XX.

Baintree lifted his sleek black head for a moment, and covertly surveyed his fireside companion, whose eyes were fixed meditatively on the coals. There was an expression of acute though surprised comprehension in the face of the crafty mountaineer; his elevated eyebrows, keen, quick glance, and thin pursed lips betokened much deft and agile deduction and analysis, although none of these swift processes were indicated in the reflective mien into which he had relapsed before Rathburn’s attention once more reverted to him.

“Marcelly air pritty enough,” he said, still spreading his thin fingers to the blaze. “Thar ain’t no two ways ’bout’n that. I reckon a man mought take a righteous oath ez thar ain’t sech another lookin’ gal in the Newnited States—but she ain’t like them young citified Glaston gals, what walks with par’sols,—in no wise like them ez walks with par’sols,” he repeated the phrase with relish of its aptness, for to him it expressed the totality of the status. “An’ she don’t know none of the things they know. Why shucks! even the men-folks in the mountings air a thousand million o’ miles away behind the times. I fund that out through jes’ goin’ ter jail in a sure-enough town. I reckon they would fall down stunned ef they war ter see a three-story house. I’ll be bound they would be plumb afeard ter go inside o’ one, thinkin’ bein’ so high it mought fall in onto ’em an’ mash ’em tee-totally!” He looked up half laughing, half sneering at the thought of his compatriots’ ignorance, and Rathburn’s face wore a responsive gleam,—Jake Baintree’s attitude of superiority expressed so definitely how relative a thing is sophistication!

“The folks in the mountings don’t know nuthin’ sca’cely,” he went on, evidently bitten by that tarantula of decrying the home-keeping things which besets more learned travelers in wider circuits. “But they won’t b’lieve that, though. Why, even me—I useter think thar warn’t no kentry but Tennessee, an’ No’th Carliny, an’ Georgy, an’ sech. It liked ter hev knocked me down whenst that man ez war my cell-mate in Glaston—ye ’member, he hed a chronic mis’ry in his throat—an’ bless the Lord, he showed me Ashy an’ Africky an’ Europe on a map he hed, an’ I couldn’t sleep none that night—the news liked ter hev tuk my breath away!”

He reached behind the chair to the wood-pile, lifted a great log split in half, and flung it on the fire, which sent up a myriad of sparks and a cloud of smoke, and then seemed to dwindle in discouragement for a season, only now and then emitting a timorous blue or yellow flame to coil like a thong around the bulk of the wood, disappearing the next moment in the slowly ascending gray wreaths that had usurped the place of the dancing blazes. The room had grown very nearly dark. Rathburn could ill distinguish the crouching figure, with its elbows on its knees, seated in the rickety chair on the opposite side of the hearth. It seemed lighter without than within. He could see through the rift in the batten shutter a section of the deeply purple sky athwart which the leafless twigs of a bough near at hand moved fitfully, fretted by the wind. Once in their midst a great white star shone, pulsating in some splendid ecstasy, and then the clouds surged over it anew. The lash-like blaze sprang out once more about the log, and he caught Baintree’s eye, still illumined with a jeering laugh, and a twinkling appreciation of the incongruity between his present fully-posted estate and his former ignorance.

“Did ye see Eli?” he demanded presently.

Rathburn nodded.

“Hev he got sensible agin?” asked Baintree, remembering the constable’s delirious condition when they visited the house together.

“He talked very sensibly indeed, this evening,” the physician replied evasively, the professional punctilio instantly on the alert, “especially about lynchers and law-breakers generally—sound views.”

Baintree became suddenly rigid.

“Ye warn’t fool enough,” he said, sitting stiffly upright, “ter go tellin’ Eli Strobe, the off’cer o’ the law, ’bout’n them men _by name_—they’d hang ye fur a informer, ef they hed nuthin’ else agin ye, ef enny of ’em fund it out.”

“_That_ for their slip-knots!” cried Rathburn, snapping his fingers and laughing in gay bravado. “I’m not in collusion with ’em, an’ I’ll do nothing to protect ’em. I’ll give ’em away every time!”

Baintree visibly winced at the mere idea of this defiance. He made no response for a moment, but looked doubtfully over his shoulder at the broken batten shutter. It shivered and shook as if in sympathy with his glance.

“The wind is harsh ter-night,” he said again.

“I’m through with this skulking and hiding,” said Rathburn, the superficial composure and friendly tone that he had maintained giving way suddenly. “I’ll say what I mean, and what I think, and what I feel. And I’m going to hire twenty—fifty hands—to sink shafts in both those gorges where the best indications are.”

Baintree had been startled by his sudden change of tone, and had listened with relaxing muscles and lips parted. A certain hardening took possession of his features as the final words fell on the air. A covert triumph, a definite appreciation of his own cleverness, shone in his eyes, incongruously enough with the mild tenor of his speech as he said, “Waal, Eugene, I wish ye well—I wish ye well! Ye an’ me hev been mighty frien’ly tergether an’ I hev enjyed yer comp’ny.”

Rathburn, tilted back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, looked, with curling lip and sarcastic, glowing eye, the sneering protest that it was futile to speak. Since he had been so free with his company he could not logically quarrel with Baintree for presuming to find it agreeable.

