ed a new one-hundred-dollar bill.

That night Bergstein put up at the best hotel in Troy.

* * * * *

Three days after Bergstein's departure Holcomb sat in his cabin going
over his accounts. When it grew dark he lighted his kerosene lamp and
drew a chair beside his desk. As he bent over and unlaced his shoes
the sash of the square cabin window in front of him was raised
cautiously and four bony fingers slipped in and gripped the sill. As
he sprang to his feet the gaunt face of a man rose slowly above the
window sill and a pair of brilliant, cavernous eyes, framed in a shock
of unkempt beard and sandy hair, stared into his own.

It was Bob Dinsmore--the hide-out. The next instant Holcomb was out of
his boots and had raised the sash with a whispered welcome. With the
quickness of a cornered cat Dinsmore was inside.

"It's took me most a week to git this chance to see ye, Billy,"
the hide-out began in a faint, husky voice weakened by exposure.
He glanced about him nervously, his thin body shivering under the
patchwork of skins and threadbare rags that covered him. Holcomb,
without a word, crossed to the cupboard.

"Eat, Bob," he said, putting a dish of cold meat and beans and
another bottle on the table. For the space of a quarter of an hour the
hide-out ate hurriedly in silence, his food and drink guarded between
his soaked forearms like an animal fearful lest its prey be stolen.
Holcomb watched him the while with now and then a friendly word. When
he had finished eating, the cavernous eyes looked up gratefully.

"I dasn't risk it until to-night, Billy," he resumed. "When I seen
that skunk Bergstein leave I thought I'd let ye know." He leaned
forward, one hand fumbling under the rags. "That's what I found," he
said in a whisper, as he drew out a piece of twisted paper. "I had
hard work to get it," he added, carefully untwisting the fragment and
disclosing a teaspoonful of whitish powder. "It may be pizon and
it mayn't--I ain't tried it on nothin' yet, but he was so all-fired
perticler in hidin' it I thought I'd bring it along."

"Where did you find it?"

"Under that hell-hound's mattress. He's got more of it in a blue box.
Thar warn't nobody seen me. Damn him!"--he muttered--"it was him that
told the sheriff last month down to Leetle Moose that he seen me cross
his trail. I'd crep' down to see my leetle gal, and he stepped 'most
on top of us. We weren't more 'n forty rod this side