gret and
sympathy which sat upon him awkwardly from lack of practice:

"It was an accident, you know. Don't say anything about it to anybody;
I was excited, and didn't notice what I was doing. You're not looking
well; you've worked enough for to-day; go down to my cabin and eat what
you want, and rest. It's just an accident, you know, on account of my
being excited."

"It scared me," said the lad, as he started away; "but I learnt
something, so I don't mind it."

"Damned easy to please!" muttered Buckner, following him with his eye.
"I wonder if he'll tell? Mightn't he?... I wish it had killed him."

The boy took no advantage of his holiday in the matter of resting; he
employed it in work, eager and feverish and happy work. A thick growth
of chaparral extended down the mountainside clear to Flint's cabin;
the most of Fetlock's labor was done in the dark intricacies of that
stubborn growth; the rest of it was done in his own shanty. At last all
was complete, and he said,

"If he's got any suspicions that I'm going to tell on him, he won't keep
them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always
was--all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there 'll
be an end of him; nobody will ever guess who finished him up nor how it
was done. He dropped me the idea his own self, and that's odd."

V

The next day came and went.

It is now almost midnight, and in five minutes the new morning will
begin. The scene is in the tavern billiard-room. Rough men in rough
clothing, slouch-hats, breeches stuffed into boot-tops, some with vests,
none with coats, are grouped about the boiler-iron stove, which has
ruddy cheeks and is distributing a grateful warmth; the billiard-balls
are clacking; there is no other sound--that is, within; the wind is
fitfully moaning without. The men look bored; also expectant. A hulking
broad-shouldered miner, of middle age, with grizzled whiskers, and an
unfriendly eye set in an unsociable face, rises, slips a coil of fuse
upon his arm, gathers up some other personal properties, and departs
without word or greeting to anybody. It is Flint Buckner. As the door
closes behind him a buzz of talk breaks out.

"The regularest man that ever was," said Jake Parker, the blacksmith;
"you can tell when it's twelve just by him leaving, without looking at
your Waterbury."

"And it's the only virtue he's got, as fur as I know," said Peter Hawes,
miner.

"He's just a blig