“I be sorry ye hev got tired o’ me. I ain’t ez school-larned ez ye, though I ain’t like a ignorant mountaineer, nuther. I hev larned some in books, an’ I be one o’ them ez kin larn out’n ’em, too. Thar’s a heap o’ things I know—through jes’ bein’ knowin’.” His look was the very essence of boastful slyness as he cast his eyes up obliquely at the flushing face of the young townsman. He had his elbows once more on his knees, and his chin in his long bony hand, and his drawl was not as distinct, thus hampered, as it might have been. “Eli Strobe hev been ter Glaston time I war tried, likewise Teck Jepson. They never larnt thar what I larned ’bout town ways; they never seen thar what I seen! Though Teck Jepson hev got sech a survigrous vision ez he kin view the prophets o’ the Lord lopin’ around the Big Smoky Mountings!—when the men never war out’n Ashy in all thar born days, ’ceptin’ they hed a sorter stampin’-ground o’ captivity in Egypt.” He gave the self-flattering laugh of conscious cleverness, and then went on with that manner compounded of mock-humility and fraternal familiarity which had become so offensive to Rathburn. “But I ain’t ekal ter sech ez you-uns, Eugene, an’ I don’t wonder none ef ye hev in an’ about hed enough o’ me. I don’t wish ye nuthin’ but well. Mebbe ye mought hire some o’ them men ez war along o’ Teck Jepson at the blacksmith’s barn ter-night ter kem an’ dig an’ sink shafts.” He rubbed his chin in pretended cogitation upon ways and means. “Folks in Brumsaidge ain’t gin over ter diggin’ much—seems ez ef it in an’ about kills ’em ter hev ter scratch the top o’ the ground enough with thar shallow plowin’ ter put in the leetle bit o’ corn an’ sorghum an’ sech ter keep the life in ’em. But mebbe ef ye war ter hire ’em, they would be cured o’ thar dad-burned laziness, an’ would jes’ jump fur jye fur the pleasure o’ diggin’ down sixty or sebenty feet in the hard groun’. They would git used ter giant-powder an’ sech, too, arter a while—an’ wouldn’t ’low the Devil war in it.”

Eugene Rathburn was chewing the end of his mustache, now and then pausing with his white teeth set, and looking at Baintree with antagonistic eyes, his anger held in bounds only by the sense of being at a disadvantage, and the demoralizing effect of sustaining an unrequitable rebuff,—for Baintree’s sarcasm admitted of no successful retort. It was merely for the sake of going through the motions of self-confidence and asserting independence, that he said in an offhand way, “Oh, I meant laborers from Glaston—Irish ditchers; they are willing to dig, I fancy.”

Jake Baintree affected to receive this with solemn consideration. “Yes, sir! _They’d_ dig. Useter see a gang a-workin’ on that thar new railroad—whilst lookin’ out’n the jail winder.”

It seemed a wide and varied expression of the world and of life that that jail window had given upon, so much had the crafty observation been able to glean therefrom.

“_They’d_ ’stonish the mounting folks! Thar ain’t no sech dirt-slingers nowhar. But ’pears like ter me, Eugene, they mought be sorter expensive—ef—ef, ye know—it war ter turn out ez thar _warn’t_ silver in payin’ quantities. Ye know bes’, Eugene, what with yer book-larnin’, yer g’ology an’ sech, an’ yer leetle assayin’ consarns, but ez fur ez I kin jedge, ye air powerful welcome ter enny min’ral in them two gorges. I’m willin’ ter gin ye my sheer!” He had spoken gravely, but suddenly a glancing smile lighted up his eyes and curved his lips with so spontaneous an expression of malicious enjoyment that it seemed in his rare relish of the situation his will had lost control of his muscles. He instantly recovered himself, and although he noted the fact that Eugene Rathburn, quietly looking at him, had marked the dropping of the mask, he went on in the same mock-fraternal vein, “I dunno ez I be hopeful ’bout’n it, Eugene—but I wish ye well, I wish ye well, Eugene.”

Rathburn was holding his every muscle in a sedulous placidity. There was a conscious, intent, exacting calmness upon his face and in his voice.

“Baintree,” he said slowly, “I am glad I slept to-day. I am glad I have my nerves abnormally under my control. Otherwise I should kill you,—I should strike you dead where you are. No man under ordinary circumstances could resist the temptation.”

Baintree cast a searching glance upon him; then emboldened by his quiescent aspect, he sneered as he laughed.

“Then I’m glad, too, ye slept. Thanky kindly, sir! But I hain’t slept none. An’ I know ye wouldn’t ’low ez I war right perlite ef I war ter kill ye an’ take yer life, kase I hain’t hed my nap. _I’m_ glad, too; I never s’picioned afore how much interest I oughter take in yer sleepin’ sound an’ satisfactory.”

Rathburn felt the blood rush to his temples, and he heard his hurrying pulses beat surcharged with the impetus of rage. He did not stir. He still sat with his hands clasped behind his head, his chair tilted on the hind legs. He looked very trim, and sinewy, and lithe in his close-fitting blue flannel shirt and trousers, with the well-shaped high boots coming to the knee, in contrast with the long and lean Baintree, upon whose gaunt frame his ill-made brown jeans hung with many a crease and wrinkle. Beside the florid young physician, the jail-bird seemed to have no blood in his veins, so pallid was his clearly-cut face. As they steadfastly gazed at one another, the comparison might have interested a third party looking on in the firelight, now richly aglow once more; but they were alone in the vastness of the Great Smoky Mountains, the slope of this lofty dome inhabited by naught else save bear, or panther, or wolf. Only the mist peered in at the rift of the batten shutter, white-faced, and wild, and disheveled, fleeing forever before the ousting wind that made the timorous silent thing a vagrant. It seemed as if to escape the antagonistic element that it sought to enter the rift in the shutter, sending in a hesitating wreath, slow-stealing, pausing aghast in the glow of the fire, and disappearing in the instant.

As the two comrades faced each other it was hard to say which had the advantage, the clever man with the aid of culture, or the clever man so clever despite the lack of culture.

