“You are too suspicious, quite, Guy, even for our business.  I am older than you, and have seen something more of the world:  suspicion and caution are not the habit with young men like this.  They are free enough, and confiding enough, and in this lies our success.  It is only the old man—­the experienced in human affairs, that looks out for traps and pitfalls.  It is for the outlaw—­for you and me—­to suspect all; to look with fear even upon one another, when a common interest, and perhaps a common fate, ought to bind us together.  This being our habit, arising as it must from our profession, it is natural but not reasonable to refer a like spirit to all other persons.  We are wrong in this, and you are wrong in regard to this youth—­not that I care to save him, for if he but looks or winks awry, I shall silence him myself, without speech or stroke from you being necessary.  But I do not think he made out your features, and do not think he looked for them.  He had no time for it, after the onset, and you were well enough disguised before.  If he had made out anything, he would have shown it to-night; but, saving a little stiffness, which belongs to all these young men from Carolina, I saw nothing in his manner that looked at all out of the way.”

“Well, Munro, you are bent on having the thing as you please.  You will find, when too late, that your counsel will end in having us all in a hobble.”

“Pshaw! you are growing old and timid since this adventure.  You begin to doubt your own powers of defence.  You find your arguments failing; and you fear that, when the time comes, you will not plead with your old spirit, though for the extrication of your own instead of the neck of your neighbor.”

“Perhaps so—­but, if there be no reason for apprehension, there is something due to me in the way of revenge.  Is the fellow to hurl me down, and trench my cheek in this manner, and escape without hurt?”

The eyes of the speaker glared with a deadly fury, as he indicated in this sentence another motive for his persevering hostility to Colleton—­an hostility for which, as subsequent passages will show, he had even a better reason than the unpleasing wound in his face; which, nevertheless, was in itself, strange as it may appear, a considerable eyesore to its proprietor.  Munro evidently understood this only in part; and, unaccustomed to attribute a desire to shed blood to any other than a motive of gain or safety, and without any idea of mortified pride or passion being productive of a thirst unaccountable to his mind, except in this manner, he proceeded thus, in a sentence, the dull simplicity of which only the more provoked the ire of his companion—­

“What do you think to do, Guy—­what recompense would you seek to have—­what would satisfy you?”

The hand of Rivers grasped convulsively that of the questioner as he spoke, his eyes were protruded closely into his face, his voice was thick, choking and husky, and his words tremulous, as he replied,