There was moisture on the full yellow leaves of the hickory, the splendid red foliage of the scarlet oak and the sour-wood, shaken out afresh as bravely as if summer burned still in the sap; there were ferns green yet, here and there. He stooped to pick a spray of the lilac “Christmas flower,” and thrust it jauntily in the button-hole of his blue flannel shirt; then, as his path curved abruptly, he came within sight of the deserted cabin which he and Baintree had lately made their camp. Somehow, with its dark little roof beneath that vast sky, so splendidly aflare, the gigantic vigorous trees on every hand, the gallant wind a-blaring all its bugles down the ravines, the sense of great openness and infinite space, it seemed doubly mean, and the plots devised there curiously sordid, and the episode and escape of last night grotesquely ignominious. In the midst of the conscious physical luxury that every respiration of the high air afforded, he wished he had never seen the place; his cherished scheme, for which he had risked so much, palled for the nonce. He became aware of a great infusion of bitterness toward Jake Baintree, that was not less strong because of contempt. “And where has he gone, I wonder?” he said, as he approached the cabin. For there was no smoke from the chimney and the place was silent. He checked his pace as he went toward the door. The unhewn logs that had once formed the steps to ascend to the threshold had rotted down at one side; the wood quaked and gave way anew under his tread, as he laid his hand on the latch. It was not fastened, and the door easily swung back under his touch. The room was vacant, illumined less by the rifts in the broken batten shutter than by the pale stream of light that came down the chimney, for the embers had died on the hearth. A repugnance, a paroxysm of fastidiousness, seized him as he looked in at the desolate discomforts, the sordid bareness, of the place. “This is no way to live!” he exclaimed, forgetful for the moment of the wealth that barely eluded his clutching hand; and as he remembered it he thought it would be hardly earned. He had not cared heretofore for the deprivations which he had endured although he had found scant congeniality in his comrade. The suspicion of crime, however, which attached to Baintree had seemed but the touch of romance to the backwoods desperado. But Jake had proved himself little fitted for that stanch _rôle_; and however natural his flight when he heard of the danger, Rathburn had not the dispassionate temperament to regard it leniently. He felt that it savored strongly of cowardice, he mentally designated his comrade a “contemptible cur,” and he began to feel a certain absorbing curiosity concerning the whereabouts of Samuel Keale and how he had met his fate.