Then George showed Jacky how he had given Abner one-third of all his sheep and cattle, and Jacky two-thirds, and how McLaughlan, a just man, would see the division made.  “And do leave the woods, except for a hunt now and then, Jacky; you are too good for them.”

Above all, George explained with homely earnestness the nature of the sheep, her time of lambing, etc., and showed Jacky how the sheep and cattle would always keep him fed and clothed, if he would but use them reasonably, and not kill the breeders for dinner.

And Jacky listened with glistening eyes, for George’s glistened, and the sweet tones of affection and gratitude pierced through this family talk, and it is sad that we must drop the curtain on this green spot in the great camp and go among our villains.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

ROBINSON did not overrate the fatal power of the fabulous mass of gold, a glimpse of which he had incautiously given to greedy eyes.  It drew brutus like a magnet after it.  He came all in a flutter to mephistopheles, and told him he had met the two men carrying a lump of solid gold between them so heavy that the sticks bent under it.  “The sweat ran down me at the sight of it, but I managed to look another way directly.”

What with the blows and kicks and bruises and defeats he had received, and with the gold mass his lawless eye had rested on, brutus was now in a state of mind terrible to think of.

Lust and hate, terrible twins, stung that dark heart to frenzy.  Could he have had his will he would have dispensed with cunning, would have gone out and fired bullets from his gun into the tent, and, if his enemies came out alive, have met them hand to hand to slay or be slain.  But the watchful foe had disarmed him, and he was compelled to listen to the more reynard-like ferocity of his accomplice.

“Bill,” said the assassin of Carlo, “keep cool, and you shall have the swag; and yet not lose your revenge neither.”

“——­ you, tell me how.”

“Let the bottle alone, then; you are hot enough without that.  Come nearer me.  What I have got to say is not the sort of thing for me to bawl about.  We should not be alive half an hour if it was heard to come from our lips.”

The two heads came close together, and Crawley leaned over the other side of the table and listened with senses keen as a razor.

“Suppose I show you how to make those two run out of their tent like two frightened women, and never once think about their swag?”

“Ah!”

“And fall blinded for life or dead or dying while we walk off with the swag.”

“Blind, dead, dying! give me your hand.  How? how? how?”

“Hush! don’t shout like that; come closer, and you, Smith.”