"Sure as you're sitting there!" cried Budd. "'Keep your eyes open, Percy, they're a bad lot.' That's what the corporal told him when he went on guard. Lord! but it was a pity!" He chuckled inanely, swaying on his feet.
"What then?" inquired the man from Charbridge, rising slowly.
Budd cowered before his questioner's eyes as he might have cowered when those long silent guns were booming had the tall young fellow turned.
"Nothing!" he muttered sullenly. "Nothing, so help me God! I didn't do it."
"You lie!" retorted the small man quietly.
Budd laughed a foolish laugh. "There's where we lay," he babbled, "just where your foot is, me and the Dutchman and the balance of us, and here was the door——"
He lurched toward the aspen tree and laid a hand upon its trunk to keep from falling. The professor followed and stood close behind.
"What do you want?" cried Budd, wheeling in sudden panic.
"To learn the manner of my brother's death," the other answered between lips that scarcely moved.
The voice of the pines was like the rumble of a railway train; the winds boomed down from timber line like thunders of artillery; the hailstones struck the aspens' leaves like bullets, and over all the laugh of Budd rang in maniacal mirth.