e brink Sellon put out his hand to help
him. This, however, he ignored, and drew himself up unaided.

"What a game chap you are, Fanning," began Sellon, trying to laugh. But
the other turned to him, and there was that in the look which cut him
short.

"I only wish I could believe in your `practical joke' theory, Sellon,"
said Renshaw, and his tones were very cold and stern. "But I can't, and
I tell you so straight. Do you know that for the bare attempt at the
hideous treachery you proposed just now you would be lynched without
mercy, in any mining camp in the world. Wait--let me say it out. I
have shared my secret with you, and have given you wealth, and even now
I will not go back on our bargain--share and share alike. But there is
one condition which I must exact."

"And what's that?" asked Sellon, shortly, not at all relishing the
other's way of looking at things.

"I trusted you as fully as any man ever was trusted. I thought the
large diamond was as safe in your possession as in my own. I left it in
your possession, thereby placing temptation in your way. Now I must
insist on taking charge of it myself."

"Oh, that's another pair of shoes. Possession, you know--nine points--
eh?" answered Maurice, defiantly.

"Why, the very fact of your hesitating a moment proves what your
intentions were, and are," said Renshaw, speaking rather more quickly,
for even he was fast reaching the limits of patience. "I must ask you
to hand it over."

"And suppose I decline?"

"One of us two will not leave this place alive."

Sellon started. Well he might. There was a look upon the other's face
which he had never seen there before. Accustomed as he was to trade
upon his friend's good nature, he could hardly believe him in earnest
now. He had felt a real liking for Renshaw, sincere, but dashed with a
touch of superiority. A fine fellow in many ways, but soft in others,
had been his verdict. And now this man was actually dictating terms to
him. Even then, however, some faint stirrings of his better impulses
moved Sellon, but greed of gain, selfishness, self-importance, came
uppermost.

"I'm not the sort of man to be bullied into anything," he answered.

They stood there facing each other--there on the brink of that
marvellous treasure house--on the brink, too, of a deadly quarrel over
the riches which it had yielded them. To the generous mind of one there
was something infinitely repulsive--degrading--in