ithout stepping out of
your tracks."

Freckles drew back.

"You needn't be afraid of speaking up," he said. "There isn't a soul in
the Limberlost save the birds and the beasts, unless some of your sort's
come along and's crowding the privileges of the legal tinints."

"None of my friends along," said Wessner. "Nobody knew I came but Black,
I--I mean a friend of mine. If you want to hear sense and act with
reason, he can see you later, but it ain't necessary. We can make all
the plans needed. The trick's so dead small and easy."

"Must be if you have the engineering of it," said Freckles. But he
heard, with a sigh of relief, that they were alone.

Wessner was impervious. "You just bet it is! Why, only think, Freckles,
slavin' away at a measly little thirty dollars a month, and here is a
chance to clear five hundred in a day! You surely won't be the fool to
miss it!"

"And how was you proposing for me to stale it?" inquired Freckles. "Or
am I just to find it laying in me path beside the line?"

"That's it, Freckles," blustered the Dutchman, "you're just to find it.
You needn't do a thing. You needn't know a thing. You name a morning
when you will walk up the west side of the swamp and then turn round
and walk back down the same side again and the money is yours. Couldn't
anything be easier than that, could it?"

"Depinds entirely on the man," said Freckles. The lilt of a lark hanging
above the swale beside them was not sweeter than the sweetness of his
voice. "To some it would seem to come aisy as breathing; and to some,
wringin' the last drop of their heart's blood couldn't force thim! I'm
not the man that goes into a scheme like that with the blindfold over
me eyes, for, you see, it manes to break trust with the Boss; and I've
served him faithful as I knew. You'll have to be making the thing very
clear to me understanding."

"It's so dead easy," repeated Wessner, "it makes me tired of the
simpleness of it. You see there's a few trees in the swamp that's real
gold mines. There's three especial. Two are back in, but one's square on
the line. Why, your pottering old Scotch fool of a Boss nailed the
wire to it with his own hands! He never noticed where the bark had been
peeled, or saw what it was. If you will stay on this side of the trail
just one day we can have it cut, loaded, and ready to drive out at
night. Next morning you can find it, report, and be the busiest man
in the search for us. We know where to fi