At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where he knew how to exist--the wilderness. All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly scared him. Yet--what a revenge!--to strike Clinch through the only creature he cared for in all the world!... What a revenge!... Clinch was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump.... Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind;--_the packet_! Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana. Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected. Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett, had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life. He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart. Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich.... Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!... * * * * * When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars. Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by the solemn forest. There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen. Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and lay flat. The light burned steadily from Eve's window. IV From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber. But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that--tall shadows of human shapes that stirred at times. The trap-robber, scared, stiffened to immobility, but his little eyes remained fastened on the camera obscura above. All the cunning, patience, and murderous immobility of the rat were his. Not a weed stirred under the stars where he lay with tiny, unwinking eyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling. * * * * *