a wonderful exhilaration of spirit.  Once more he canvassed his scheme.  This was the one great opportunity of his restricted life.  Visions of future possibilities were opening wide their fascinating vistas.  He might make enough to buy a horse, and this expressed his idea of wealth.  “But ef I live ter git a cent out’n it,” he said to himself, “I’ll take the very fust money I kin call my own an’ buy Tennessee a chany cup an’ sarcer, an’ a string o’ blue beads an’ a caliky coat—­ef I die fur it.”

His pleased reverie was broken by a sudden discovery.  He was not standing among stones about the great bowlder; no—­his foot had sunk deep in the sand!  He stooped down in the darkness and felt about him.  The spot was not now as he had left it yesterday afternoon.  He was sure of this, even before a fleet, wan flash of the heat lightning showed him at his feet the unmistakable signs of a recent excavation.  It was not deep, it was not broad; but it was fresh and it betrayed a prying hand.  Again the heat lightning illumined the wide, vague sky.  He saw the solemn dark forests; he saw the steely glimmer of the lick; the distant mountains flickered against the pallid horizon; and once more—­densest gloom.

CHAPTER III.

It was Nate who had been here,—­Birt felt sure of that; Nate, who had promised he would not come.

Convinced that his friend was playing a false part, Birt went at once to the bark-mill in the morning, confident that he would not find Nate at work in the tanyard according to their agreement.

It was later than usual, and Jubal Perkins swore at Birt for his tardiness.  He hardly heard; and as the old bark-mill ground and ground the bark, and the mule jogged around and around, and the hot sun shone, and the voices of the men handling the hides at the tanpit were loud on the air, all his thoughts were of the cool, dark, sequestered ravine, holding in its cloven heart the secret he had discovered.

Rufus happened to come to the tanyard today.  Birt seized the opportunity.

“Rufe,” he said, “ye see I can’t git away from the mill, ’kase I’m ’bleeged ter stay hyar whilst the old mule grinds.  But ef ye’ll go over yander ter Nate Griggs’s house an’ tell him ter come over hyar, bein’ ez I want to see him partic’lar, I’ll fix ye a squir’l-trap before long ez the peartest old Bushy-tail on the mounting ain’t got the gumption ter git out’n.  An’ let me know ef Nate ain’t thar.”

Rufe was disposed to parley.  He stood first on one foot, then on the other.  He cast calculating eyes at the bark-mill and out upon the deep forest.  The exact date on which this promise was to be fulfilled had to be fixed before he announced his willingness to set out.

Ten to one, he would have gone without the bribe, had none been suggested, for he loved the woods better than the woodpile, and a five-mile tramp through its tangles wearied his bones not so much as picking up a single basketful of chips.  Some boys’ bones are constituted thus, strange as it may seem.