Baintree’s insidious sarcasms, with their ever-ready thrust, had acquired an edge from the attrition with his malicious mirth. And Rathburn found that his seriousness weighted his anger and, since he would not sanction its outburst, made his defense clumsy.

“I don’t understand you, Jake,” he said at last in a mollifying tone,—“to save my life I can’t understand you. You go fooling me along with a bait of rich float from month to month pretending to show me where you found it. And when I tell you that it is impossible that you could have found it here, and there, and elsewhere, because the formation proves you a liar, you make out all at once that you were mistaken, and we plod about, and you affect to recognize other landmarks, and so we have the whole tomfoolery over again. If you were half as smart as you think you are, you would realize that you can’t light hap-hazard on any similar rich spot—you have got to go where you found that piece of float, and follow it up or dig there.”

“Laws-a-massy, Eugene,” said Baintree, adopting in turn a more pacific tone, and holding out both empty hands with the palms upward as if to express a vacuity of unworthy intention, “don’t I try an’ try ter find the percise spot, an’ ef I fool ye don’t I fool myse’f too? ’Twar toler’ble long ago whenst I fund that rock, an’ the Big Smoky Mountings seem sorter roomy whenst ye take ter huntin’ fur one percise leetle yard medjure o’ groun’, whar a boy five year ago picked up a rock.”

Somehow as he became less acrid the temper of the other waxed stronger, feeling the opposition lessen. With this spirit encroaching upon his self-control Rathburn said suddenly, “I don’t believe one word of it. You know the spot well enough. You are afraid to go to it.”

Baintree, whose attitude remained unchanged, barely having had time to shift to a defiant sneer the deprecating earnest look he had worn, seemed petrified for one moment as he sat still holding out his hands, his laugh rigid on his startled face.

“’Fraid!” he echoed, glancing over his shoulder at the spectral mists that came in at the crevice in the shutter and paused at the sight of the fire, and shivered into invisibility. “’Fraid!”

Suddenly the rain came down on the roof with a thousand tentative touches upon the clapboards, as if to try their sonorous capacities, and elicit what element of melody so unpromising an instrument might add to the music of the storm. Through its iterative staccato beat might be heard the blended, unindividualized fall of the floods in the distance, a low, mellow resonance. A chill blast came in under the door. The chimney piped. The pallid mists were torn from the rift in the shutter, and one could see upon the black and limited space of darkness without certain fine gray palpitating lines of rain, close at hand, continuously shifting, but never ceasing nor breaking into drops.

“I believe,” continued Rathburn, “that the silver is at the spot where you ki—where that man Samuel Keale lost his life.” He did not fail to note that Baintree winced at the name. “And you are afraid to go there, and—ignorant fool that you are!—you think because silver is there, it is anywhere else, and if we dig hard enough we will find it _somewhere_ in the mountains.”

Baintree said nothing. He sat moistening his thin dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and looking at Rathburn with eyes small, bright, and with an expression that reminded him of the eyes of a rat in a trap, timorous, furtive, and bespeaking mercy that it did not hope to receive.

“Where is that cave? Tell me that,” urged Rathburn, all his eager desire for the hidden treasure goading him anew with the recollection of how long he had been forced to dally upon the verge of an opulent discovery.

“Where is that cave?” he demanded. He was fain to raise his voice to be heard above the din of the elements, and the commanding tones added to the sense of power that possessed him more and more as Baintree’s confidence collapsed. “I don’t ask you to tell me where the float was found—simply where is that cave?”

Still Baintree met his eye like a caged and helpless thing. He nevertheless had something in his power,—to be speechless; and as Rathburn perceived a resolution in his dumbness he persisted more vehemently.

“Tell me! Tell me! Then, if you won’t, Teck Jepson will be ready enough to tell me where he found the man’s coat and hat, and I suppose the cave can’t be far away in the gorge. I shall find it—I shall find it—I shall never cease to search until”—

As he spoke he caught a glint of triumph in Baintree’s eyes. He realized how far afield his hopes had carried him, that long and devious distances lay between the spot to which he might be guided and the spot he sought.

With a sudden savage cry and the agility of a panther he flung himself upon the man at the fireside and grappled at his throat.

“Tell me!” he ground out between his set teeth. “Tell me!”

A hoarse, half-strangled, intermittent scream for help filled the log-cabin, and penetrated to the stormy voids of the wilderness without. How vain! The heedless rain beat upon the roof. The unrecking wind passed by. They were alone in the lofty fastnesses of the mountains, and one was at the mercy of the other. Eugene Rathburn had never thought to put his knowledge of the mechanism of the human throat to such uses, but the mountaineer’s superior strength had enabled him only to rise and to writhe helplessly upon the verge of strangulation, under the scientific pressure of those fine and slender hands upon his bare throat, practically demonstrating how nearly a man may be choked and still live. For now and again their grasp relaxed, not to permit that hoarse, futile cry which twice and thrice ensued, but as the essential means of an answer to the question,—

“Tell me, where did you find it?”

