"No; that's a fact," he agreed, "and less of late than when I knew him first. But he'll make Akkomi talk, maybe, when he arrives--and I hope you, too." "When he arrives!" She thought the words, but did not say them aloud. She sat long after Max had left her, and thought how many hours must elapse before they discovered that Dan had not followed the other men to the lake works. She felt sure that he was somewhere in the wilderness, avoiding the known paths, alone, and perhaps hating her as the cause of his isolation, because she would not confess what the man was to her, but left him blindly to keep his threat, and kill him when found in her room. Ah! why not have trusted him with the whole truth? She asked herself the question as she sat there, but the mere thought of it made her face grow hot, and her jaws set defiantly. She would not--she could not! so she told herself. Better--better far be suspected of a murder--live all her life under the blame of it for him--than to tell him of a past that was dead to her now, a past she hated, and from which she had determined to bar herself as far as silence could build the wall. And to tell him--him--she could not. But even as she sat, with her burning face in her hands, quick, heavy steps came to the door, halted, and looking up she found Dan before her. "Oh! you should not," she whispered, hurriedly. "Why did you come back? They do not suspect; they think I did it--and so--" "What does this all mean?--what do you mean?" he asked. "Can't you speak?" It seemed she could not find any more words, she stared at him so helplessly. "Max, come here!" he called, to hasten steps already approaching. "Come, all of you; I had only a moment to listen to the captain when he caught up with me. But he told me she is suspected of murder--that a ring she wore last night helped the suspicion on. I didn't wait to hear any more, for I gave the little girl that snake ring--gave it to her weeks ago. I bought it from a miner, and he told me he got it from an Indian near Karlo. Now are you ready to suspect me, too, because I had it first?" "The ring wasn't just the most important bit of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Overton," answered the man named Saunders; "and we are all mighty glad you've got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the time the thing happened she won't say anything." His face paled slightly as he looked at her and heard the brief summing up of the case. "My knife?" he said, blankly. "Yes, sir. When some one said it was your knife, she spoke up and said it was, but that you had not had it since noon, for she borrowed it then to cut a stick; but beyond that she don't tell a thing." "Who is the man?" "The renegade--Lee Holly." "Lee Holly!" He turned a piercing glance on Harris, remembering the deep interest he had shown in that man Lee Holly and his partner, "Monte."