oyer and assistant. What do you know that I do not? What do I
know that you do not?"

Like most fat and comfortable people Bryce was the soul of generosity,
and his offer was dictated not so much by expediency as by a sense of
the pity that he felt for this man, who seemed to have aged years in the
last few minutes. He, too, in his time had known what it meant to have
the prize within a hand's touch and then at the last moment lose it
after all.

"You know nothing about me," Cumshaw said impulsively. "You don't know
who I am or what I've been. You haven't an idea...."

Bryce cut him short with a sweeping gesture of his chubby hands. "My
dear man," he said, "what you've been doesn't matter a tinker's curse to
me. It's what you are that counts."

"You don't even know that," the other answered, his lips curling in a
wry smile.

"I'll know as soon as you tell me," Bryce hinted.

It is a difficult matter for a man, who all his life has held a close
secret, to divulge it at a moment's notice, in a sudden fit of warm
friendliness, to a comparative stranger, and so Abel Cumshaw found it.
It is even harder to surrender one's hopes and ambitions in favor of a
potential rival, honest and all as that rival may appear to be. For one
brief moment Cumshaw paused on the brink of revelation, the while he
weighed the matter in his mind. In some strange way Bryce had guessed
that he was after the gold, but did he know why and how? Cumshaw rather
fancied he didn't. He was so sure of it that he decided that he would
gain nothing by divulging the connection between himself and the late
Mr. Bradby. So the mouth which was opening to speak shut up again like a
steel trap, and the dark eyes turned bleak and cold. He looked Bryce
steadily and calmly in the face.

"There is nothing to tell," he said, and turned on his heel.

* * * * *

Black night had descended on the forest many hours before, so many in
fact that the camp fire had sunk to a feeble red glow, and the dying
embers were already circled by a ring of dead white ash. The breeze was
crooning softly through the branches of the trees, singing weird
chanties to itself. In between the murmurs of the wind there came
another sound, the indistinct sound of a sleepy man mumbling to himself.
Bryce half-raised himself on one elbow and listened. Half a dozen feet
away from him Cumshaw lay tightly rolled in his blankets. He tossed
restlessly and once all but