"What was that?"
"I didn't see anything."
Denby stumbled over the remains of the barricade. "That must have been what I saw," he said. "But at the moment I could have sworn it was a man dodging into the tunnel."
A few feet from the entrance Jeffard felt along the wall for the crevice, found it, and presently thrust the note-book into Denby's hands.
"You may remember that I told you I should leave my will here against a contingency which seemed altogether probable. In view of what has since passed between us, I sha'n't hold you to your promise to act as my executor; but if anything happens to me I shall be glad if you will send that book under seal to Dick Bartrow. You will do that much for me, won't you?"
"Yes."
"That is all; now I am at your service."
A few minutes later the cabin and the bit of dry sward in front of it were deserted, and the whispering firs had swallowed up the last faint echoes of minishing hoof-beats. Not until the silence was unbroken did the shadowy figure venture out of its hiding in the tunnel to stumble blindly down the dump, across the foot-log, and so to the cabin door. Here it went down on hands and knees to quarter the ground like a hungry animal in search of food. Unhappily, the simile is no simile. It was James Garvin, who, for the better part of two days, had not tasted food. And when finally the patient search was rewarded by the retrieval of a few scraps of bacon and pan-bread, the broken meats of Donald's supper-table, the starving fugitive fell upon them with a beastlike growl of triumph. But in the midst of the scanty feast he dropped the bread and meat to cover his face with his hands, rocking back and forth in his misery and sobbing like a child.
"Oh, my Gawd!—ef I hadn't hearn it out'n his own mouth ... and me a-lovin' him thess like he'd been blood-kin to me! Oh, my Gawd!"