his new labourer, could not be expected to see it in that light. Then,
too, on all impersonal subjects of conversation which arose, it was the
nature of Bates to contradict and argue; whereas Trenholme, who had
little capacity for reasonable argument, usually dealt with
contradiction as a pot of gunpowder deals with an intruding spark. As
regarded the personal subject of his own misfortune--a subject on which
Trenholme felt he had a certain right to receive confidence--Bates's
demeanour was like an iron mask.

Bates scorned the idea, which Turrif had always held, that Cameron had
never really died; he vowed, as before, that the box he had sent in
Saul's cart had contained nothing but a dead body; he would hear no
description of the old man who, it would seem, had usurped Cameron's
name; he repeated stolidly that Saul had put his charge into some
shallow grave in the forest, and hoaxed Trenholme, with the help of an
accomplice; and he did not scruple to hint that if Trenholme had not
been a coward he would have seized the culprit, and so obviated further
mystery and after difficulties. There was enough truth in this view of
the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme. But Bates did not seem
to cherish anger for that part of his trouble that had been caused by
this defect; rather he showed an annoying indifference to the whole
affair. He had done what he could to bury his late partner decently; he
neither expressed nor appeared to experience further emotion concerning
his fate.

When a man has set himself to anything, he generally sticks to it, for a
time at least; this seemed to be the largest reason that Trenholme had
the first four weeks for remaining where he was. At any rate, he did
remain; and from these unpromising materials, circumstance, as is often
the case, beat, out a rough sort of friendship between the two men. The