"Why, man alive, I'm well, or so near it there's no use talking. I could go home to-morrow, except, as I have had the house built, I think I'd better stay the winter in it. But before the cold weather comes on they are going to send up a darky to look after me. I only hope _I_ won't have to wait on _him_,--awful lazy nigger! He used to be a porter of ours. Loafing around these woods with a gun on his shoulder, pretending to hunt, will be just about his size. He's out of a job now, and comes cheap. I couldn't afford to pay him wages all the time, but winter is winter." He was silent a moment, gazing into the fire; then Hanway, gloomily brooding and disturbed, for the conversation had impressed him much as if it had been post-mortem, so immediate seemed his companion's doom, felt Selwyn's eye upon him, as if his sentiment were so obvious that the sense of sight had detected it. "You think I'm going to die up here all by myself. Now I tell you, my good fellow, dying is the very last thing that I expect to do." He broke out laughing anew, and this time he did not cough. Hanway could not at once cover his confusion. He looked frowningly down at the steam rising from his great cowhide boots, outstretched as they dried in the heat of the fire, and slowly shifted them one above the other. The flush on his sunburned cheek rose to the roots of his dark hair, and overspread his clumsy features. His appearance did not give token of any very great delicacy of feeling, but he regretted his transparency, and sought to nullify it. "Not that," he said disingenuously; "but bein' all by yerse'f, I wonder ye ain't willin' fur the county road ter be put through. 'T would run right by yer gate, an' ye could h'ist the winder an' talk to the folks passin'. Ye wouldn't be lonely never." For the first time Selwyn looked like a man of business. His eyes grew steady. His face was firm and serious and non-committal. He said nothing. Hanway cleared his throat and crossed his legs anew. The thought of his true intention in coming hither, not his ostensible errand, had recurred more than once to his mind,--to lay bare the secret touching the visitor to Selwyn's remote dwelling, whom he could not or would not identify; and if there were aught amiss, as the mountaineer suspected, to take such action thereupon as in the fullness of his own good judgment seemed fit. But since the man was evidently so sharp, Hanway had hitherto feared even indirectly to trench upon it; here, however, the opening was so natural, so propitious, that he was fain to take advantage of it. "An' see," he resumed, "what dangers kem o' hevin' no road. That thar man what war killed las' month, ef we hed hed a reg'lar county road, worked on an' kep' open, stiddier this hyar herder's trail, this-a-way an' that, he could hev rid along ez free an' favored, an'"--