Baintree, taken by surprise, his eyes starting out of his head, his face almost purple, both unnerved hands grasping Rathburn’s lifted arms, seemed in these intervals, in catching his breath, to regain a modicum of his faculties. He ceased his instinctive efforts to tear away the strong clutch at his throat. He swiftly passed his arms around the waist of his assailant, and with a sudden wrench sought to fling him to the floor. But the lithe Rathburn kept his feet, and the two went staggering together across the room; crashing over the chairs; dragging the saddle that lay on the floor under their clumsy, stumbling steps, the stirrup-irons clattering on the puncheons; now swaying this way and now that; overturning the table, with its scanty store of crockery breaking unheeded on the hearth-stone. The red firelight, sole witness of the strife, flickered bravely on the brown walls; the green wood, with the sap still in the fibres, sang a mellow elfin song, fine and faint, all unheard. Their shadows had lost the pacific habit of many evenings of fraternal communings when the silhouettes smoked many a pipe in Barmecidal fashion, and drank together in dumb show, and imitated their hilarious, genial, and hopeful gestures. Now, adopting their example anew, they reeled furiously after them as they went.

Baintree’s vise-like grip failed when the pressure on his throat was renewed; the strength of the convulsive struggle, in which all his unconscious physical forces were asserted, proved futile. There was a different expression in his bulging eyes—he was beginning to believe that the reply to the question was the price of his life. Perhaps Rathburn noticed and interpreted the sign of subduement. The pressure of the deft fingers relaxed again.

“Where did you find the float—tell me!” he reiterated.

“I never fund it,” Baintree gasped. The fingers tightened on his throat, then loosened, for he was about to speak again. “Sam’l Keale fund it.”

“Where—where?” demanded Rathburn, his teeth set hard and his breath fluttering.

“I dunno,” gasped the victim,—“he wouldn’t never tell me!”

“You killed him for that?” Rathburn asked swiftly—suddenly his fingers began to tremble. Had he too been tempted to this hideous crime through the lure of that bit of float? “What ever became of him?”

He asked this question less with the desire of response than with an instinctive effort to elude even to his own conscience the tracing of so repulsive a parallel. But Baintree could not divine his train of thought nor that aught had served to weaken that clutch upon his throat save the wish to facilitate reply. He was in momentary expectation of its renewal. He had yielded and yielded utterly.

“I never knowed,” he sputtered,—“ez the Lord air my witness I never knowed. He jes’ disappeared one day, an’ I traced his steps ter the mouth o’ a cave,—thar hed been a rain,—an’ I never seen him agin.”

“Was the cave where Jepson found his hat and coat?” Rathburn demanded.

“Naw!” exclaimed Baintree, his eyes growing suddenly intent with anger. “Naw! Ef I hed knowed at the trial ez Teck Jepson war a-goin’ ter find them old clothes in the gorge, an’ make sech a power o’ a ’miration over ’em arter ward at the baptizin’, I’d hev tole whar the cave war sure enough whenst they put me on the stand. An’ Teck Jepson wouldn’t hev liked that so mighty well, I reckon, kase all the kentry knowed ez him an’ Sam’l war at loggerheads.”

“Why?—what would Jepson have cared?” cried Rathburn.

It was only because of the revived interest of the moment that his muscles grew tense, but his grasp had the intimation of coercion to Baintree, who instantly responded, with a nod of the head,—

“Kase the cave’s on his land—in Teck Jepson’s woods. That’s why! An’ folks war powerful worked up an’ excited then, an’ mought hev s’picioned him.”

Rathburn’s hands fell from Baintree’s throat to his shoulders. “Jake,” he said, amazed, his voice bated with uncertainty and excitement, “why did you never tell this before, if you had no hand in Keale’s death?”

“What did I want ter tell fur? How’d I know what ter tell an’ what not ter tell? Nobody knowed how nuthin’ would strike the jury—not even the lawyer. An’ I ’lowed ef they fund Sam’l thar,”—he shivered a little at the suggestion,—“he’d hev looked turrible, mebbe, an’ hev hed his bones bruk—an’ that would hev made it all go harsher at the trial. Ev’rybody knowed he had been consortin’ with me, a-sarchin’ fur silver, an’ war seen las’ along o’ me. So I jes’ purtended I couldn’t find the spot agin, an’ the steps ez led ter the cave; it hed rained mo’, an’ the groun’ war washed up cornsider’ble. An’ they all ’lowed ’twar up in the gorge whar them clothes war fund. Whyn’t I tell, an’ whyn’t I tell?” he reiterated. “I be sorry now I hev tole what I hev tole.”

He cast his anxious eyes absently about the room with a harried, hunted look. Evidently the disclosure he had made was of paramount importance to him, and precluded for the moment consideration or realization of the coercion which had elicited it.

“That’s of no importance—you couldn’t be tried again for the same offense,” said Rathburn reassuringly.

“Waal—_that_ rule don’t hold good in Jedge Lynch’s court,” returned Baintree gloomily.

Rathburn walked away a few steps with his hands in his pockets. It was difficult to assume a casual air after the episode of the evening, but his efforts were aided by Baintree’s fixed attention upon the engrossing subject of Keale’s disappearance rather than his recent injuries.

He stopped short suddenly. “Thought you and he were scuffling and playing when he fell into the chasm?” He looked at Baintree with a revival of suspicion.

“I ’lowed that whenst I war confused an’ didn’t know what ter say,” replied Baintree. “We warn’t playin’ nor nuthin’. He lef’ me a-diggin’ in the gorge—an’ lef’ his hat an’ coat thar—an’ ’lowed he war a-goin’ ter a spot ter peck at the rocks a leetle furder down; an’ I waited an’ waited,—I waited a week fur him, whenst I fund his track ter the cave—’feard ter go home. He ain’t kem yit.”

Rathburn sank down into his chair beside the fire with a dazed, baffled sense of loss. He was trembling with excitement, and exhausted by the struggle. His eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the fire, and he panted heavily as he drew out his handkerchief and passed it over his forehead.

“Why didn’t you tell me before that it was he who found the float; that you didn’t know where in this big, thrice-accursed wilderness it came from?”

