en.

Five minutes later the man he had spent the day seeking emerged alone
from the woods and stood ten yards from his own hiding place.

This was a coincidence too remarkable and providential to be credited,
thought Thornton, yet it was no coincidence at all. Bas knew of the
drama that was to be played out that night--a drama of which he was the
anonymous author--and he was coming, in leisurely fashion, to a lookout
from which he could witness its climax while he still held to his pose
of detachment.

The master-conspirator seated himself on a boulder and wiped his brow,
for he had been walking fast. A little later he glanced up, to see bent
upon him a pair of silent eyes whose message could not be misread. In
one hand Thornton held a cocked revolver, in the other a sealed
envelope.

Rowlett rose to his feet and went pale, and Parish advanced holding the
paper out to him.

"Ther day hes come, Bas," said Thornton with the solemnity of an
executioner, "when I don't need this pledge no longer. I aims ter give
hit back ter ye now."

CHAPTER XXXIII

One might have counted ten while the picture held with no other sound
than the breathing of two men and the strident clamour of a blue-jay in
a hickory sapling.

Rowlett had not been ordered to raise his hands, but he held them
ostentatiously still and wide of his body. The revolver in its holster
under his armpit might as well have been at home, for even had both
started with an equal chance in the legerdemain of drawing and firing,
he knew his master, and as it was, he stood covered.

Now, too, he faced an adversary no longer fettered by any pledge of
private forbearance.

This, then, was the end--and it arrived just a damnable shade too soon,
when with the falling of dusk he might have witnessed the closing scenes
of his enemy's doom. To-morrow there would be no Parish Thornton to
dread, but also to-morrow there would be no Bas Rowlett to enjoy
immunity from fear.

"Hit war jest erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable
inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap
hes done come ter pass since then--don't ye want yore envellip, Bas?"

Silently and with a heavily moving hand, Rowlett reached out and took
the proffered paper which bore his incriminating admissions and
signature, but he made no answer.

"Thet other time," went on Thornton with maddening deliberation, "hit
was in ther moonlight thet us two stud hy