ppearance of the daughter was. Whatever had been his
fault, rough justice and superstitious fear had imposed on Bates a term
of solitary confinement and penal servitude which so far he had accepted
without explanation or complaint. He still expressed no satisfaction at
Trenholme's arrival that would have been a comment on his own hard case
and a confession of his need. Yet, on the whole, Trenholme's interest in
him would have been heightened rather than decreased by a nearer view of
his monotonous life and his dry reserve, had it not been that the man
was to the last degree contentious and difficult to deal with.

Taking for granted that Trenholme was of gentle extraction, he treated
him with the generosity of pride in the matter of rations; but he
assumed airs of a testy authority which were in exact proportion to his
own feeling of physical and social inferiority. Seen truly, there was a
pathos in this, for it was a weak man's way of trying to be manful but
his new labourer, could not be expected to see it in that light. Then,
too, on all impersonal subjects of conversation which arose, it was the
nature of Bates to contradict and argue; whereas Trenholme, who had
little capacity for reasonable argument, usually dealt with
contradiction as a pot of gunpowder deals with an intruding spark. As
regarded the personal subject of his own misfortune--a subject on which
Trenholme felt he had a certain right to receive confidence--Bates's
demeanour was like an iron mask.

Bates scorned the idea, which Turrif had always held, that Cameron had
never really died; he vowed, as before, that the box he had sent in
Saul's cart had contained nothing but a dead body; he would hear no
description of the old man who, it would seem, had usurped Cameron's
name; he repeated stolidly that Saul had put his charge into some
shallow grave in the forest, and hoaxed Trenholme, with the help of an
accomplice; and he did not scruple to hint that if Trenholme had not
been a coward he would have seized the culprit, and so obviated further
mystery and after difficulties. There was enough truth in this view of
the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme. But Bates did not seem
to cherish anger for that part of his trouble that had been caused by
this defect; rather he showed an annoying indifference to the whole
affair. He had done what he could to bury his late partner decently; he
neither expressed nor appeared to experience further emotion conce