hed again. "I ken
see clear through Eve. If Will was dead, in six months she'd marry
agin. D'ye know who? Jim Thorpe. She's jest a fool gal. She's allus
liked Jim a heap. That night's stickin' in her head. She ain't fergot
Jim--nor you. Say, d'you know what she's doin'? When Will sends her
money she sets it aside an' don't touch it. She don't buy things for
herself. She hates it. She lives on her sewin'. That's Eve. I tell you
she hates Will, same as I do, an' I'm--I'm glad."

Peter smiled incredulously. He didn't believe that the girl's love for
her husband was dead. Possibly her attitude deceived the lad, as well
it might. How could one of his years understand a matter of this sort?
But he thought long before he replied to the venomous tirade. He knew
he must stop the lad's intention. He felt that it was not for him to
hunt Will down, even--even if he were a cattle-thief.

"Look here, laddie," he said at last, "I promised you all the gold I
found in this place. I'm going to keep that promise, but you've got to
do something for me. See? Now I'm not going to say you can't track
Will if you've a notion to. But I do say this, if he's on the crook,
and you find it out, you'll promise only to tell me and no one else.
You leave Will to me. I'm not going to have you hanging your sister's
husband. You've got to promise me, laddie, or you don't see the color
of my gold. And don't you try to play me up, either, because I'll soon
know if you are. Are you going to have that gold?"

The boy's face was obstinately set. Yet Peter realized that his
cupidity was fighting with the viciousness of his twisted mind, and
had no doubt of the outcome. The thought of seeing Will hang was a
delirious joy to Elia. He saw the man he hated suffering, writhing in
agony at the end of a rope, and dying by inches. It was hard to give
it up. Yet the thought of Peter's gold--not the man himself, of whom,
in his strange fashion, he was fond--was very sweet. Gold! It appealed
to him, young as he was, as it might have appealed to a mind forty
years older; the mind of a man beaten by poverty and embittered by a
long life of hopeless struggle. Finally, as Peter expected, cupidity
won the day, but not without a hot verbal protest.

"You're a fool man some ways, Peter," the boy at last declared in a
snarling acquiescence. "What for d'you stop me? Gee, you've nothing to
help him for. Say, I'd watch him die, I'd spit at him. I'd--I'd----"
But his frenzy of e