“You did, hey?” Mr. Wagg gazed off across the landscape, as if wondering how much of a trail he had left.

“You dropped ‘recuperates’ like a molting rooster drops feathers, Bart,” averred the warden, jocosely.  “That was my trail.  Reckoned I’d come and tip you off so that you can do a little scouting for the good cause.”

Mr. Wagg threw out his chest.  “You can leave this hill section to me.  Always on the job!  That’s my motto.”

The deputy said he knew that, stated that he would probably spend a week along the highways and in the villages of the section, got a drink of water from a spring near at hand, and departed with his aide.

And after the two were far down the slope, Mr. Wagg called in his campmates with the caution of a hen partridge assembling the brood after the hunter has passed.  “It means that we’ve got to stick close by this camp and mind our business for a week, at any rate,” he said, after he had reported the conversation.

Vaniman could not keep the complacency out of his countenance.  He caught the short man squinting at him with a peculiar expression.  “It would be mighty dangerous for any one of us to go far from this camp,” said the young man.

“It sure would!” agreed the convict, sententiously.

Vaniman was promptly conscious that his innocent air had not been convincing.

He became more fully aware of that fact when the tall man and the short man resumed guard duty that night, turn about.  It was plain that they proposed to hang grimly to the token in their possession until the token could be cashed in for the coin.

The confinement behind prison bars had tested Vaniman’s powers of endurance; this everlasting espionage by the men who had set themselves over him tried him still more bitterly.  They lacked the sanction of the law which even an innocent man respects while he chafes.  While that situation continued he was prevented from taking any step toward clearing up his tangled affairs.  He could look down on the roofs of the village of Egypt and meditate savagely—­and that was all.  Vona had apprised him of Britt’s plans regarding a mansion.  He could see that structure was taking shape rapidly.  Men swarmed over it like bees over a hive.  He did not doubt the loyalty of the girl.  But he was left to wonder how long her loyalty to the memory of a dead man would endure.

Day by day, through dragging hours, he suffered from the agonizing monotony of the camp.  But the future offered only a somber prospect.  After this respite in the insistence of the treasure seekers, he could expect only ugly determination when they dared to make a move in the matter.  They had plenty of leisure for talk.  They were already spending that money!  Wagg was even more impatient than the others.

Through Vaniman had been cruelly tortured by thoughts of the injustice that had been visited on him, by his reflections that the Egyptians had shown him no consideration, he had nursed the hope that he might contrive to give them back their money after he had dragged from Britt the truth.