The place had a mighty fascination for him, as if it might have played a tremendous part in long-gone passages of his own life.  As he stood gazing at it cautiously, the mountaineer seemed definitely to emerge from his low-country dress and superficial “bluegrass” manner, fastened on him by long years of usage.  Old expressions of not only face but muscles came clearly to the front.  Now, no person watching him, could ever for a moment doubt that he was mountain-born and mountain-bred, if they but knew the ear-marks of that people—­almost a race apart.  The sight of the old cave-mouth plainly stirred in him a horde of memories not wholly pleasant.  Leathern as his face was, it none the less showed his emotions with remarkable lucidity now that he was off his guard.  Now sly cunning dominated it, with, possibly, a touch left of the early fear to flavor it.

“I bet a hundred revenuers in these mountains have looked for that there still,” he thought, “an’ no one ever found it, yet.  Forty years it’s been thar—­through three generations o’ th’ Loreys—­damn ’em!—­an’ no one’s ever squealed on ’em.  I ... wonder....”

A look of vicious craft and malice wholly drove away the searching curiosity which had possessed the old man’s features.  For a time he plainly planned some work of bitter vengefulness.  Then, with shaking head, he evidently abandoned the enticing thought.

“Too resky,” he concluded, and edged a little nearer to the thicket’s edge.  “Might stir up old—­”

He paused suddenly, alert and keenly listening.  From another path than that by which he had approached the place there came the sound of voices raised in talk and laughter.  He easily identified them, to his great surprise, as those of some young mountain-girl and some young bluegrass gentleman.  Their tones and accents told this story plainly.  Surprised and curious, he went farther, his head bent, with study of the voices, peering, meanwhile, through the thicket’s tangle to get sight of them as soon as they appeared within the clearing.  Suddenly he dropped his jaw in blank amazement.

“Frank Layson!” he exclaimed.

The girl’s voice he did not recognize, but knew, of course, from its peculiar accent, that it was some mountain maiden’s.

“Well!” he exclaimed beneath his breath in absolute astonishment.  “I didn’t think it of Frank Layson!  What would Barbara—­”

The pair emerged, now, from a gully by-path, and came into view.  He tightly shut his jaws and watched them with a peering, eager curiosity.

A moment later, and by her wonderful resemblance to her dead mother, he recognized the girl.

She, above all people, must not know that he was there, even if she only thought him to be Horace Holton, newcomer among the bluegrass gentry in the valley.  His plans had been laid carefully, and for her to find them out would almost certainly upset them all.  He was far from anxious to meet Layson, there among the mountains, for it would mean awkward questioning, but he was doubly anxious to avoid a meeting with the girl, first because she owned the land on which he had secured the bits of rock then nestling in his pocket, and, second, because she was the daughter of—­