“Kase I war ’feard ye wouldn’t ’low ’twar wuth while ter sarch, then,” responded Baintree, with the promptitude of the instinct of self-defense. “I ’lowed ef Sam’l Keale, knowin’ the leetle he did ’bout min’ral, could find sech ez that, ye with _all_ yer book-larnin’ could. What’s the good o’ yer g’ology, an’ all yer other gear, ef ye can’t?”

“I can’t find silver if it isn’t in the rock,” returned Rathburn. This was not said in the tone of a retort. A gnawing sense of shame, a burning self-reproach, had the ascendancy in his consciousness,—even the vanishing prospects of wealth, diminishing gradually in the far perspective of probability, were secondary for the time. He could not justify his deed—he blushed for his motives. He felt in this cooler moment of reflection as if he had suffered some metamorphosis—some translation into another sordid entity, whose every impulse was followed by an anguish of remorse. He gazed down at his hands, still red and smarting with the strain to which he had subjected them, as if he could hardly endure to acknowledge them after the work which they had done for him so well and cleverly. His lids drooped a little as he looked up at Baintree, and he evasively glanced hastily away.

“Jake,” he said in an embarrassed and husky tone,—the mountaineer had seated himself opposite and was unwinding a large handkerchief which he had worn around his throat, the folds, as they fell, showing the bruised and swollen flesh,—“I am sorry I got to quarreling with you. I don’t know what in the world made me do it.”

Baintree paused in unrolling his neck-gear, and glanced keenly at the troubled and downcast face.

“I dunno what made ye do it, nuther. I be sorry, too. I hev got reason ter be. An’ if ye call it _quar’lin’_—it’s toler’ble survigrous quar’lin’, I will say.”

The flames in the chimney cowered as the wind swept down, and crouched like a beaten thing. The smoke puffed into the room. The gusts had a wild, insurgent, menacing note. The batten shutter rattled. The rain redoubled its force upon the roof. The place seemed infinitely solitary, and distant, and forlorn.

“I wish I had never heard of the silver. I wish I had let it alone,” said Rathburn, from out his moody reflections.

“That ain’t goin’ ter do ye no good,” declared Baintree suddenly. “Ye’ll go right back ter it, same ez a frog ter water. Them ez hanker arter it hev got the love of it rooted in ’em. Hey, Lord! I ’lowed wunst ez I hed enough o’ it. I ’lowed thar war a everlastin’ curse on it. Arter Sam’l Keale, he jes’ vamosed like he done, an’ they ’rested me, an’ I hed ter go ter jail an’ be tried fur my life—an’ paid everything I hed in the world, even my gun, an’ my pistol, ter the lawyer, fur defendin’ me—I ’lowed ’twar kase I hed hankered arter the silver ez the Lord hid away in the hills. An’ I didn’t keer no mo’ fur it then. Not even whenst ye kem ter physic me, an’ seen that piece o’ float I hed kerried jes’ by accident in my pocket. Not even whenst ye ’peared so streck of a heap, an’ kep’ sayin’ how rich,—how rich ’twar. Naw, sir! An’ whenst I kem home, I tuk cornsider’ble pains ter git religion. I ’lowed I warn’t goin’ ter gin the Lord no mo’ excuse fur goin’ back on me. I got religion an’ sot out ter save my soul. I hed hed enough o’ sarchin’ arter silver an’ hevin’ nuthin’ ter kem o’ it, so I hed sot out a-sarchin’ arter salvation. I wanted ter find suthin’ this time! I wanted ter be a prosperous saint o’ the Lord, an’ what with knowin’ how ter read an’ write, I mought git ’lected ter office some day, ef I stood well in the church. Couldn’t find salvation, nuther! This hyar Teck Jepson kem a-pouncin’ down on me at the very water’s aidge, whenst I war a-goin’ ter be baptized an’ wash my sins away, an’ git the right sperit ter lead my feet ter heaven, an’ he war a-totin’ Sam’l’s old gyarments what I hid ter be rid of ’em, an’ Pa’son renounced me. So now I hev got ter go ter hell—but hevin’ lived sech a life in Brumsaidge ez hev been my sheer, I reckon ’twon’t be sech a turr’ble change ez most folks find it.”

“Come, Jake, you don’t have to be baptized to go to heaven!” exclaimed Rathburn. He was looking at his fireside companion with an anxious commiseration upon his deprecatory, flushed face, despite the laugh that fluctuated over it.

But the rustic, however he may be awakened to a sense of his ignorance of mundane matters, stoutly maintains all the arrogations of a spiritual adept. The mountaineer sneered the theological proposition scornfully away.

“_Ye_ dunno nuthin’ ’bout’n it—I hev hearn _ye_ say things ez makes me ’low ye ain’t haffen a b’liever; ye ’pear ter sense religious things mighty porely! Ef ye read the Bible mo’, an’ yer g’ology an’ min’rology, ez ye call ’em, less, ye’d be mo’ able ter entertain the sperit, ef ye ever war ter hev a chance.”

As he shook his head drearily over the fire, the sombre reflections evoked by his review of his forlorn, distraught fate imprinted on his pallid, clear-cut face, his throat momentarily showing more definitely the marks of the fingers that had clutched it, his poverty, and its concomitant hopelessness, despite his native cleverness, expressed in his rough jeans clothes, and his broken boots, and his bent old hat, Rathburn’s heart smote him anew.

“Jake,” he said, an insistent inward monitor clamoring against him, “you don’t know how sorry I am that I was so—so harsh.” He adopted in his uncertainty a word that Baintree often used; it expressed for him many phases of the physical and temporal world. “You don’t know how badly I feel about it.”

