As Spot was asleep under the wheelbarrow, Bill’s equity in the repeating rifle and cartridges, that Hyatt had received in exchange for him, seemed rather hazy. The reason for Spot’s prolonged absence some months before was now apparent to Bill, and, although the intelligent animal had returned home, as expected, after being traded off, the old man’s nurtured wrath was waiting for Rat when he arrived that afternoon. Hyatt seemed in nowise abashed at the revelation of Bill’s knowledge of his shady transaction with the trapper. [Illustration: “MUSKRAT” HYATT ] “If I hadn’t a knowed the dog ’ud come home, I wouldn’t a let ’im go. It showed how much I trusted ’im w’en I let ’im go off with a stranger like that. If that feller thought ’e c’d keep a fine dog like that away from them that loved ’im, ’e oughta suffer fer ’is foolishness, an’ leave sump’n in the country to be remembered by. Of course if sump’n ’ad a happened to Spot, an’ ’e hadn’t a come back, I’d a given you the rifle, but I knowed that dog was all right. You c’n have ’im back any time you want ’im, if he’ll stay with you, but you hadn’t oughta jump on me as long as ’e aint lost, an’ ’e’s in first class health.” “Its the funny ideas that some fellers ’ave about other people’s propity that keeps the state’s prisons filled up,” remarked Bill. “It aint the lyin’ an’ stealin’ that gits ’em thar, its gitt’n caught. If they don’t git caught its jest called business shrewdness. You bilked that feller out o’ that gun an’ you’r deprivin’ me of it w’en you used my dog to git it with. You’r a fine man to trust anythin’ with, you are. If I had any place to keep Spot I wouldn’t let you have ’im a minute. I c’n fill my shanty with stuff by tradin’ ’im off, an’ then wait’n fer ’im to come home, jest as well as you can, an’ it ’ud be all right fer me to do it, but you aint got no such right, ’specially if yer goin’ to swindle people.” After Bill’s assurance that he had told the deluded trapper nothing of Spot’s return, and that he had gone off up the river, the conversation drifted into channels that were less irritating. The old man’s mind became calm and he ascended the narrow stairway on the outside of the building, to his room over the store, for a nap. “That ol’ feller oughta to have a phonygraph with ’is voice in it so he c’d spin it an’ listen to ’imself speil,” remarked Rat after Bill had left. “I used to often watch ’im when ’e was set’n quiet out ’ere by the hour, with that dinkey hat pulled down in front an’ lookin’ wise, an’ wonder what big thoughts was ferment’n up in that old moss covered dome o’ his, but I found out after a while that ’e wasn’t thinkin’ about nuth’n at all.”