timorous star palpitated in the sky. In the sudden stillness when
the bark-mill ceased its whir, the mountain torrent hard by lifted a
mystic chant. The drone of the katydid vibrated in the laurel, and
the shrill-voiced cricket chirped. Two of the men were in the shed
examining a green hide by the light of a perforated tin lantern,
that seemed to spill the rays in glinting white rills. As they
flickered across the pile of bark where Rufe and Tennessee were
sitting, he noticed how alert Birt looked, how bright his eyes were.

For Birt's hopes were suddenly renewed. He thought that some
mischance had detained Nate to-day, and that he would come to-morrow
to work at the bark-mill.

The boy's blood tingled at the prospect of being free to seek for
treasure down the ravine. He began to feel that he had been too
quick to distrust his friend. Perhaps the stipulation that Nate
should not go to the ravine until the work commenced was more than
he ought to have asked. And perhaps, too, the trespasser was not
Nate! The traces of shallow delving might have been left by another
hand. Birt paused reflectively in unharnessing the mule. He stood
with the gear in one hand, serious and anxious, in view of the
possibility that this discovery was not his alone.

Then he strove to cast aside the thought. He said to himself that
he had been hasty in concluding that the slight excavation argued
human presence in that lonely spot; a rock dislodged and rolling
heavily down the gorge might have thus scraped into the sand and
gravel; or perhaps some burrowing animal, prospecting for winter
quarters, had begun to dig a hole under the bowlder.