“Waal,” said Baintree, carefully abstaining from any intimation of being appeased, although he made no definite sign of resentment. “I feel toler’ble bad myse’f.” He touched his throat with a gingerly gesture, as he rearranged his neck-gear. It appealed to Rathburn with all the power that the sight of physical injury, however slight, exerted upon him. He could without compunction have lacerated his fellow-creature’s sentiments, but for his cuticle he had a humane professional regard, and remorse found him an easy prey.

“I’d give a hundred dollars if I hadn’t done it,” he said.

“Waal—_I_ wouldn’t,” Baintree protested, with mock earnestness, “kase I never hed a hunderd dollars in all my life ter give,” he added dryly.

Rathburn turned aside, clearing his throat with a sound that was much like a stifled groan.

There was silence for some moments between them. The rain splashed ceaselessly into the gullies below the eaves. The roof leaked in more than one place, and now and then a solemn, intrusive series of drops fell upon the floor, with a deliberate iteration of chilly intimations. Once Rathburn thought he heard a wolf howl at no great distance, and then doubted if it were not the wind sounding a new and savage pipe.

He began to fancy that Baintree, relishing his contrition, was disposed to make the most of it, and give him as much to be sorry for as his capacity for repentance could accommodate. But he strove to banish this caviling mood, incongruous with the injury he had done, and the regret and humiliation that it had entailed. His perceptions, however, could not be denied the prominent lugubriousness of Baintree’s mien, albeit his mental faculties were interdicted any deductions therefrom.

Baintree’s voice had a latent reproach in its very tones as he resumed:—

“An’ then whenst I war a-tryin’ ter git over that backset—findin’ out thar warn’t no mo’ room fur me in heaven than thar war on yearth—up ye hed ter pop, like a devil out’n a bush, a-goin’ ter sarch in the mountings fur silver, sech ez that float ez I hed. An’ ye got me set ter honin’ an’ hankerin’ arter silver an’ sech—whenst I mought hev knowed ez Satan war in it, through Sam’ls takin’ off bein’ so durned cur’ous.” He rubbed his hands silently for a few minutes as he looked at the fire. “That war the reason I tuk ye ter Jepson’s old cabin ter bide a-fust—I ’lowed ye mought find sech float ’mongst them steep ledges an’ rocky slopes.”

Rathburn looked up at him with an alert and kindling eye. His sense of humiliation, his troubled conscience, were forgotten in an instant. “We never went near the cave!” he exclaimed. “That was where the fellow was going. That is where you tracked his steps, Jake.” He rose to his feet and leaned over and clapped his comrade on the shoulder. “We’ll find it yet. There’s the ore. We’ll explore the cave!”

The color had flared into his face; his lips curved hopefully under his yellow mustache; his hand stroked it with his wonted alert, confident gesture.

The mountaineer looked up at him with a face cadaverous in its extreme pallor and the elongation of all its traits. His remonstrant eyes had a presage of hopeless defeat in the midst of their anxious entreaty.

“_That_ won’t do, Eugene,” he said, in palpitating eagerness. “Laws-a-massy, boy, we can’t go rummagin’ round a dead man’s bones fur silver!”

He seemed to take note of the unmoved resolution in Rathburn’s expression. In his despair and fear he sought to assume a casual air of confidence which might impose upon his companion, however little root it had in fact.

“But shucks! ye wouldn’t _dare_ to go a meddlin’ round dead folks. _Ye_ know _ye_ be afeard o’ ’em!”

“_I?_” exclaimed Rathburn, glancing down at him with a bantering smile, “I?—afraid of dead men’s bones?”

Still looking up into his flushed, handsome, triumphant face, full of life, and light, and spirit, Baintree quailed. For did he not remember, so late though it was, his coadjutor’s profession? And had he not once seen, in the backroom of Rathburn’s office, a bleached white skull that the young physician considered a beautiful thing? The sight was renewed to Baintree’s recollection with the vivid dread of a nightmare. He felt a suffocating pressure upon his chest. A hoarse, wheezing, half-smothered unconscious cry broke from his lips.

“Why, Jake!” Rathburn began, in a cheerful, rallying, reassuring tone; but the mountaineer had started to his feet, and the impetuous torrent of words would not be stopped.

“Ye air puttin’ a rope round my neck! Ye—knowin’ the Brumsaidge boys like ye do! Ef they war ter find his bones—ye know, ye know what would happen! O God A’mighty!” He struck his long, lean hands together as he held them above his head. “An’ ye’d do it! Ye’d put a rope round my neck fur the bare chance, the bare chance o’ findin’ the silver! O Lord! I hev been gin over—plumb gin over! What ailed me,” he went on, in frantic self-reproach,—“what ailed me ter tell the true place, many a lie ez I hev tole? Even the Devil fursook me, never whispered me nare lie ter tell this time,—this time, when a lie would hev saved my life! What ailed me ter tell the place—the place”—

“Oh Jake, stop—_hush_!” exclaimed Rathburn, irritably.

“Oh, I never ’lowed ez ye’d sarch that spot—ez ye’d put me in danger—the man ez gin ye all the chance ye ever hed”—

“Mighty good chance!” sneered Rathburn, losing patience. “A piece of float that another fellow found, God knows where,—_stop_ that racket, Jake!”

“Stop!” cried the mountaineer, still clasping and unclasping his hands above his head as he moved convulsively about the floor. “Whyn’t ye ax that thar worm in the fire,”—he pointed his quivering hand at a wretched, writhing thing that the heat had summoned from its nest in the rotten heart of the log forth into the midst of the flames, to turn hither and thither in a futile frenzy until consumed,—“whyn’t ye ax that worm ter stop?”

