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She nodded acquiescently, her expression once more abstracted, her thoughts far afield.

He had one moment of triumph as he brought himself tensely erect, shouldering his gun–his shadow behind him in the moonlight duplicated the gesture with a sharp promptness as at a word of command.

“All the mounting’s a-diggin’ by this time!” He laughed with ready scorn, then experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. Her face had changed. Her expression was unfamiliar. She had caught together the two ends of the broken thread, and was knotting them with a steady hand, and a look of composed security on her face, that was itself a flout to the inopportune search of the mountaineers and boded ill to his hope to discover from her the secret of the cache. He recovered himself suddenly.

“Ye ‘lowed ter me ez ye never keered nuthin’ fur that man, Renfrow,” he said with a plaintive appeal, far more powerful with her than scorn.

She looked up at him with candid reassuring eyes. “I never keered none fur him,” she protested. “He kem hyar all shot up, with the miners an’ mounting boys hot foot arter him–an’ we done what we could fur him. Gran’daddy ‘lowed ez he warn’t ‘spon-sible fur whut the owners done, or hedn’t done at the mine, an’ he seen no sense in shootin’ one man ter git even with another.”

“But ye kep’ his secret!” Kinnicutt persisted.

“What fur should I tell it–‘t ain’t mine?”

“That thar money in that box he buried ain’t his’n, nuther!” he argued.

There was an inscrutable look in her clear eyes. She had risen, and was standing in the moonlight opposite him. The shadows of the vines falling over her straight skirt left her face and hair the fairer in the silver glister.

“‘Pears like ter me,” he broke the silence with his plaintive cadence, “ez ye ought ter hev tole me. I ain’t keerin’ ter know ‘ceptin’ ye hev shet me out. It hev hurt my feelin’s powerful ter be treated that-a-way. Tell me now–or lemme go forever!”

She was suddenly trembling from head to foot. Pale she was always. Now she was ghastly. “Rufe Kinnicutt,” she said with the solemnity of an adjuration, “ye don’t keer fur sech ez this, fur nuthin‘. An’ I promised!”

He noted her agitation. He felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to wield his power, “Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made ter that man–or the word ye deny ter me! An’ when I’m gone–I’m gone!”

She stood seemingly irresolute.

“It’s nuthin’ ter me,” he protested once more. “I kin keep it an’ gyard it ez well ez you uns. But I won’t be shet out, an’ doubted, an’ denied, like ez ef I wan’t fitten ter be trested with nuthin’!”

He stood a moment longer, watching her trembling agitation, and feeling that tingling exasperation that might have preceded a blow.

“I’m goin’,” he threatened.

As she still stood motionless he turned away as if to make good his threat. He heard a vague stir among the leaves, and turning back he saw that the porch was vacant.

He had overshot the mark. In swift repentance he retraced his steps. He called her name. No response save the echoes. The house dogs, roused to a fresh excitement, were gathering about the door, barking in affected alarm, save one, to whom Kinnicutt was a stranger, that came, silent and ominous, dragging a block and chain from under the house. Kinnicutt heard the sudden drowsy plaints of the old rheumatic grandmother, as she was rudely awakened by the clamors, and presently a heavy footfall smote upon the puncheons that floored the porch. Old Byars himself, with his cracked voice and long gray hair, had left his pipe on the mantel-piece to investigate the disorder without.

“Hy’re Rufe!” he swung uneasily posed on his crutch stick in the doorway, and mechanically shaded his eyes with one hand, as from the sun, as he gazed dubiously at the young man, “hain’t ye in an’ about finished yer visit t–or yer visitation, ez the pa’son calls it He, he, he! Wall, Loralindy hev gone up steers ter the roof-room, an’ it’s about time ter bar up the doors. Waal, joy go with ye, he, he, he! Come off, Tige, ye Bose, hyar! Cur’ous I can’t ‘larn them dogs no manners.”