At that the watcher came out into the open, and stepping softly, followed in silent pursuit. He could not have explained what impelled him to it. Only it seemed to him a natural counter-move in that game of secrecy and suspicion he had set his wits to master. Stealthily he stole down the littered passage--stealthily put foot in the dusk room where the museum was. He might pad it like an Ojibbeway, but she heard him. She heard him and turned, her eyes opening _chatoyant_. She was standing near the loaded shelves, fingering something--a round yellow flint-stone, by the look of it--that she had lifted from its place amongst the collection. “What have you there?” said he, curious and masterful at once. She did not answer. But she snatched the object to her bosom and glinted at him with adumbrated pupils. “Let me see it,” he said, advancing a step. At that she gave out a thin little tale of screams, like the cry of a shot rat, and, retreating into a black corner, hugged her treasure with a frantic closeness. “It’s not for you!” she cried. “It’s his--Dennis’s. It was thrown through the window to him that night you went a-wooing to ‘Chatters.’” “Thrown! by whom, you jade?” “How should I know? The shadows were thick about the house. They cried to get back to their dark hole under the floor against daylight. But he wouldn’t let them, and they stormed and wept. I would have opened the door and given them passage; but he is wise, my wise brother, and he forbade me. ‘They must bid higher first,’ said he.” It was as if a dark veil fell over the listener’s face. “Go on,” he muttered. “They cried to him; but he withdrew, and would give no answer. And they entreated long, till my heart sobbed for them. ‘Let them in, Dennis,’ I prayed. But he said, ‘They must bid higher.’ Then they threw this thing, and it cracked through the lattice; and he crept softly and took it up and read and cast it down again. ‘Make no sound,’ he whispered to me; ‘and they will think we are gone.’ But I went secretly and picked up the stone; and all night long the shadows moaned about the house.” She screamed again, with a note of fury startled out of terror, for her master had pounced upon her and wrung the treasure from her grasp. She fought with him, clawing and spitting like a cat; but he beat her off, as he would have any wild animal, and rushed out to the light. Here, in a moment’s gain of time, he looked and read what was roughly scrawled in pencil upon the smooth surface of the stone. “Half the profits,” were the words--“if you lead us to the Lake of Wine.” He had space to no more than decipher this when the wild creature was upon him again. “Stand off!” he cried furiously, backing from her, with a white face. “Stand off! I must have a word with your brother.” He heard her swift step behind him as he raced up the drive. He might have been conscious of a certain lack of dignity in the situation, had his passion allowed his reason a moment to itself.