scarcely resist should betray him. "Blame _me_!" Under his breath
he muttered the words with almost fiendish pleasure.

His worst enemy then was the occasion of those sounds that had startled
Grandall from his reverie. But he felt himself so entirely alone, so
wholly free from any probability of being observed, that he had given the
slight noise not a second thought. During all his afternoon of sinister
gazing upon the ambitious enterprise his act had wrecked, he still
believed himself as completely alone as a man well could be in any vast
woods or wilderness.

And even when Grandall left the little valley and walked in silent
meditation to spend one night more--but one--in the old house on the Point
he heard no footsteps coming on behind. His thoughts were far from
pleasant ones but they occupied him fully. The sullen hatred so clearly
shown in the expression of his eyes and lips was but a reflection of all
that passed within his mind. Friends or foes, men were all alike to
him, and those who had never voiced a word against him he reviled equally
with those who had been his dupes, and with the men whose accusations had
caused his flight, as well.

Coming to the clubhouse, Grandall lingered for a time up and down the
weed-grown walk leading to the garage. Then while it was yet light he
went down to the rotting pier and looked long and earnestly across and
up and down the lake. Slowly he returned and, entering the house, went
at once down cellar.

In the pitch darkness he felt his way to the rear of the steps leading
from above. Striking a match or two, he examined by such flickering flames
the rough uneven wall. With bare hands, then, he seized a projecting
corner of one of the large flat stones and pulled it easily from place.

If this part of the wall had been laid up with cement or mortar it had
been broken down some time before, as would appear very probable, for the
masonry that Grandall now brought tumbling to the floor concealed a deep
aperture in the dry, sandy earth.

The thief's next lighted match revealed the hole and also revealed a damp
and discolored leather case.

Still crouching in the dark cellar Grandall managed to work the rusty
lock and lay the suit-case open. Then he struck another match and its dim
glow disclosed the carefully packed bundles of bills, and among them a bag
of coin. He nodded his head in a satisfied way. He had assured himself
on first arriving at the old house that the treasu