“I’m speakin’ it for your own good,” the old man answered, throwing into his voice as much of frankness as he could command.  “I tell you that th’ revemooers have got word about your still.”

“Then somebody’s spied an’ told ’em.”

Here was Holton’s chance.  The vicious scheme came to him in a flash.  Layson he hated fiercely; this youth he hated fiercely.  What plan could be better than to set the one to hunt the other?  If Lorey should kill Layson it would remove Layson from his path and make his way clear to the purchase of Madge Brierly’s coal-lands at a small fraction of their value.  And, having killed him, Lorey would, of course, be forced to flee the country, for the hue and cry would be far-reaching.  Such a killing never would be passed over as an ordinary mountain murder generally is by the authorities.  Thus, at once, he might be rid of the young bluegrass gentleman he hated and the young mountaineer he feared.

“You’re right,” said he.  “Somebody’s spied an’ told ’em.  Somebody as stumbled on yore still while he was huntin’.”

Lorey looked at him, wide-eyed, infuriated.  Instantly he quite believed what Holton said.  It dove-tailed with his own grim hate of Layson that Layson should hate him and try to work his ruin by giving information to the revenuers.  “Somebody huntin’!” he exclaimed.  “Frank Layson!  Say it, say it!”

“Promise you’ll never speak my name?” said Holton.  He had no wish to be mixed up in the tragic matter, and he knew, instinctively, that if Joe Lorey gave his word, moonshiner and lawbreaker as he was, it would be kept to the grim end.

“I promise it, if it air th’ truth you’re tellin’ me,” said Lorey.

“It’s true, then,” Holton answered.  “You can see for your own self that I’m a stranger hyar.  I couldn’t a’ knowed o’ th’ still exceptin’ through Frank Layson.”

The simple, specious argument to Lorey was convincing.  “It air true,” he admitted slowly.  “Nobody else would a’ gin ye th’ word.”  The angry youth paused in black, murderous thought.  “He air a-comin’ hyar, to-night,” he went on presently.  “I heered him tell Madge Brierly that he war comin’ back, this evenin’.  You better—­maybe you had better git along.”  He had no wish for witnesses to what he planned, now, to accomplish, when Layson should come back to Madge, as he had promised, with the engineer’s report upon her coal lands.

Holton nodded, grimly satisfied that he had planted a suspicion which might flower into his own revenge.  That blow which Layson had delivered on his face, in the old days, had left a scar upon his soul, and now that the young man seemed likely to add to this unforgotten injury the new one of retiring from the field as suitor for his daughter, and, further, interfering with his plans to rob Madge Brierly of her coal lands, his hatred of him had become intense, insatiable.  What better fortune could he wish than to pit this mountain youth, whom, also, for a reason carried over from dark days in his past life, he hated, against the young man from the bluegrass whom he hated no less bitterly?