"Now, I will finish with you, sir," resumed Gaut's lawyer, turning again sternly to Elwood, from whom he--like many other over-acting attorneys, who cannot see where they should stop in examinations of this kind--seemed to think he could draw something more that would make for his client. "When that fellow interrupted me, just now, I was asking what reason, besides some grudge or malice, you had for your unwarrantable course in pronouncing the respondent guilty, without proof; for, allowing the furs you swear to _were_ once yours, you don't show, by a single particle of proof, that he had any thing to do with it more than yourselves, who were quite as likely to have taken them as he. Yes, what reasons,--facts, facts, I mean; no more guess-work here; so speak out, sir, like an honest man, if you can." "I will, then," promptly responded Elwood. "You shall have facts, to your heart's content; I said what I did because I am convinced he _is_ guilty." "Convinced!" sneeringly interrupted the other; "there it is again; thrusting in sheer conjectures for evidence! I must call on the court to interpose with the stubborn and wilful fellow. Didn't I tell you, sir, I'd have no more of your guess-work? Facts, sir, facts, or nothing." "Well, you shall have them, then," replied the other, in a determined tone, "for I know enough facts to convince _me_, at least, of his guilt. Both before and after we started on our expedition, he threw out hints to me which I did not then quite understand, but which, since this affair, I have recalled, and now know what they meant. He hinted, if I would fall into his plan and keep council, we might--" "Might what?" sharply demanded the excited and alarmed attorney. "Do you know you are under oath, sir? Might what, I say?" "Might get all the furs into our hands, and--" "Traitor! liar! scoundrel!" exclaimed Gaut Gurley, in a tone that sounded like the hiss of a serpent, as he bent forward and glared upon Elwood, with an expression so absolutely fiendish as to make every one in the room pause and shudder, and as to be remembered and recounted, months afterwards, in connection with events which seemed destined to spring from this worse than fruitless trial. "You was going to say," said the attorney for the prosecution, here eagerly pricking up and turning to the interrupted and now evidently discomposed witness,--"you was going to say, he proposed that he and you should take all the furs to yourselves, and so rob the rest of the company!" "I can't tell the words; but I think he meant that," replied Elwood, in more subdued tones. "O ho," exclaimed Gaut's lawyer; "you _now_ think, that is, you guess, he meant something that you didn't dream of his meaning at the time he uttered it. Pretty evidence this; make the most of it!"