ours; then spent an hour in pumping a dry well. Enoch
Grosket, has sent me on a fool's errand. Michael Rust knows too much to
trust that addle-headed fool.'

Having given vent to these observations, he deliberately buttoned up his
coat, and walked off.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

In a dark room into which even in the day-time the light struggled in such
scanty streams that a kind of twilight was the nearest approach that it
ever made to broad day, but which was now only lighted by a single candle,
that flared and dripped in the currents of air, as they eddied and whirled
about, seeking an escape, sat Tim Craig, and his comrade Bill Jones, the
men with Rust's interview with whom the reader is already acquainted. They
were sitting cheek by jowl on two wooden benches in front of a fire, which
they from time to time nourished with sticks from a heap of wood on the
hearth. The fire however would not burn, but kept smouldering and smoking,
now and then springing up into a fitful blaze, which threw a spectral air
over the room, peopling its dim recesses with all sorts of fantastic
forms, and then expired, leaving it more gloomy than ever. The appearance
of the men, their subdued, whispering voices and startled looks, showed
that at that particular time they were not altogether in a frame of mind
to resist the gloomy influence of the place. The dark, lonely room, with
its large shadowy corners and gaping seams, through which the wind sighed
and wailed, and the pattering of the rain as it swept heavily against the
side of the house and on the roof, all tended to add to the melancholy and
sombre tone of their feelings. Bill drew his bench to the fire, looked
suspiciously about him, and then, as if half ashamed of having done so,
said:

'It's a h-ll of a night! I don't know how it is, but I'm not in trim
to-night. Blow me, if the sight of that old fellow don't make one's blood
cold. I can't get warm; and this bloody fire keeps sputtering and smoking,
as if to spite one.'

Tim Craig, to whom this remark was addressed, turned and looked him
steadily in the face, without speaking; and then his eyes wandered about
the room, as if he were fearful of being watched or overheard, in what he
was going to say.

'Bill,' said he in a low voice, his thin lips quivering; but whether from
anger or any other emotion, was a matter of much doubt; 'd----d if I know
which way to leap! Enoch pulls one way and Rust another. Either of them
could send