One more than ordinarily prolonged and loud snort afforded Ruth an opportunity of changing her cramped position, and at the same time of obtaining a clearer view of the scene before her. Almost immediately facing her, at the corner of the table, sat Rumsey, staring with such a fixed steady gaze straight before him, through the lamp's thin flickering flame, that she trembled and sank crouching to the floor. Could he have caught sight of her? Never a fear of that. For even if he had chanced to notice the long straggling crack in the wainscot, and that tiny hole caused by the displacement of a little knot in the wood, you had but to look at his moody face a second time, to be sure that his thoughts were blinding his outward senses to all around him; save when from time to time he turned his head on his sleeping companion with an ugly look of mingled mistrust and contempt. [Sidenote: Rumsey draws cold steel.] "Clod! idiot!" he growled at last through his clenched teeth, at the same time drawing a short poignard from a sheath in his buff leathern belt, and throwing it on the table with such a clatter that it woke the sheriff, who sat up with a start of terror. "Ha; thieves!" he shouted. "Murder! Call the watch!" "Come, come, sheriff; what's the matter?" laughed Rumsey. "Are you dreaming still? don't you know where you are? Hey! look about you, man." Goodenough obeyed mechanically; and his dazed eyes, as fate would have it, fell first upon the naked dagger, glittering in the lamplight--"What's that? what's that?" he shrieked again, startled into all his senses at the sight of the thing. "Take it away! For mercy's sake, take it away," he entreated piteously. "It--it's just what I've been dreaming about! Put it up, Master Rumsey; dear Master Rumsey, put it away in its proper place." "When I am quite sure where that is, I will," coolly answered Rumsey. "In the meantime you and I, sheriff, will just have a little bit of gossip together. There couldn't be a nicer opportunity for it, while we've got the place all snug to ourselves; 'under four eyes,' as they used to call it when I served in Italy." [Sidenote: The sheriff and his enemy,] "But where are they all?" said Goodenough, staring round into the darkness visible, with eyes now thoroughly wide-awake. "And how the plague came I to fall asleep?" "I suppose only Sheriff Goodenough can solve that problem," answered Rumsey with a shrug. "But where are they all?" persisted Goodenough. "Ah!" impatiently said Rumsey, "down below." "Down below!" gasped Goodenough. "Oughtn't we to be there along with them, colonel? They'd no business to go leaving us all alone;" and the sheriff shivered--"Eh, ought they now? Let's be going too, shall we?" and Goodenough rose to his feet, and began stumbling in his haste to reach the door, over the disorder of chairs and footstools. "I'd rather, I would indeed."