He had not hitherto, in his comings and goings, been insensible of the majesty of these dark ranges, the pervasive effects of awe and silence of this nocturnal scene,—never so august, never so austere, as on this night of mingled lustre and gloom; but now a sort of repulsion for the inanimate mountain forms possessed him. He experienced that strong hatred of place, a thousand times more potent than the vaunted local attachments. He would fain have never seen these grim encircling heights; if he might, he would have swept them away into vague annihilation. There rose in his heart a sentiment, too, of reproach to the insensate scene, grown so familiar; and then he saw it, purple or duskily brown, with heavy shadows lined about with mystic strokes of luminous white and with that pure pale sky above,—saw it all through a shimmer, for the hot tears had risen to his eyes, smitten out by his helpless rage. This shabby ordeal, as he felt it,—how little he had deserved it! Even these ignorant savages could find no flaw in aught that he had done, albeit they had thirsted for his blood. They were bereft of pretext by the integrity of his intentions. Such interest, such sense of adventure, as the secret nocturnal expeditions to the forge had possessed had given way utterly before this exigent necessity to account for his freak. He began to appreciate more definitely than before the danger that had waited upon it. And yet, he thought, what sane being would not have ventured upon a trifle of mystery rather than alienate a man who held a secret like Jake Baintree’s, now half revealed, and again with a miserly clutch concealed? Always Baintree’s clumsy subterfuges grew clumsier; always his reticent, suspicious nature was relaxing more and more. It seemed only a little waiting yet, and still a little time. And if these clods of mountaineers could not comprehend the value of even the remote possibility of veins of ore commensurate in richness with the specimen in Baintree’s possession, Eugene Rathburn congratulated himself that he could, and felt anew that he stood ready to risk much—very much of bodily harm and mental indignity and anguish of fright—for the bare hope to live to possess the treasure. With this, he felt he was soothsayer enough to read his future,—the long lapse of years filled with the satisfied cravings his heart held dear; without it, he could scarce foresee the dull to-morrow that should follow to-day, and of which naught save sequence might be predicted,—the empty, empty time! He had a sudden spasm of an unnamed affection, very well defined, however, the reverse of nostalgia, as there arose the poignant recollection of his office in Glaston, where he sat idle much of the time, in company with a fly, that droned on the window-pane, and whence he was summoned at inconceivably long intervals to attend some charity patient. The reward of this exertion was a local reputation of