Rathburn took his cigarette from his mouth, emitted an airy wreath of smoke, and shook his head seriously from side to side. Then as he smoked on he said, “I have a very pretty quarrel with you, Jake. By your own confession, you have systematically deceived me for a matter of six months or more. You made me believe that _you_ had found the float, and of course knew where you found it, when you were only trying to get the benefit of such scientific knowledge as I had,—to discover mineral where there was no reason to believe it to be. If you were not so ignorant you wouldn’t have tried a foolish, hopeless dodge like that. You have made me work very hard at this wild-goose chase, digging, and tramping, and blacksmithing, and _you_ got me into a scrape that might have cost _me my_ life. Indeed, but for that timely warning that put me on my guard and made me behave like a man instead of a sheep-killing dog, I believe it _would_ have cost me my life.” His face grew grave and conscious at the thought of Marcella. He sat silent for a moment or two, looking steadfastly at the fire and turning the cigarette delicately between his fingers. “It is absurd, because you are afraid of this, and afraid of that, to ask me to give up the whole thing or to go and search where there are no indications, or very slight ones, as you had me do all summer, when you knew where the only chances lay. But I forgive you, and I’m not going to do anything that can possibly injure you.” Baintree was sitting so still in the dusky gloom of the darkening cabin that he hardly seemed alive. With the brown color of his coat dimly suggested on the duller tones about him, he looked like an effigy of a man rudely fashioned from a root. “What be ye a-goin’ ter do?” he demanded. The lack of candor could hardly be urged against Eugene Rathburn among his many and conspicuous faults. “I’m going to search that cave from end to end, if the good Lord spares me,” he asseverated. “That’s what I’m going to do. There’s nothing there that I shan’t find.” His cigarette, so far spent it was, required some deft manipulation that it should not burn his fingers or lips and yet yield the last treasures of nicotian luxury that it contained. His attention was fixed upon it, and he lost the look with which Jake Baintree received this unequivocal statement. When he glanced up, the mountaineer had risen and was filling his pipe from some tobacco on the mantel-piece. “Going to smoke?” asked Rathburn. “Well, good-night to you, for I’m going to turn in.”