“Anything might happen,” he returned. “We’re sitting on a powder-keg. I can’t guarantee that it won’t blow up. Montell is a bull-headed brute, and so am I. If he should throw a slug into me, I’d probably live long enough to return the favor.” Then, after a pause: “I’ve been running on like an old woman. That rifle business to-night jarred me like the devil. Maybe a decent night’s rest will scatter these pessimistic ideas. Here goes, Robert; good-night.” With which he turned his face to the wall, and did, I verily believe, go at once to sleep. And he was still asleep, his head resting on one doubled-up arm, when I got up and lighted the candle at seven in the morning. My slumbers had been beset by disturbing visions of violent deeds, the by-product of what I had seen and heard that evening; Barreau, by his cheerful aspect on arising, had banished his troubles while he slept. The day dawned, clear and cold and very still. It passed, and another followed, and still others, till I lost track of their number in the frost-ridden cycle of time. Montell’s momentous stumble grew to be a dim incident of the past; sometimes I was constrained to wonder if, after all, he had done that with malice aforethought. Upon divers occasions I met and talked with Jessie, but I did not go to the house again, until Barreau hinted, one day, that unless I continued the intimacy I had accidentally begun, Montell would think I suspected him, that I was taking Barreau’s side. “There is no use in your making an enemy of him,” he said. “Well,” I replied, “I must say I don’t altogether like his fatherly manner. He makes me uncomfortable.” “Nevertheless,” Barreau declared, “he has taken a fancy to you. He’s human. And seeing it’s not your fight, you’d better not break off short on that account. Better not antagonize him. It’s different with me; I have no choice.” Influenced more or less by Barreau’s suggestion, I suppose, I found myself giving assent that very afternoon when Montell asked me to the cabin for supper and a session at cribbage. Over the meal and the subsequent card-game he was so genial, so very much like other big easy-going men that I had known, I could scarcely credit him as cold-bloodedly scheming to defraud and, if necessary, murder another man. Somehow, without any logical reason, I had always associated fat men, especially big, fat men, with the utmost good-nature, with a sort of rugged straightforward uprightness that frowned on anything that savored of unfair advantage. I could not quite fathom Mr. Simon Montell—nor George Barreau, either, so far as that goes.