man could produce down there beneath the mill, out of water and air. “He takes nothing down but brings something up.” Here indeed was a puzzler. “If he took some of the corn down there you might think he was making moonshine whisky,” he told himself. “And—and perhaps he does when Ballard is asleep. And yet—”

Someone had told him that this old man, Malcomb MacQueen, had a noble character, that he had helped bring well educated teachers down to