As the two walked on together, Jepson took note of the moon in the sky. “Ain’t it some earlier ’cordin’ ter the moon than ’twar that night when ye say ye kem so nigh ter ketchin’ ’em?” “Dunno,” panted Clem. “I hev hed suthin’ else ter do, sence then, than ter stare-gaze the moon.” The tone of the retort arrested Jepson’s attention. He had hitherto taken little account of his rival’s mental attitude toward him. As he turned his head, and, though still walking forward, looked at Clem, he could scarcely interpret his expression. Antagonism he could read, to be sure, in the hard-set jaw, the gleam of his teeth between his half-parted lips, the glitter of his eye; but a sort of uncertainty was shadowed in his manner, with a tumultuous, fluttering excitement, a badgered, hopeless, yet still struggling anxiety,—he could not account for these in the light of the present surroundings. A much wiser man could hardly have divined the turbulent perplexity that surged through Clem’s mind, the coercive rigors of decision and yet the wild regret for whatever course he took. He seemed to himself to be living at a climax. Every breath he drew chronicled an emergency. He was in the clutch of contradictions, the victim of distorted and strangely reversed circumstances. He had set the machinery of vengeance in motion again when it had seemed to flag, and he had wished to hinder. He had forced himself upon Teck Jepson as his lieutenant in this abhorrent enterprise, hoping that in the guise of lending him aid he might be able to frustrate him utterly. Yet he was beginning to perceive that, should his scheme in aught go awry, it would seem to Marcella as if he had been foremost and active in the participation in the deed which she deemed an infamous cruelty, and which her father accounted a crime. His senses reeled as he sought to escape his dilemma. He wished himself back at the barn, leaving Jepson to conduct the affair at his own imperious will; and he wondered futilely and bitterly why he should have come forth at all in obedience to an impulse so strong, but so unreasoning. What had he, in his folly, expected to do? What could it avail to keep by Jepson’s side, and hold him under surveillance? He realized acutely that his simple brain was no instrument for clever scheming,—that every course of action which he sought to plan had only its preliminary impulse, thereafter dwindling to vague nullity in lieu of logical sequences. Nevertheless, he caught himself ever and anon casting sidelong glances at Teck Jepson, informed with a wild inclination to spring upon him unaware, and stifle his cries, and overbear him—for what? Even the futureless Clem could look forward far enough to anticipate the sallying forth of the reserves at the barn after so long a time, in default of any sign from the leader of the expedition.