On the day following the expulsion of Prendergast, Harry woke restless and unrefreshed. Fleeting sensations mocked him--a disturbing conviction that the struggling memory in some measure had succeeded in reasserting itself in the shadowy kingdom of sleep. Waking, the apparitions were fled again into their obscurity, leaving only the wraiths of recollection to startle and disquiet. A girl's face hovered always before him--ruling his consciousness as it had ruled his sleeping thought. "Is it only fancy?" he asked himself. "Or is it more? It was there--my memory--in shreds and patches, on my sleep; now when I wake, it is only the fraying mist of dreams.... Dreams!" He drew a deep breath. "Yet the overmastering sense of reality remains. Last night I walked in intimate, forgotten ways--and she was in them--_she!_" He flushed, an odd, sensitive flush. "Dreams!" he said. "All dreams and fancies!" At length he took down from its shelf the bottle he had rescued from Prendergast's intention and emptied it of its glistening grains--enough to replenish his depleted stock of provisions. He paused a moment as he put on his hat, smiling whimsically, a little sadly. He dreaded entering the town. But there could be no remedy in concealment. If he was to live and work there, appear he must on the streets sooner or later. Smoky Mountain must continue to think of him as it might; what he was from that time on, was all that could count to him. If he had but known it, there was good reason for hesitation to-day. Early that morning an angry rumor had disturbed the town; the sluice of the hydraulic company had been robbed again. Some two months previously there had occurred a series of depredations by which the company had suffered. The boxes were not swept of their golden harvest each day, and in spite of all precautions, coarse gold had disappeared mysteriously from the riffles--this, although armed men had watched all night. There had been much guess-work. The cabin on the hillside was the nearest habitation--the company's flume disgorged its flood in the gulch beneath it--and suspicion had eventually pointed its way. The sudden ceasing of the robberies with the disappearance of Hugh Stires had given focus to this suspicion. Now, almost coincident with his return, the thievery had recommenced. It had been a red-letter day for Devlin and his ilk who cavilled at the more charitable. Of all this, however, the object of their "I-told-you-so" was serenely ignorant.