sly absent from his ordinary talk.

"You take advantage of your weakness, like any cur," he wound up.

"And you of your strength--like the young bully you are!" I retorted.

"You do your best to make me one," he answered bitterly. "I try to stand
by you at all costs. I want to make amends to you, I want to prevent
a crime. Yet there you lie and set your face against a compromise; and
there you lie and taunt me with the thing that's gall and wormwood to me
already. I know I gave you provocation. And I know I'm rightly served.
Why do you suppose I went into this accursed thing at all? Not for the
gold, my boy, but for the girl! So she won't look at me. And it serves
me right. But--I say--do you really think she loathes me, Cole?"

"I don't see how she can think much better of you than of the crime
in which you've had a hand," was my reply, made, however, with as much
kindness as I could summon. "The word I used was spoken in anger," said
I; for his had disappeared; and he looked such a miserable, handsome dog
as he stood there hanging his guilty head--in the room, I fancied, where
he once had lain as a pretty, innocent child.

"Cole," said he, "I'd give twice my share of the damned stuff never to
have put my hand to the plough; but go back I can't; so there's an end
of it."

"I don't see it," said I. "You say you didn't go in for the gold? Then
give up your share; the others'll jump at it; and Eva won't think the
worse of you, at any rate."

"But what's to become of her if I drop out?

"You and I will take her to her friends, or wherever she wants to go."

"No, no!" he cried. "I never yet deserted my pals, and I'm not going to
begin."

"I don't believe you ever before had such pals to desert," was my reply
to that. "Quite apart from my own share in the matter, it makes me
positively sick to see a fellow like you mixed up with such a crew in
such a game. Get out of it, man, get out of it while you can! Now's your
time. Get out of it, for God's sake!"

I sat up in my eagerness. I saw him waver. And for one instant a great
hope fluttered in my heart. But his teeth met. His face darkened. He
shook his head.

"That's the kind of rot that isn't worth talking, and you ought to know
it," said he. "When I begin a thing I go through with it, though it
lands me in hell, as this one will. I can't help that. It's too late to
go back. I'm going on and you're going with me, Cole, like a sensible
chap!"

I shook my head.