"Now pick up that sack with me an' tote hit in here. We mus'n' leave anythin' roun'. Here, this corner 'll do. Now bring me in that pipe 'n the little keg. We c'n leave all the tools here _ex_-ceptin' our axes. Axes looks well 'f we meet anybody goin' down." "H'm," grunted Yarebrough once more, and scratched his head again. He stepped out of the cave on to the platform that Nature's hand had laid. The brightening light indicated the approach of dawn, though the sun had not yet risen. The mist was not dispelled, but it had grown thinner, and trees at some distance down the mountain began to have individual shape through the veil of dry haze that inwrapped them. The air was cool and sweet. The birds were singing, though still sleepily, but one in a tree over his head burst into a glorious heralding of the morning. Bud thrust his hands into his pockets and whistled softly. Pink roused him roughly from his reverie. "Come, boy, we gotter fix up this yer openin' somehow." Bud answered irrelevantly: "Ah wisht Ah was certain about M'lissy." Pressley let fly the bush that he was bending across the mouth of the cave. "What about her?" he asked, sharply. "Oh, everythin'!" Explanation was difficult to his slowness of thought. "She'll be wonderin' what takes me away from home so much at night; an' Ah don' much like to leave her alone, neither." "Cain' ye trust her?" jeered Pink, with an evil scowl, but Bud turned on him so fiercely that he added, hastily,--"to keep still if ye tell her?" "Tell her? Tell M'lissy! Ah wouldn' tell her fo' a good deal! You-all don' know M'lissy." "She'd jump ye, Ah reckon." "No, Ah don' allow she'd say much. The way hit is, ye see, M'lissy,--hit's foolish 'f her,--but M'lissy kinder thinks Ah ain' a right bad feller, an' Ah sorter hate to disabuse her min' o' that opinion." "She mus' know you-all drinks." "Yes, Ah 'low she do." "An' ye play craps." "Oh, well, that ain' anythin'." "An' ye fight chickens." "Of co'se; everybody does that." "'N you've killed paddidges befo' the law was off." "Who hasn'?" "If she knows all those things she sho' cain' think yo' a plumb angel." "Ah don' s'pose she's lookin' fo' wings. All the same, Ah do hate to have her know Ah'm about to do this." "Oh, this is all right. She don' know yo' in debt an' need the money." "No, she don'." "Would that worry her?" "Ah reckon hit would, specially if----" "If what?" "You seem powerful eager to know what'll worry M'lissy." "If ye don' know what worries people ye cain' know how to help 'em." Pink was suavity itself. "If what?" "Ah was goin' to say, specially 'f she knowed it was you-all Ah owed hit to." "Lemme tell ye somethin' right now, Bud: M'lissy wouldn' fin' everybody clever 'nough to len' money to a no-'count feller like you. She better like me 'f she don'." "She don' know hit, ye see. 'N she never shall 'f Ah c'n help hit." Pressley grunted and seemed to reflect. Then he shook his head and muttered to himself.