"By George, sir!" The colonel brought a hand down on his knee for emphasis. "Of course, I'll keep faith in you! That pass--the Devil's Gate--was beautifully named, wasn't it? But there's one thing, Arnold, I must ask you to remember. That your life is of more value to us, infinitely, than our money. Don't forget it, son." There followed a few minutes of silence save for the night song of a mocking bird somewhere in the maples. Then Tot Singleton, who now wore shoes and stockings and a white dress that Mrs. Mason had found for her, sat up straight in her chair and addressed the dimly-shining officer's shield. "Let me tell you, Little Buck," she said, "you'll shorely wish you'd put Cat-Eye Mayfield in jail the minute you got to town. I'd bet my life ag'in a safety-pin 'at Cat-Eye Mayfield ain't in the house right now. As long as he can go whar he pleases, yore life ain't wo'th nothin'. I tell you, after you've done what you've done tonight fo' him, he'd foller you to the bottomest hole in Tophet to git to shoot you in the back. Hate you? Why, he's hated you ever sence he can rickollect. It's all the' is to him, that hate fo' you. As Grandpap Singleton says, the sourest vinegar in the world is made out o' molasses--a-meanin', o' course, hate made out o' l-love. Cat-Eye thinks he l-loves me, y' know----" If the lights had been on, they would have seen that she was blushing terribly; she had made a bad mess, she thought, of telling them how it was. The last word had barely left her lips when there came from the velvety darkness of the lawn the voice of an eavesdropper, a snake, Mayfield himself, who had stolen out by way of the back stairs: "Ef ever she told the truth in all o' her borned days, Little Buck Wolfe, she told it then. Ye might as well make yore fun'ral 'rangements afore ye come into the hills ag'in, acause I'll certainly git you!" [Illustration] Wolfe ran down the steps and disappeared in the blackness. Colonel Mason flashed on the veranda lights, and brought out a shotgun. But Mayfield and the night were too closely akin, and they failed to catch even a glimpse of him. "I have always held out," muttered the colonel, when they had again gathered on the veranda, "that there was no man without a little that was good somewhere in his make-up. I admit now that I was mistaken." Little Mrs. Mason came out then. She put a hand on Tot's arm. "I've got a room ready for you upstairs," she said. "Would you like to go to bed now? You must be pretty tired." "Yes'm," Tot replied absentmindedly. She displayed no interest whatever in the beautiful blue-and-white bedroom that the good woman at her side told her to consider her own. She barely noticed the dainty night-dress that Mrs. Mason took from a drawer and hung across the back of a chair for her. Wondering at her sudden abstraction, the colonel's wife smiled a gentle, "Good night, my dear!" and left her to herself.