“Go on, then, and have a fit,” said Rathburn coolly, “or work yourself into a fever.” He pointed to a small medicine-chest. “Shan’t cost you anything,—got that advantage over the worm.”

His ridicule and his assumption of indifference were salutary. Baintree paused, looking restlessly about for a moment, then he returned to the hearth, shoving his chair with his knee back into the corner where he had sat before. His fear was not allayed, however, nor his sense of injury assuaged.

“Oh, ye air a mighty aggervatin’ cuss, Eugene Rathburn!” he declared, lowering hopelessly at him across the hearth. “Ef I hed lived the life other men do, an’ hed hed my sheer o’ the good luck other folks gits, I’d hev too much sperit ter let ye kerry things like ye do. I’d kill ye afore I’d let ye harm me!”

“I ain’t going to harm you,” said Rathburn casually. He did not even remember his clutch on his comrade’s throat.

“Ef I hedn’t been through with jes’ what I hev been through with, ye wouldn’t treat me so. Ye wouldn’t dare treat another man—Teck Jepson, say—this-a-way.”

“Now I’m not afraid of Teck Jepson; you can bet high on that,” Rathburn protested, with a sudden flush. “You are such a fool, Jake, though you think yourself very smart indeed, that you make all sorts of mistakes, and you want me to make them, too. You ought never to have said that the man fell into a cave or chasm—for you don’t know it.” That continually recurrent doubt again crossed his mind, and he cast a quick, suspicious glance across the hearth at Baintree, whose trembling hands were spread out to the fire, his pallid face bearing that recent impress of a strong nervous shock, indescribable, but as unmistakable as the print of a blow. “You ought never to have hid his coat and hat,—and, by the way, the Broomsedge despot took no measures to punish you for that,—and I dare say if the man’s bones were found even now in a cave on _his_ land, people would like to know how _his_ cave came by them.”

Baintree looked up with a sudden flash of his former sly intelligence, then bent his brooding eyes once more on the fire.

“Especially,” Rathburn continued, after a pause, “as they were always on bad terms. You would be in a better position to stand such a discovery than Jepson, for the jury has said that you had nothing to do with his bones. What did Jepson quarrel with him about?”

Baintree never spoke of the victim of the catastrophe save with a bated voice and a strained, anxious expression, almost a contortion in its speculative keenness to detect the lack of confidence that was the usual sequence of his words.

“’Bout’n the way he treated his wife.”

“His wife?—thought he was a young fellow, a mere boy.”

“He war married young,—’bout twenty. Gal war young, too. They didn’t agree tergether. Some folks ’lowed he beat her, but Sam’l’s kin declared they jes’ fought tergether—her bein’ ez survigrous ez him. But Jepson went over thar one day whenst she hed her head tied up, ’lowin’ her husband hed busted it, an’ he gin Sam’l a turr’ble trouncin’. _He_ hed _his_ head tied up arter that.”

“I suppose she didn’t mourn her loss?” suggested Rathburn, with a jeering smile.

“Took on turr’ble a-fust, an’ married agin ’fore the year war out.”

“Glad to get rid of him, eh?”

“_He’d_ hev been mighty glad ter git rid o’ _her_. Useter ’low sometimes ez he’d run away from her ef he hed ennywhar ter run ter, an’ from Jepson, too. He war turr’ble ’feard o’ Jepson. He useter ’low sometimes ez he wisht he hed never kem from North Car’liny, whar he useter live an’ work in a silver mine. It gin out, though, an’ warn’t wuth nuthin’ ter its owners.”

“I wonder,” said Rathburn speculatively, “if that isn’t where he is right now.”

“Hedn’t been hearn on thar at the time o’ the trial,” said Baintree.

“Or else,” pursued Rathburn meditatively, “if in trouncing him, according to his royal prerogative, Jepson might not have overdone the chastisement, and stowed away the evidences of how justice had overborne mercy in that cave of his.”

Both would have liked to credit this, but Baintree shook his head.

“_I_ don’t believe Keale fell into any cave,” Rathburn presently resumed,—“a deft-footed mountaineer! He either went in there searching for silver, or he was put in there for some purpose, or he has run away from his matrimonial infelicity and the despot of Broomsedge Cove.”

He paused to kick the chunks of the logs together, between the stones that served as fire-dogs, for they were burnt out now save for their bulky and charred ends. The flames leaped up anew. The smoke had ceased to puff into the room, but its aroma, with the pungent fragrance of the wood, lingered in the air. The worm, in which Jake Baintree had descried a parallel of cruelly perplexed anguish, was gone, and the world was as if it had never been. The sinuous contortions of his fear and harassment continued with hardly more hope of ultimate rescue. Nevertheless, like the worm, he could but strive.

“Eugene,” he said, “let’s leave the cave alone. Su’thin’ dreadful will kem o’ it ef we go meddlin’ thar. Ye know ye don’t want ter put me in no danger wuss’n I be in now. Ye wouldn’t, now would ye?” in an unctuous, coaxing voice, and with an appealing look.

“Why, not for worlds, Jake, not for worlds!” exclaimed Rathburn heartily.

A sigh of relief was on the lips of the suspected man, a gleam of renewing life in his jaded eye. There had not yet been time to evolve doubt, suspicion, qualification, before Rathburn spoke again.

“Nothing that I am going to do can injure anybody. I was placed in far greater jeopardy by your concealments and mystery about the forge than ever you will be by anything I counsel or do.”

“Ye mean ye won’t go ter the cave?” said Baintree, his lips dry and moving with seeming difficulty.

