Kloon's dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips. His rifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it, moved it again, froze stiff as Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees, continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon. "Jake?" "Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a dirty rat--you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough, neither,--not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't." "Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake." Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled the cup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took other shots at intervals. Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair's width to the left, shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a pallor made his visage sickly grey. "Jake?" No answer. "Say, Jake?" No notice. "Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills." Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher. "I'm--I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta--gotta----" Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head. "You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----" The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon's inquiry with a final period. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knocking him flat as though he had been clubbed. Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared through a rosy bar of sunshine. In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted. But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the ground. * * * * * If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never have reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died. A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head and fluttered the ferns around him where he lay.