SOMEBODY laughing in the darkness?

He stood intently listening. But now he heard only the down-pour of
the rain, the sonorous gusts of the wind, the multitudinous voices
of the muttering leaves.

He said to himself that it was fancy. "All this trouble ez I hev
hed along o' Nate Griggs hev mighty nigh addled my brains."

The name recalled his resolve.

"I'll git even with him, though. I'll git even with him yit," he
reiterated as he plodded on heavily down the path, his mind once
more busy with all the details of his discovery, his misplaced
confidence, and the wreck of his hopes.

It seemed so hard that he should never before have heard of
"entering land," and of that law of the State according priority to
the finder of mineral. The mine was his, but he had hid the
discovery from all but Nate, who claimed it himself, and had secured
the legal title.

"But I'll git even with him," he said resolutely between his set
teeth.

He had thought it a lucky chance to remember, in his reverie before
the fire-lit hearth, that peg in the shed at the tanyard on which
Tim had hung his brother's coat. Somehow the episode of the
afternoon had left so vivid an impression on Birt's mind that hours
afterward he seemed to see the dull, clouded sky, the sombre,