Inquiry developed the fact that the boundaries of Nate’s land did not include the salt lick, and his talents as an obstructer were not called into play.  The professor was free to dig as he chose for the antique bones he sought, and many a long day did he and Birt spend in this sequestered spot, with the great crags towering above and the darkling vistas of the ravine on either hand.  There was a long stretch of sunny weather, and somehow that shifting purple haze accented all its languorous lustres.  It seemed a vague sort of poetry a-loose in the air, and color had license.  The law which decreed that a leaf should be green was a dead letter.  How gallantly red and yellow they flared; and others, how tenderly pink, and gray, and purplish of hue!  What poly-tinted fancies underfoot in the moss!  Strange visitants came from the north.  Flocks of birds, southward bound, skimmed these alien skies.  Sometimes they alighted on the tree-tops or along the banks of the torrent, chattering in great excitement, commenting mightily on the country.

Birt had never been so light-hearted as during these days.  The cessation of anxiety was itself a sort of happiness.  The long, hard ordeal to which the truth had subjected him had ended triumphantly.

“Mighty onexpected things happen in this worl’,” he said, reflectively.  “It ’pears powerful cur’ous to me, arter all ez hev come an’ gone, ez I ain’t no loser by that thar gold mine down the ravine.”

He himself was surprised that he did not rejoice in Nate’s mortification and defeat.  But somehow he had struck a moral equilibrium; in mastering his anger and thirst for revenge, he had gained a stronger control of all the more unworthy impulses of his nature.

Meantime there was woe at the tanyard.  Jube Perkins had been anxious to have Birt resume his old place on the old terms.  The professor, however, would not release the boy from his engagement.  It seemed that this man of science could deduce subtle distinctions of character in the mere wielding of a spade.  He had never seen, he said, any one dig so conscientiously and so intelligently as Birt.  The tanner suddenly found that conscience might prove a factor even in so simple a matter as driving the old mule around the bark-mill.  The boy who had taken Birt’s place was a sullen, intractable fellow, and brutal.  When he yelled and swore and plied the lash, the old mule would occasionally back his ears.  The climax came one day when the rash boy kicked the animal.  Now this reminded the mild-mannered old mule of his own youthful prowess as a kicker.  He revived his reputation.  He seemed to stand on his fore-legs and his muzzle, while his hind-legs played havoc behind him.  The terrified boy dared not come near him.  The bark-mill itself was endangered.  Jube Perkins had not done so much work for a twelvemonth as in his efforts to keep the boy, the mule, and the bark-mill going together.