"I was about to give you an option," he resumed. "I think Laurance will second my guarantee of a lightening of the punishment the miners will hand out. My proposition, in brief, is this: Tell us what you know, what your game is, who is behind you, and what is their object–tell us this, I say, and you'll only be flogged instead of hanged."
Britton's meaning came out clear and sharp to the victim of drink. He shivered a little and pulled himself to his knees. There was a hint of supplication in the position, but this his captor ignored.
Laurance coughed apologetically, in expiation of his silence.
"You want to make sure of that?" he questioned.
"Yes," answered Rex. "I know Morris through and through. In my long battle in the courts I came to read the man like a book. I can sense his subtleties and under-purposes. I learned to do that, Jim, in the hardest school of the world–the law-courts. I am almost certain that he is in league, or worse–in bondage. Shall we guarantee him this?"
Laurance consulted his pipe for a long minute. Then he flashed up his eyes in acquiescence.
"Go ahead!" he grunted. "I guess we can make it even with Anderson."
Britton confronted Morris once more, and drove his words home with sledgehammer effect.
"Take your choice!" he said. "Keep silent and hang–you know they'll do it at Ainslie's–or speak and get off with a flogging. Which? And be quick! We want to sleep here. Half the night has already gone."
Morris, the derelict, instinctively felt himself on the edge of things. His wits were not yet so liquor-dulled but that he could see the fate awaiting him at the camp. He knew the stern code of the North–rough but effective. Fortune had played him a miserable turn, and, if he did not catch at the proffered hope, she would sing his death-knell, rollicking heartlessly.