“Laws-a-massy, Eugene,” said Baintree, adopting in turn a more pacific tone, and holding out both empty hands with the palms upward as if to express a vacuity of unworthy intention, “don’t I try an’ try ter find the percise spot, an’ ef I fool ye don’t I fool myse’f too? ’Twar toler’ble long ago whenst I fund that rock, an’ the Big Smoky Mountings seem sorter roomy whenst ye take ter huntin’ fur one percise leetle yard medjure o’ groun’, whar a boy five year ago picked up a rock.” Somehow as he became less acrid the temper of the other waxed stronger, feeling the opposition lessen. With this spirit encroaching upon his self-control Rathburn said suddenly, “I don’t believe one word of it. You know the spot well enough. You are afraid to go to it.” Baintree, whose attitude remained unchanged, barely having had time to shift to a defiant sneer the deprecating earnest look he had worn, seemed petrified for one moment as he sat still holding out his hands, his laugh rigid on his startled face. “’Fraid!” he echoed, glancing over his shoulder at the spectral mists that came in at the crevice in the shutter and paused at the sight of the fire, and shivered into invisibility. “’Fraid!” Suddenly the rain came down on the roof with a thousand tentative touches upon the clapboards, as if to try their sonorous capacities, and elicit what element of melody so unpromising an instrument might add to the music of the storm. Through its iterative staccato beat might be heard the blended, unindividualized fall of the floods in the distance, a low, mellow resonance. A chill blast came in under the door. The chimney piped. The pallid mists were torn from the rift in the shutter, and one could see upon the black and limited space of darkness without certain fine gray palpitating lines of rain, close at hand, continuously shifting, but never ceasing nor breaking into drops. “I believe,” continued Rathburn, “that the silver is at the spot where you ki—where that man Samuel Keale lost his life.” He did not fail to note that Baintree winced at the name. “And you are afraid to go there, and—ignorant fool that you are!—you think because silver is there, it is anywhere else, and if we dig hard enough we will find it _somewhere_ in the mountains.” Baintree said nothing. He sat moistening his thin dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and looking at Rathburn with eyes small, bright, and with an expression that reminded him of the eyes of a rat in a trap, timorous, furtive, and bespeaking mercy that it did not hope to receive. “Where is that cave? Tell me that,” urged Rathburn, all his eager desire for the hidden treasure goading him anew with the recollection of how long he had been forced to dally upon the verge of an opulent discovery.