"And it goes through you, this damp cold," responded Lloyd. "It isn't like the dry cold at the entrance of the cave." Then to Lucia, "Did you notice how dusty it was there?"
"Well, say," exclaimed Frank, "have you seen enough of this?"
Lloyd submitted the question to Lucia, who assented with feverish eagerness. Then he shouted to Frank, "Suppose we get a move on us. I'm about fed up with this place."
As Frank retraced his way to rejoin the others, the precious lantern once more dangling from his arm, he pondered anxiously as to his next step. He knew, partly from the position of the group, and he thought that he could divine from the intonation of Lloyd's voice, that Lucia had not been able to exchange a word with him out of the hearing of the mountaineer. Hence, he was sure that Lloyd was still all unconscious of his danger, and thus cut off from his advice and co-operation, young Laniston felt peculiarly helpless, yet laden with responsibility. While in certain traits of his adolescence he represented a type of the callow undergraduate, he had an appreciation of his own inexperience and limitations that indeed did much to annul them, and rendered him almost as cautious as a man versed in the mutations of human affairs. He hardly knew what to do, and hence he was slow to act. He thought at one moment that he would call Lloyd aside and disclose the facts, thus bringing the matter to a crisis. But this, he reflected, might precipitate the lurking treachery, whatever deed it was that the man had in contemplation. At length he determined that, with the shifting of the personnel of the conference, he would call the mountaineer aside, thus giving Lucia one moment for her whispered confidence to Lloyd.
"Come here, my friend," Frank said, stopping short and looking straight at the guide and then down at the light, "Come and see what is the matter with this lantern."
His face, all thrown into high relief by the light shining upward upon it, placid, and smooth, and roseate, gave no intimation of the unrest in his mind, and even a suspicious man might easily have been caught by the lure.
But the saturnine mountaineer resisted stanchly. "Nuthin' the matter with it," he retorted. "But I tell you now, ef ye fool with that thar lantern an' git it out'n fix, you will be in hell fire a good spell 'fore yer time comes—that's whut!"
"Look out, man—bridle your words in the presence of this lydy—or I'll cut your tongue out," Lloyd spoke abruptly, with such sudden fierceness that the mountaineer started aside.
The stalwart Frank, knowing what he knew, could have fainted at this provocation to the lurking menace. With desperate eagerness he sought to re-establish such poor pretence of an entente cordiale as had heretofore existed. "Have patience with the speech of the country, Mr. Lloyd. The thoughts of a plain man are plainly expressed, hey, my friend?" he said jovially, clapping the guide on the shoulder.
It was but a momentary diversion, but in that restricted interval Lucia whispered to Lloyd, "He is the man who attacked you in the Ferris Wheel."