and wide. He was a slender, weazened man, nervous, irritable, high-strung,
and anaemic--a typical child of the gutter, with unbeautiful twisted
features, small-eyed, with face and mouth perpetually and feverishly
hungry, brutish in a cat-like way, stamped to the core with degeneracy.

Matt did not finger the diamonds. He sat with chin on hands and elbows on
table, blinking heavily at the blazing array. He was in every way a
contrast to the other. No city had bred him. He was heavy-muscled and
hairy, gorilla-like in strength and aspect. For him there was no unseen
world. His eyes were full and wide apart, and there seemed in them a
certain bold brotherliness. They inspired confidence. But a closer
inspection would have shown that his eyes were just a trifle too full, just
a shade too wide apart. He exceeded, spilled over the limits of normality,
and his features told lies about the man beneath.

"The bunch is worth fifty thousan'," Jim remarked suddenly.

"A hundred thousan'," Matt said.

The silence returned and endured a long time, to be broken again by Jim.

"What in hell was he doin' with 'em all at the house?--that's what I want
to know. I'd a-thought he'd kept 'em in the safe down at the store."

Matt had just been considering the vision of the throttled man as he had
last looked upon him in the dim light of the electric lantern; but he did
not start at the mention of him.

"There's no tellin'," he answered. "He might a-ben gettin' ready to chuck
his pardner. He might a-pulled out in the mornin' for parts unknown, if we