Taft's keen senses instantaneously apprehended the difference. He glanced around with a quick eye, illumined by the feeble white gleam of the lantern in his hand, for he had but just emerged from the tunnel. He did not simulate. He looked as he felt, interrogative, expectant, as he sat down on the side of a barrel without pausing to extinguish the lantern. Its pallid glow suffused his florid face and yellow beard, and brought out the tint and effect of translucency in his blue eyes. They were fixed steadily on Larrabee, who was suddenly out of countenance. He had intended a more casual disclosure of his project than the impending interview permitted,--a sort of unpremeditated announcement of his determination, as of being free to do as he would. He felt that his face had changed, and he knew that the change was noted. A new rush of alarm seemed to surge through his nerves. For, guarded as Taft evidently was, he too had betrayed somewhat the importance which he attached to the plans, even the words, of his employee, or his partner, or his prisoner, as Larrabee might be variously regarded. It daunted Larrabee: the latent ferocity that lurked in Taft's character, repudiated in his burly good comradeship of manner and in his florid face,--save for a certain beaklike outline of the nose that gave a rapacious, cruel intimation,--was instinctively known to the young mountaineer, who was not skilled in the craft of a knowledge of his kind, and had no habit of analysis. He somehow flinched to be made anew so definitely aware that he was a factor, and a troublous one, in Taft's schemes. He felt no match for the elder tactician. He wished he had gone long before, when the moonshiner sought so openly to be rid of him. At all events, he would go now, and without chicanery or subterfuge. He blurted out his plan, which he had intended to trench upon with great care and circumspection, and which should have appeared a natural evolution and outcome of the conversation. "'Renzo," he said, with a distinct abatement of his former genial inflections, but still with a pliable, amiable tone,--and for his life he could not suppress an intonation of appeal,--"'Renzo, I'm a-studyin' 'bout takin' yer advice. Ye air old'n me an' hev got mo' 'speriunce an'"-- "What advice?" Taft interrupted succinctly. The sentence seemed very short in his big, mellow, sonorous voice; it was like a key struck inadvertently on some great organ; the heavy vibrations in themselves seemed to promise continuity. "'Bout goin' out'n the Cove. I been studyin' it all out, an' I 'low 'twould be safer fur all consarned ef I war ter cut an' run." Taft remained silent. His illumined eyes were glassy and fixed; somehow, the absorbed, introspective thought seemed to eliminate their expression. "Jes' cl'ar out," said Larrabee, as if in explanation; he could not repress the manner of asking a permission, although he raged inwardly at himself.