"How did I know Hogge was coming this way that rainy night, or how do I know other things that are going on in the world that interest me?" Burke answered. "Well, how do you?" "Because I have a man on the outside whose interest it is to tell me. You don’t suppose I trust everything to chance, do you?" Burke answered. "You devil! Who’s the man?" "Well, I like that, Blott, I like that; and you an old constable, too! Why don’t you ask me to give myself up; to put a halter around my neck?" "If we’re to be pards, Burke, you must trust me, for I’ll know who’s pullin’ the strings or I won’t go on." "We are not going to be partners, Blott; or only in this. Why should we?" "Then why have you brought me here to help you?" "Because the man is said to be ugly to handle, and I might fail alone." "Well, what’m I to git out of it if we’re not pards?" Blott asked. "We are partners in this, and you are to get one-third if you do as I tell you," Burke answered. "What’m I to do?" "Nothing of any account. You are to stand beside the road and fire when I do, and if one shot doesn’t kill him, you are to keep on firing till he is dead. Is that hard, Blott? It is just play." "You won’t kill him, though, if he throws up his hands an’ we git what we want?" "Yes; he is to die whether he throws up his hands or not. That is the understanding," Burke answered. "Whose understandin’?" "My understanding with my partner, and in this he is to have his way; and why not?" Burke answered, in his soft voice. "Great God! what does he want him killed for?" "I don’t know; but what does it matter? That is always the best way, for it leaves one enemy the less." "Yes, and I hang for’t, like these dead men, while you go free, you devil! No, I’ll have nothin’ to do with the murder. I didn’t come here to kill a man ’cause somebody I don’t know wants it," Blott answered, in a determined way. "Don’t talk foolishly, Blott; don’t!" Burke replied, quietly, but with such dreadful menace in his voice that I shuddered, hearing it. "No, not a finger’ll I raise agin the man, whoever he is," Blott answered, doggedly. "Not a finger!" "You will think better of it, Blott; but come into the cabin, though it is a poor thing since the boys held it against the Regulators," Burke answered, as if to turn the subject to pleasanter things. "Were you one of ’em?" Blott asked, as if loath to go on. "No; or how should I be here? I was late, you see, and when I stuck my head out of the bushes there the cabin was afire, and our men holding up their hands and crying for mercy." "What happened then?" Blott asked.