pec' Quintana? Yes? Alors!"

Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree.
Quintana's nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung, dangling.

"What you do by that pond-hole? Eh? I come and touch you, and, my God!
-- one would think I have stab you. Such an ass!"

The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmer tide
stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at
Quintana.

"Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter.

At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis.
Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth
to mask any twitching.

"Where's my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana.

"Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes
switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree
behind Quintana.

"Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently.

"He got bogged."

"Bogged? What is that, then?"

"He got into a sink-hole."

"What!"

"That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was
travellin' hell-bent to meet up with you, -- Jake, he was for a short
cut to Drowned Valley, -- but 'no,' sez I, sink-holes into the
woods----'"

"What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed
features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?"

"I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now
shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon
him: "I heard Jake give a holler. `What the hell's the trouble?' I
yells. Then he lets out a beller, `Save me!' he screeches, `I'm into a
sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I did,
-- there she stands against that birch sapling! -- and I run down into
them there pitcher-plants.

"`Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a
kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud.

"Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The
water was a-shakin' all over but Jake he had went down plum out o'
sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick
and scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise,
an' grabbed me -- God! -- I guess you'd jump, too."

Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to
look at him. Like most liars he realised the advisability of looking
his victim straight in the eyes.