Thus he drew the conversation aside to the commercial aspects of the situation, as if he acquiesced in Taft's view, and recurred to his proposition no more. He controlled his voice, but his heart sunk like lead. He had not dreamed but that they would be glad to let him go if he quitted the region. He had not even feared that this resource was in jeopardy. He could not imagine the turn of events which must needs preclude his flight abroad, as well as his familiar appearance in his wonted haunts about the Cove. He cursed his fatuity again and again that he had not escaped when he could. What were the dangers of the world at large in comparison with the mysterious menace that environed him here? He dwelt continuously on these thoughts for a time, and it was only gradually, and chiefly by reason of Sykes's leering grin and secretly gleeful eye, that he became aware that this Benjamin amongst them had been specially deputed to watch him. In the days of his own terrors of the world without, he had ceased to go out for his meals or to sleep. He subsisted on "snacks" which Taft fetched down from his own table,--which abstraction caused no surprise to his small housekeeper, for Miss Cornelia Taft had long since exhausted her capacities for astonishment at any prodigies of food consumption on the part of her father, who took such big bites in comparison with old Mrs. Jiniway's custom,--and he slept at broken intervals, as his uneasy thoughts permitted, on the empty meal sacks in the shadow of the piles of barrels. This life continued now of necessity, as formerly of choice. Larrabee's apparent acquiescence, he had a vague idea, surprised and perturbed the others. They were evidently prepared for resistance and harsh measures. They had lost their balance in some sort; their attitude was like that of one who makes ready for a running leap, and stops short of the jump. Thus, their unsteady, balked surprise bore scant relation to their persistent, unchanged purpose, for their watch upon him was not for one moment relaxed. Even in the network of wrinkles about the sunken eyes of the elder distiller, a sort of staggered, dumfounded suspicion expressed itself, in conjunction with an observant heed of Larrabee's every movement which hitherto would not have been allowed to absorb so much of the attention he was wont to bestow on the still.