you and your folks kin use
this house and all that's in it ez long ez you're in trouble. I've
told you why I couldn't sell the house to ye, and why I couldn't leave
it. But ye kin use it, and while ye're here, and when you go,
Collinson don't tell nobody. I don't know what ye mean by 'binding
myself' to keep your secret; when Collinson says a thing he sticks to
it, and when he passes his word with a man, or a man passes his word
with him, it don't need no bit of paper."

There was no doubt of its truth. In the grave, upraised eyes of his
prisoner, Chivers saw the certainty that he could trust him, even far
more than he could trust any one within the house he had just quitted.
But this very certainty, for all its assurance of safety to himself,
filled him, not with remorse, which might have been an evanescent
emotion, but with a sudden alarming and terrible consciousness of being
in the presence of a hitherto unknown and immeasurable power! He had
no pity for man who trusted him; he had no sense of shame in taking
advantage of it; he even felt an intellectual superiority in this want
of sagacity in his dupe; but he still felt in some way defeated,
insulted, shocked, and frightened. At first, like all scoundrels, he
had measured the man by himself; was suspicious and prepared for
rivalry; but the grave truthfulness of Collinson's eyes left him
helpless. He was terrified by this unknown factor. The right that
contends and fights often stimulates its adversary; the right that
yields leaves the victor vanquished. Chivers could even have killed
Collinson in his vague discomfiture, but he had a terrible
consciousness that there was something behind him that he could not
make way with. That was why this accomplished rascal felt his flaccid
cheeks grow purple and his glib tongue trip before his captive.

But Collinson, more occupied with his own shortcomings, took no note of
this, and Chivers quickly recovered his wits, if not his former
artificiality. "All right," he said quickly, with a hurried glance at
the door behind him. "Now that you think better of it, I'll be frank
with you, and tell you I'm your friend. You understand,--your friend.
Don't talk much to those men--don't give yourself away to them;" he
laughed this time in absolute natural embarrassment. "Don't talk about
your wife, and this house, but just say you've made the thing up with
me,--with ME, you know, and I'll see you through." An idea, as yet