k.

"The use is, I've got it into my head that he's alive, and that I shall
find him," returned Mat.

"'Well?" said young Thorpe eagerly.

Mat became silent again. His head drooped slowly forward, and his
body followed it till he rested his elbows on the gun. Sitting in this
crouched-up position, he abstractedly began to amuse himself by snapping
the lock of the rifle. Zack, suspecting that the brandy he had
swallowed was beginning to stupefy him, determined, with characteristic
recklessness, to rouse him into talking at any hazard.

"What the devil is all this mystery about?" he cried boldly. "Ever since
you pulled out that feather-fan and tobacco-pouch at Blyth's--"

"Well, what of them?" interrupted Mat, looking up instantly with a
fierce, suspicious stare.

"Nothing particular," pursued Zack, undauntedly, "except that it's odd
you never brought them out before; and odder still that you should
tell Blyth, and never say a word here to me, about getting them for a
woman--"

"What of _her?"_ broke out Mat, rising to his feet with flushed face
and threatening eyes, and making the room ring again as he grounded his
rifle on the floor.

"Nothing but what a friend ought to say," replied Zack, feeling that, in
Mat's present condition, he had ventured a little too far. "I'm sorry,
for your sake, that she never lived to have the presents you meant
for her. There's no offense, I hope, in saying that much, or in asking
(after what you yourself told Blyth) whether her death happened lately,
or--"

"It happened afore ever you was born."

He gave this answer, which amazed Zack, in a curiously smothered,
abstracted tone, as if he were talking to himself; laying aside the
rifle suddenly as he spoke, sitting down by the table again, and resting
his head on his hand, Young Thorpe took a chair near him, but wisely
refrained from saying anything just at that moment. Silence seemed to
favor the change that was taking place for the better in Mat's temper.
He looked up, after awhile, and regarded Zack with a rough wistfulness
and anxiety working in his swarthy face.

"I like you, Zack," he said, laying one hand on the lad's arm and
mechanically stroking down the cloth of his sleeve. "I like you. Don't
let us two part company. Let's always pull together as brotherly and
pleasant as we can." He paused. His hand tightened round young Thorpe's
arm; and the hot, dry, tearless look in his eyes began to soften as he
added, "I take i