was he in fitting this fragment of fact into his mental mosaic. It
had begun to assume the proportions of a distinct design.

He suddenly asked a question of apparent irrelevancy.

"This hyar land down the ravine don't b'long ter yer folkses--who do
it b'long ter?"

"Don't b'long ter nobody, ye weasel!" Birt retorted, in rising
wrath. "D'ye s'pose I'd be a-stealin' of gold off'n somebody else's
land?"

Nate's sly, thin face lighted up wonderfully. He seemed in a fever
of haste to terminate the conference and get away. He agreed to his
friend's proposition and promised to be at the bark-mill bright and
early in the morning. As he trudged off, Birt Dicey stood watching
the receding figure. His eyes were perplexed, his mind full of
anxious foreboding. He hardly knew what he feared. He had only a
vague sense of mischief in the air, as slight but as unmistakable as
the harbinger of storm on a sunshiny summer day.

"I wisht I hedn't tole him nuthin'," he said, as he wended his way
home that night. "Ef my mother hed knowed bout'n it all, I wouldn't
hev been 'lowed ter tell him. She DEspises the very sight o' this
hyar Nate Griggs--an' yit she say she dunno why."

After supper he sat gloomy and taciturn in the uninclosed passage
between the two rooms, watching alternately the fire-flies, as they
instarred the dark woods with ever-shifting gold sparks, and the
broad, pale flashes of heat lightning which from time to time