“Now don’t be an ignoramus and a fool, Jake. Of course I shall look for more of the float about the cave. I believe that’s where the man found it. I should be a fit subject for the lunatic asylum if I didn’t search there, and that’s just what you are. No harm in the world can come of it. Why,” taking a bit of paper from his pocket and deftly rolling a cigarette,—“why, Jake,”—he spoke in answer to Baintree’s silent look,—“what would you have done if, some of those days when we were at Jepson’s house, I had stumbled on the mouth of that cave?”

He cocked the cigarette between his teeth, its tiny red tip brightly flaring, for the room was growing dull and dusky, and looked with an expression of good-natured argument at Baintree across the hearth.

The mountaineer’s ruminative eyes were fixed upon him. “I tuk good pains ye shouldn’t,” he admitted, in a tone, however, which implied that he had yielded the previous points of controversy. “I never guided ye in that d’rection.”

Rathburn took his cigarette from his mouth, emitted an airy wreath of smoke, and shook his head seriously from side to side. Then as he smoked on he said, “I have a very pretty quarrel with you, Jake. By your own confession, you have systematically deceived me for a matter of six months or more. You made me believe that _you_ had found the float, and of course knew where you found it, when you were only trying to get the benefit of such scientific knowledge as I had,—to discover mineral where there was no reason to believe it to be. If you were not so ignorant you wouldn’t have tried a foolish, hopeless dodge like that. You have made me work very hard at this wild-goose chase, digging, and tramping, and blacksmithing, and _you_ got me into a scrape that might have cost _me my_ life. Indeed, but for that timely warning that put me on my guard and made me behave like a man instead of a sheep-killing dog, I believe it _would_ have cost me my life.”

His face grew grave and conscious at the thought of Marcella. He sat silent for a moment or two, looking steadfastly at the fire and turning the cigarette delicately between his fingers.

“It is absurd, because you are afraid of this, and afraid of that, to ask me to give up the whole thing or to go and search where there are no indications, or very slight ones, as you had me do all summer, when you knew where the only chances lay. But I forgive you, and I’m not going to do anything that can possibly injure you.”

Baintree was sitting so still in the dusky gloom of the darkening cabin that he hardly seemed alive. With the brown color of his coat dimly suggested on the duller tones about him, he looked like an effigy of a man rudely fashioned from a root.

“What be ye a-goin’ ter do?” he demanded.

The lack of candor could hardly be urged against Eugene Rathburn among his many and conspicuous faults.

“I’m going to search that cave from end to end, if the good Lord spares me,” he asseverated. “That’s what I’m going to do. There’s nothing there that I shan’t find.”

His cigarette, so far spent it was, required some deft manipulation that it should not burn his fingers or lips and yet yield the last treasures of nicotian luxury that it contained. His attention was fixed upon it, and he lost the look with which Jake Baintree received this unequivocal statement. When he glanced up, the mountaineer had risen and was filling his pipe from some tobacco on the mantel-piece.

“Going to smoke?” asked Rathburn. “Well, good-night to you, for I’m going to turn in.”

He spread upon the floor a thick rug and a heavy blanket, placing one end over the saddle to serve as pillow, and as he lay before the dying fire he seemed to take scant heed of the vigil of the silent, watchful Baintree, still erect in his chair, and still smoking his pipe. Only once the young townsman stirred after he lay down. “How good the rain sounds on the roof,” he said drowsily. A few moments afterward he was doubtless asleep—a sound, dreamless slumber, the close counterfeit of death, motionless, silent, deep. Nevertheless Jake Baintree hardly felt sure of its genuineness until after he had arisen and arranged his own pallet with some unnecessary stir, that might have seemed an experiment to judge if the sleeper would rouse again on any slight provocation. Then he sat down once more and meditatively eyed the red embers, dwindling, still dwindling in the white and gray ashes.

The monotone of the rain still beat on the roof; he heard the wind from far away; the vague stir of the crumbling fire was distinguishable, although it might seem so fine and subtle a rustle would have been lost in the sound of aught else. The muffled figure on the floor was still discernible in the red glow; even the yellow hair showed in a dull gleam amidst the umber tones of the shadows. Jake Baintree’s eyes were upon it as with a careful hand he reached into a crevice of the jamb of the chimney and drew forth something that had a sudden steely glitter even in the semi-obscurity, and laid it cautiously on his knee.

He did not move for some time afterward, although in the increasing dusk his shadowy figure could hardly have been distinguished from the inanimate shadows about him. Presently his hands were moving softly to and fro with swift, industrial intentness.

Even the embers seemed to cling to life and yield it with the reluctance and vacillating struggle pathetically typical of the passing of human breath. Their sparkle, and verve, and flamboyant energies were all spent, but suddenly they sent forth an unexpected red glow, strong in the midst of the ashes, that was like the transitory revival in the last flickering moments of a doomed creature.

It irradiated Baintree’s wary bright eyes fixed abruptly upon it, as he sat in the corner. So sudden was its flare that he had not an instant to prepare for it, and a whisking feather in his hand still mechanically moved to and fro as he oiled a pistol, now and then dipping the tip of the quill into a tin vessel that stood on the jagged edge of the jamb beside him. He gazed with alert anxiety at the sleeping man upon the floor. The room was fully revealed in the melancholy red suffusion; Rathburn’s face was distinct with its far-away, unconscious expression. He did not stir; he saw naught of what he might have thought strange enough in the dead hour of the midnight,—Jake Baintree slipping cartridge after cartridge into the six chambers of Dr. Rathburn’s neglected revolver, not loaded before since he had come to the mountains in August.