“I hear from some of the men that you have been able to do some prospecting in the last weeks, Mr. Everett,” remarked the Senator casually from behind the veil, as he accepted and lighted a cigar.

“Just knocked around a bit,” answered Everett carelessly.  “The whole Mississippi Valley is interesting geologically.  There is quite a promise of oil here, but practically no outcrop.”

“Your examination been pretty thorough—­professional?” queried the Senator, still in an equally careless voice, though his little eyes gleamed out of their slits.

“Oh, yes, I thrashed it all out, especially Mr. Alloway’s place.  I’d like to have found oil for him—­and the rest of Sweetbriar, too, but it isn’t here.”  Everett spoke decidedly, and there was a note in his voice as if to end the discussion.  His own eyes he kept down on his cigar and, as he lounged against a post he had an air of being slightly bored by an uninteresting shop topic.  The Senator looked at him a few seconds keenly, started to make a trivial change in the conversation, then made a flank movement, bent toward Everett and began to speak in a suave and most confidential manner.

“I’m sorry, too, you didn’t find the oil on the old gentleman’s place,” he said in his most open and dulcet tones.  “I am very fond of Mr. Alloway; I may say of the whole family.  Farming is too hard work for him at his years and I would have liked for him to have had the ease of an increased income.  Some time ago a phosphate expert examined these regions, but reported nothing worth working.  I had more hope of the oil.  As I say, I am interested in Mr. Alloway and the family—­I may say it to you in confidence, particularly interested in one of the members.”  And the smile that the Senator bestowed upon Everett aroused a keen desire for murder in the first degree.  There was a challenge and a warning in it and a cunning, too, that was deeper than both.  Controlling his impulse to smash the Senatorial bulldog jaw, Everett’s mind went instantly after the cunning.

“So you only got the phosphate in your examination report of the Alloway place?” he asked in a friendly, interested tone, as if the hint had failed to make a landing.  The cunning in his own glance and tone he was shrewd enough to hide.

“That was about all—­nothing that was worth taking up then,” answered the Senator again carelessly, and at that moment Mr. Crabtree came out to join them.

In a few minutes Everett threw away his cigar, glanced across at the Briars, where he could see Rose Mary and Uncle Tucker establishing Miss Lavinia, in her high company cap, in the big chair on the front porch, and without a word he strode out the back door of the store and across the fields toward Boliver.  He stopped at the Rucker side fence and entrusted a message to the willing Jenny, and then went on into the twilight in the direction of the lights of the distant town.