"Was it him as told you?" she inquired, amazed.
Joe did not answer her, but continued to face Holton and address him. "I believed you," he went on, "because I thought you couldn't a-knowed o' th' still except through him; but since he never told you, it air proof to me that you have been in these here mountings, sometime, afore." Strange suspicions were glittering from his hostile eyes as he faced the now thoroughly alarmed man who, a moment since, had been the blustering bully.
"I tell you I were never thar!" said Holton hurriedly.
"Then how did you know of th' cave an' the oak?" said Joe, accusingly. The glitter of suspicion in his eyes was growing brighter every second. "It's plain to me as how you've passed many a day thar in them mountings. Thar's somethin' bound up in yer past as has egged you on ag'in me. I wants to know what that thing is—I wants to know just who an' what ye air!"
"It's easy enough to show who Horace Holton is," the man said, blustering, but he was very ill at ease. "What do I care what you want?" And then he made a slip. "You can't bring no proof—" he began, but caught himself.
Madge had been watching him with new intentness. The excitement of the moment may have sharpened the girl's wits, or, possibly, its hint of peril may have brought to Holton's face some detail of expression, which, during recent weeks, had not before appeared upon it.
"But I kin," she said, slowly. "I war right in what I thought when I first saw you in th' mountings. I had seen your face afore!"
"Don't you dare say that!" cried Holton, stepping toward her angrily. The man who had been the accuser, was, strangely, now, quite plainly, half at bay.
"That look ag'in!" the girl said, studying his face. "That look war printed on my baby brain!"
"Silence, I say!" cried Holton, now badly frightened. He had not counted on this recognition.