e
controlled himself.

"That's not enough, Spearman," he said finally. "I--I've felt you,
somehow, underneath all these things. The first time I saw you, you
were in this house doing something you ought not to have been doing;
you fought me then; you would have killed me rather than not get away.
Two weeks ago, some one attacked me on the street--for robbery, they
said; but I know it wasn't robbery--"

"You're not so crazy as to be trying to involve me in that--"

There came a sound to them from the hall, a sound unmistakably denoting
some presence. Spearman jerked suddenly up; Alan, going to the door
and looking into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evidently had
returned to the house some time before; he had been bringing to Alan
now the accounts which he had settled. He seemed to have been standing
in the hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, looking
inquiringly from one to the other of them.

"Not friends?" he inquired. "You and Henry?"

Alan's passion broke out suddenly. "We're anything but that, Judah. I
found him, the first night I got here and while you were away, going
through my father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. He
was the one that broke into my father's desks; maybe you'll believe
that, even if no one else will."

"Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was plain that he not only
believed but that believing gave him immense satisfaction. He took
Alan's arm and led him into the smaller library. He knelt before one
of the drawers under the bookshelves--the drawer, Alan recalled, which
he himself had been examining when he had found Wassaquam watching him.
He drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon the floor; he
turned the drawer about then, and pulled the bottom out of it. Beneath
the bottom which he had removed appeared now another bottom and a few
sheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with different colored
inks.

At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them into the room,
uttered an oath and sprang forward. The Indian's small dark hand
grasped Spearman's wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fierce
grin which showed how little civilization had modified in him the
aboriginal passions. But Spearman did not try to force his way;
instead, he drew back suddenly.

Alan stooped and picked up the papers and put them in his pocket. If
the Indian had not been there, it would not have been so easy for him
to do that, he thou