“Where is that cave?” he demanded. He was fain to raise his voice to be heard above the din of the elements, and the commanding tones added to the sense of power that possessed him more and more as Baintree’s confidence collapsed. “I don’t ask you to tell me where the float was found—simply where is that cave?” Still Baintree met his eye like a caged and helpless thing. He nevertheless had something in his power,—to be speechless; and as Rathburn perceived a resolution in his dumbness he persisted more vehemently. “Tell me! Tell me! Then, if you won’t, Teck Jepson will be ready enough to tell me where he found the man’s coat and hat, and I suppose the cave can’t be far away in the gorge. I shall find it—I shall find it—I shall never cease to search until”— As he spoke he caught a glint of triumph in Baintree’s eyes. He realized how far afield his hopes had carried him, that long and devious distances lay between the spot to which he might be guided and the spot he sought. With a sudden savage cry and the agility of a panther he flung himself upon the man at the fireside and grappled at his throat. “Tell me!” he ground out between his set teeth. “Tell me!” A hoarse, half-strangled, intermittent scream for help filled the log-cabin, and penetrated to the stormy voids of the wilderness without. How vain! The heedless rain beat upon the roof. The unrecking wind passed by. They were alone in the lofty fastnesses of the mountains, and one was at the mercy of the other. Eugene Rathburn had never thought to put his knowledge of the mechanism of the human throat to such uses, but the mountaineer’s superior strength had enabled him only to rise and to writhe helplessly upon the verge of strangulation, under the scientific pressure of those fine and slender hands upon his bare throat, practically demonstrating how nearly a man may be choked and still live. For now and again their grasp relaxed, not to permit that hoarse, futile cry which twice and thrice ensued, but as the essential means of an answer to the question,— “Tell me, where did you find it?”