ty
about his voice; the patience of a great grief was upon him, as he
argued away the gross suspicion.

"That settles it." Trenholme said this willingly enough.

"Yes, it settles it; for if there was a place where the earth was loose
I dug with my own hands down to the very rock, and neither man nor woman
lay under it."

Trenholme was affected; he again renounced his suspicion.

"And now I've told ye that," said Bates, "I'll tell ye something else,
for it's right ye should know that when the spring comes it'll not be in
my power to help ye with the logs--not if we should lose the flood and
have to let 'em lie till next year--for when the snow passes, I must be
on the hills seeking her." (He had put a brown, bony hand to shade his
eyes, and from out its shade he looked.) "There were many to help me
seek her alive; I'll take none wi' me when I go to give her burial."

The other saddened; The weary length and uncertainty of such a search,
and its dismal purpose, came to him.

"You've no assurance that she hasn't drowned herself in the lake here,"
he cried, remonstrating.

"But I have that; and as ye'll be naturally concerned at me leaving the
logs, I'll tell ye what it is, if ye'll give me your word as an honest
man that ye'll not repeat it at any time or place whatsoever."

He looked so like a man seeking courage to confess some secret sin that
Trenholme drew back.

"I'll not _tell_, but--"

Bates took no heed. "My aunt," he began, "had money laid by; she had ten
English sovereigns she liked to keep by her--women often do. There was
no one but me and Sissy knew where it was; and she took them with her.
By that I know she was making for the railway, and--" His voice grew
unsteady as he brought his hand down; there was a look of far-off vision
in his eyes, as though he saw the thing of which he spoke. "Ay, she's
lying now somewhere on the hills, where she would be beaten down by the
snow before she reached a road."

Trenholme was thinking of the sadness of it all, forgetting to wonder
even why he had been told not to repeat this last, when he found Bates
was regarding his silence with angry suspicion.

"It wasn't stealing," he said irritably; "she knew she might have them
if she wanted." It was as though he were giving a shuffling excuse for
some fault of his own and felt its weakness.

The young man, taken by surprise, said mechanically, "Would Miss Bates
have given them to her?" He had fallen into the habi