"What you think o’ this part o’ the country?" he asked, and then abruptly, without evidently desiring an answer: "Well, well, I ’ll give you good night. I ’ll keep goin’ on, till I get a good camp place—maybe all night I don’t like Camp Kettle to-night," and grumbling something about being an old man now, he plodded on, his pack-horse waking up at the jerk on the rein and following behind. "Aye," sighed Apache Kid to me, "no wonder they say ’as crazy as a prospector.’ It’s the hills that do it. The hills and the loneliness and all that," he said with a wave of his hand in the starshine. Then suddenly he spurred forward his horse upon Donoghue and in a low, vehement voice: "Stop that, Donoghue!" he said. "What on earth are you wanting to do?" For Donoghue was glaring after the weary old prospector and dragging his Winchester from the sling at his saddle. He managed to splutter out the word "blab" as he pointed after the man and then pulled again at the Winchester which he found difficult to get free. But Apache Kid smote Donoghue’s horse upon the flank and pressed him forward and so we left the road and began breasting the hill with the stars, brilliant and seeming larger to me than ever they seemed seen through the atmosphere of the old country, shining down on us out of a cloudless sky. Perhaps it had been better had Donoghue got his rifle free, callous though it may seem to say so. For other lives might have been spared and these mountains, into the foothills of which we now plunged, have not been assoiled with the blood of many had that one solitary old prospector ceased his weary seekings and his journeyings there, as Donoghue intended. *CHAPTER X* _*In the Enemy’s Camp*_ In a little fold of the hills we made our camp, somewhere about two in the morning, I should think. Donoghue rolled off his horse at a word from Apache Kid, and stood yawning and grunting, but Apache Kid had his partner’s blankets undone in a twinkling and bade him lie down and go to sleep. Then he hobbled the horses and, sitting down on his own blanket-roll, which he had not undone: "Could you eat anything?" said he. "Eat!" I ejaculated. "Well, sleep, then?" he said. "Aye, I could sleep," said I. "I should like to sleep never to awaken." "As bad as that?" said he. "Look here," said I. "I ’ve just been thinking that I——" and I stopped. Something was creeping stealthily along the ridge of the cup in which we sat, and the horses were all snorting, drowning the sound of Donoghue’s deep breathing.