When he had kindled a fire and sat down before it, clasping his hands behind his head, waiting for the coals that he might prepare the primitive meal, which in his rough experience he had learned to cook, he entered upon a continuous expectation of Baintree’s return. This grew to an irritable suspense. More than once he rose, walked to the door, and stood looking over the vast landscape and scanning the little path that their feet had worn to the spring, with the vivid intimation that in another instant he should see the tall, thin figure, the cadaverous face, the sleek black hair, emerge from the clustering laurel. But except for a rabbit, leaping along, and pausing to feed itself upon a succulent green leaf, held very humanly between its fore-paws,—except for this wayfarer, and the slow paces of the sunlight loitering on to noon, naught came and naught went. Sometimes when Rathburn returned to the fire he examined anew the specimens which together they had found,—all strangely inferior, strangely meagre, in contrast to the rich bits of “float” which Baintree had showed him in the prison, and with which he had lured him on from day to day. “He never found this beside that torrent in the gorge,—he may swear till he is blue!” Rathburn looked at the bit of rock, shook his head, and replaced it on the rude shelf that served as mantel-piece. And once more he went to the door. There should be no more delays, no more tortuous lies, with which he had borne merely seeking to humor the ignorant mountaineer, to familiarize him with the idea of a coadjutor, to wear out the constitutional distrust of the man. He would wait no longer; let him lay hands again on Jake Baintree,—he unconsciously clenched them,—and he would have out of him the secret he so foolishly, so zealously, guarded. And yet he thought that daily Baintree intended to reveal it; and when they would set forth to find the spot, the mountaineer would first become preoccupied, then silent, and presently stop short and pretend in clumsy fiction to recognize landmarks, and both would go through a fruitless feint of digging to find mineral that both knew was still far to seek. “There has been enough of it!” Rathburn declared between his set teeth, in his reverie. The prospect had all apparently seemed equitable to Baintree. He had rejoiced at the idea of securing an expert in some sort as a partner; he had voluntarily offered to divide. Perhaps the inchoate wealth of his secret had become more precious to him; perhaps he merely doubted the good faith of his partner. But the summer months had gone, and autumn was waning. “And it’s time there was an end of it,” Rathburn said, still looking out of the door.