first covert glance of anxiety and deprecation. A smiling, dark-eyed gaze fixed upon his face shook his confidence, in that moment of detection. The smile was not one of pleasure, but Larrabee's eyes were seldom without it. It was tinged with a suggestion of contempt; it was habitually slow; it seemed rather an unintentional emanation from the spirit within than a means of communication with others of his kind. He smiled, as it were, to himself. He had a pale, clear-cut, intelligent face, with fine straight features, dark eyes, and short auburn hair. He was about twenty three or four years of age, lean but strongly built, and tall, and was dressed in brown jeans, with great rough boots. He had a certain inactive, lounging aspect, and laid aside with a reluctant gesture the worn New Testament which he had been laboriously reading as he sat close to the door of the furnace and caught its glimmers. "Naw," reiterated the keen, eager Espey, with what he intended to be a sneer, but which was instead a snort of indignation, "ef 'Renzo hears enny news, he ain't rememberin' ter sheer it with we-uns; he keeps it from us, moles o' the yearth that we be!" He dropped his voice dramatically. The others, with a hot sense of injury, gazed with glowing eyes upon Taft. "Why, look-a-hyar," Taft felt impelled to defend himself, "what is it I ain't told ez ye want ter know?" There was a close understanding among the "moles o' the yearth," for the united accusation about to be voiced was withheld as Larrabee fixed his ever-smiling eyes upon him and held up his warning hand. "Waal, 'Renzo, what _is_ the news ye hev tole hyar?" It was the pride of intellect which illumined Larrabee's face, that ineffable sense of power which a conscious mental superiority bestows. The smile in his eyes extended to his lips; he laughed a little, showing his strong white teeth, and there was something craftily brilliant in his expression as he looked down and turned the Testament in his hands, and looked up and laughed again. "Yes," exclaimed Espey rancorously, "ye purtend ter go out an' see nuthin' an' hear nuthin'. I reckon ye air 'feared we'll git skeered too easy, an' light out an' leave the still, an' sech; so ye tell we-uns nuthin' 'bout sech ez ye meet up with. Jes' ondertake ter jedge fur us an' gin us no warnin' nor nuthin'"-- Larrabee broke in suddenly: "_We_'ll ondertake ter tell you-uns the news, 'Renzo Taft, though we do be 'moles o' the yearth'! _Thar's a stranger in the Cove!_" A large, imposing personality is at a peculiar disadvantage when overtaken by disaster. Lorenzo Taft felt detected in every fibre, and he was conscious of comprising a good many pounds avoirdupois of culprit as he sat arraigned before them all. He could only look from one to the other in flushed doubt and anxiety as to how much they knew of what he had his own reasons to conceal.