ly, intervened. "Damn you,
James don't be a boor," he said.

The boy picked up the ring and offered it to Mr. Lovel as he passed
through the door. He also gave him his hand.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The traveller spurred his horse into the driving rain, but he was
oblivious of the weather. When he came to Brampton he discovered to his
surprise that he had been sobbing. Except in liquor, he had not wept
since he was a child.

CHAPTER 12. IN THE DARK LAND

The fire was so cunningly laid that only on one side did it cast a glow,
and there the light was absorbed by a dark thicket of laurels. It was
built under an overhang of limestone so that the smoke in the moonlight
would be lost against the grey face of the rock. But, though the moon
was only two days past the full, there was no sign of it, for the rain
had come and the world was muffled in it. That morning the Kentucky
vales, as seen from the ridge where the camp lay, had been like a
furnace with the gold and scarlet of autumn, and the air had been heavy
with sweet October smells. Then the wind had suddenly shifted, the sky
had grown leaden, and in a queer dank chill the advance-guard of winter
had appeared--that winter which to men with hundreds of pathless miles
between them and their homes was like a venture into an uncharted
continent.

One of the three hunters slipped from his buffalo robe and dived into
the laurel thicket to replenish the fire from the stock of dry fuel. His
figure revealed itself fitfully in the firelight, a tall slim man with a
curious lightness of movement like a cat's. When he had done his work he
snuggled down in his skins in the glow, and his two companions shifted
their positions to be near him. The fire-tender was the leader of the
little party The light showed a face very dark with weather. He had
the appearance of wearing an untidy perruque, which was a tight-fitting
skin-cap with the pelt hanging behind. Below its fringe straggled a
selvedge of coarse black hair. But his eyes were blue and very bright,
and his eyebrows and lashes were flaxen, and the contrast of light and
dark had the effect of something peculiarly bold and masterful. Of the
others one was clearly his brother, heavier in build, but with the same
eyes and the same hard pointed chin and lean jaws. The third man was
shorter and broader, and wore a newer hunting shirt than his fellows and
a broad belt of wool and leather.

This last stretche