“_Hyuh! hyuh!_ It comed out of yo’ pocket, an’ yit you is skeered of it? Dat look mighty cur’is to me. Look lak you-all is tryin’ to play trick on de ol’ man, Marsteh Poictiers. I ain’t seed no white folks’ money yit dat I’s skeered of,” and he bent cautiously to pick it up. “Look out, Uncle William; it might burn you!” said Carfax suddenly; and quite as suddenly the old negro dropped the coin and started back. “Bless gresshus! but dat _wuz_ hot!” he exclaimed, blowing upon his fingers. And then: “Des you keep yo’ eye on dat dollah, ef you please, suh, twell I come back, an’ I’ll fix ’im,” and a little later he returned from the cook-house with a small tin pan which he turned down over the piece of money. “Ef dat won’t be in you gemmans’ way, an’ you-all ’ll des leab ’im dah, I gwine come back bimeby an’ tek de cunjer off ’im. I ain’ gwine lef de ol’ debbil hab dat dollah, not ef it _is_ his’n.” The little diversion did for Tregarvon what Carfax had hoped it might; and after the belated meal was eaten and the pipes were lighted, the atmosphere of disheartenment was changed somewhat for the better. “There is one thing we have to be thankful for,” the disappointed one volunteered, when his reflections began to mellow in the tobacco smoke. “We haven’t heard from the enemy since the attempt was made to ditch the car, and there haven’t been any more of the unaccountable accidents to the machinery.” “That is so,” said Carfax. “And I have been trying to guess, all along, why he--or they--stopped so abruptly.” “There wasn’t any good reason why he--or they--should have begun,” said Tregarvon musingly. “Somebody evidently thought there was a reason, and afterward changed his mind. Why should he change his mind? That is the question that has been puzzling me.” “Perhaps he has found out what a good fellow I really am, and is no longer bloodthirsty,” put in Tregarvon, who was too tired to make any very heavy drafts upon his mentality. “You haven’t any notion that the fight, if there is one, is personal to you, have you?--excluding Professor Hartridge, of course.” “Oh, no; I was only joking. And we’ll always exclude Hartridge, if you please; I’m still refusing to believe it of him. It was probably somebody’s intention to drown the blind kitten of an Ocoee before it had time to get its eyes open; but the somebody couldn’t, by any stretch of imagination, be Hartridge.” “But why has the somebody--who isn’t Hartridge--called the fight off so suddenly? By Jove, Vance--I have an idea! It has dawned upon the enemy, whoever he is, that it wasn’t worth while to efface us at a time when we were perseveringly going the right way about it to efface ourselves! I’d like to make a bet with you: when we begin drilling in the right place--if there is any right place--the trouble will blossom out again. What do you think?”