under the pillow. He had evidently been stooping to
secure it when the assassin crept behind him and left him dead there, with
a knife sticking between his shoulders.

"The very knife you had to-day!" said Lyster, horror-stricken at the
sight.

The miner with the lamp turned and looked at her strangely, and his eyes
dropped from her face to her clasped hands, on which the ring of the
snakes glittered.

"Your knife?" he asked, and others, attracted by Mrs. Huzzard's scream,
stood around the doors and looked at her too.

She nodded her head, scarce understanding the significance of it, and
never taking her eyes from the dead man, whose face was yet hidden.

"He may not be dead," she said, at last. "Look!"

"Oh, he's dead, safe enough," and Emmons lifted his hand. "Was he trying
to rob you?"

"I--no--I don't know," she answered, vaguely.

Then another man turned the body over, and utter surprise was on every
face; for, though it was Akkomi's blanket, it was a much younger man who
lay there.

"A white man, by Heavens!" said the miner who had first entered. "A white
man, with brown paint on his face and hands! But, look here!" and he
pulled down the collar of the dead man's shirt, and showed a skin fair as
a child's.

"Something terribly crooked here," he continued. "Where is Overton?"

Overton! At the name her very heart grew cold within her. Had he not
threatened he would kill the man who visited her at night? Had he come
straight to the cabin after leaving her? Had he kept his word? Had he--

"I think Overton left camp after supper--started for the lake," answered
some one.

"Well, we'll do our best to get it straight without him, then. Some of you
see what time it is. This man has been dead about a half hour. Mr. Lyster,
you had better write down all about it; and, if any one here has any
information to give, let him have it."

His eyes were on the girl's face, but she said nothing, and he bent to
wipe off the stain from the dead man's face. Some one brought water, and
in a little while was revealed the decidedly handsome face of a man about
forty-five years old.

"Do any of you know him?" asked the miner, who, by circumstance, appeared
to have been given the office of speaker--"look--all of you."

One after another the men approached, but shook their heads; until an old
miner, gray-haired and weather-beaten, gave vent to a half-smothered oath
at sight of him.

"Know him?" he exclaimed. "Well, I do