"It is not at all necessary to tell him," she replied frigidly. "The sick are always to be helped, in every circumstance." She gave her horse the rein as she spoke and turned him up the steep path that climbed back of the cabin, past the Knob, and so by a narrow trail to the mountain road. Emmet Prendergast stood listening to the dulling hoof-beats a moment, then reëntered the cabin. The man on the bunk had lifted to a sitting position, his eyes were open, dazed and staring. "That's right," the older man said. "You're coming round. How does it feel to be back in the old shebang? Can't guess how you got here, can you? You were towed on horseback by a beauty, Hughey, my boy--a rip-staving beauty! I'll tell you about it in the morning, if you're good." The man he addressed made no answer; his eyes were on the other, industrious and bewildered. "I heard about the row," went on Prendergast. "They didn't think it was in you, and neither did I." He looked at him cunningly. "Neither did Moreau, eh, eh? You're a clever one, Hugh, but the lost-memory racket won't stand you in anything. You hadn't any call to get scared in the first place--_I_ don't tell all I know!" He shoved the candle nearer on the table. "There's a queer look in your face, Hugh!" he said, with a clumsy attempt at kindness. "That rock they threw must have hurt you. Feel sort of dizzy, eh? Never mind, I'll show you a sight for sore eyes. You went off without your share of the last swag, but I've saved it for you. Prendergast wouldn't cheat a pal!" From a cranny in the clay-chinked wall he took a chamois-skin bag. It contained a quantity of gold-dust and small nuggets, which he poured into a miner's scales on the table and proceeded to divide in two portions. This accomplished, he emptied one of the portions on to a paper and pushed it out. "That's yours," he said. Harry's eyes were on his with a piercing intensity now, as though they looked through him to a vast distance beyond. He was staring through a gray mist, at something far off but significant that eluded his direct vision. The board table, the yellow gold, the flickering candle-light recalled something horrifying, in some other world, in some other life, millions of ages ago. He lurched to his feet, overturning the table. The gold-dust rattled to the floor. "Your deal!" he said. Then with a vague laugh, he fell sidewise upon the bunk. Emmet Prendergast stared at him with a look of amazement on his yellow face. "He's crazy as a chicken!" he said. He sat watching him a while, then rose and kindled a fire on the unswept hearth. From a litter of cans and dented utensils in a corner he proceeded to cook himself supper, after which he carefully brushed up the scattered gold-dust and returned it all to its hiding-place. Lastly he rummaged on a shelf and found a phial; this proved to be empty, however, and he set it on the table.