His head felt strange and large, and inside his skull things were moving--long, gray maggots that twisted, and writhed, and squirmed, like fishing worms in a can. He laughed flatly, a senile, cackling laugh. He did not want to laugh, but laughed again and, stooping, reached for the bullets. He stared at his fingers, bewildered; they groped helplessly at a spot a foot from the place where lay the two bullets with their shining steel jackets. He must move his fingers to the right--this way. Again he stared--puzzled; they were moving farther and farther toward the left--away from the bullets. Again the dry, cackling laugh. He would fool his fingers. He would move them _away_ from the bullets. He tried, and the next instant the groping fingers closed unerringly upon the little cylinders. The laugh became an inarticulate babble of satisfaction, his knees collapsed, and he pitched forward and lay still with wide, staring eyes, while upon the corners of his mouth appeared little flecks of white foam. A shadow fell across his face--he was staring straight into the eyes of the greener, who stood, dripping wet with the water of the river into which he had fallen more than two months before. The man leaped from the ground in a sudden frenzy of terror, and fled screaming into the forest, crashing, wallowing, tearing through the underbrush, he plunged, shrieking like a demon. The greener stood alone in the clearing and listened to the diminishing sounds. At length they ceased and, in the silence, the greener turned toward the sparkling river, and as he looked there came to his ear faint and far, one last, thin scream. CHAPTER XXXI THE ROBE OF DIABLESSE It required three days of hard labor to remove the fifty-two bird's-eye maple logs to a position of safety. Jacques made a trip to the log camp, returning with a stout rope and an armload of baling wire which he collected from the vicinity of the stables. The fact that bird's-eye maple logs, when green, will sink in water, rendered necessary the use of two large pine logs as floats. These were connected at the ends and in the middle with rope sufficiently long to permit four of the heavier logs to rest upon the ropes between the floats. The raft thus formed was laboriously towed up-stream to the eddy where the bird's-eye logs were wired together, weighted with stones, and allowed to sink. During the whole time Jeanne worked tirelessly by the side of the men, and when the last log rested safely upon the bottom of the river, and the scars were carefully removed from the bank, Bill surveyed the result with satisfaction. "I think that will keep Moncrossen guessing," he laughed. "He won't know whether Creed ate the logs or an air-ship made away with them." "But, he will know they are _somewhere_," said Jeanne gravely, "and he will search for them far and wide."