For a long time Black John sat there, sometimes muttering, sometimes as silent as the rocks. Finally he lay down, with revolver in his hand, again to watch, as he had done the previous night.
For another hour Toby Sam remained as still as if he had frozen into position.
Black John’s wakefulness of the night before, and his lack of rest for so many hours, had told on him at last; and Toby Sam heard him snore.
The time for action had come.
With his cowardly heart knocking against his ribs, Toby Sam began a stealthy movement toward the sleeping man. Only his wild anxiety to possess those emeralds could thus have urged him on.
A mouse advancing could not have made less noise.
Within five minutes the deed was done; Toby Sam had felt over the body of the sleeping man, and had possessed himself of the buckskin bag that had bulged the inner pocket of Black John’s coat.
Black John awoke, with a snort, before Toby Sam had gone ten yards in his sly retreat. Perhaps some dim recognition of what had happened had come to disturb him. He rolled over, stretched out his arms, breathed heavily, and then sat up.
Toby Sam had become as silent as the very ground on which he lay, and his body seemed no more than a portion of it.
Black John did not at once discover the loss of the buckskin bag; but, being uneasy, he rose and walked away from the cave, swinging his revolver, and peering out along the slopes where the cloud-dimmed moonlight lay.