The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.
Had they?
He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candlelight as if there were eyes behind them.
"Goddamn it!" he shouted, and turned the case over, dropping the spectacles to the stone floor. They shattered with a crack that sounded loud as a pistol shot. He stamped on them for good measure, crushing the glass to glittering splinters and twisting the frames out of shape under the sole of his boot.
He threw the case into a pile of rock shards. Valuable or not, he didn't want the damned thing anymore.
"I hope you're in Hell, Pierre!"
He didn't love Pierre. He hated him. He'd never loved him. He'd always hated him, ever since Fort Dearborn.
Holding the bit of candle high in his left hand, his rifle in his right, he started up the sloping tunnel. It was a long climb; the sacks of coins in the saddlebag on his back weighed him down.
He stopped at the gravel pile that blocked entry to this tunnel. He listened, and heard nothing but his blood hissing in his ears. He scraped chunks of stone away from the pile until he could crawl through.
After more walking and climbing through tunnels and shafts, he no longer had any notion how long it had been since he left his hideout. He saw ahead a little square of gray, in the center of the black all around him. And then he could make out the walls and floor of the tunnel. Moonlight or starlight must be illuminating the mine entrance. Night, then. Good, he could leave at once.