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BOUT noon that day, as Pole Baker sat on a fallen tree near the road-side in the loneliest spot of that rugged country, his horse grazing behind him, he saw Craig coming up the gradual incline from the creek. Pole stood up and caught the bridle-rein of his horse and muttered:

"Now, Pole Baker, durn yore hide, you've got brains—at least, some folks say you have—an' so has he. Ef you don't git the best of that scalawag yo' re done fer. You've put purty big things through; now put this un through or shet up."

"Well, heer you are," merrily cried out the ex-banker, as he came up. He was smiling expectantly. "Your secret's safe with me. I hain't met a soul that I know sence I left town."

"I'm glad you didn't, Mr. Craig," Pole said. "I don't want anybody a-meddlin' with my business." He pointed up the rather steep and rocky road that led gradually up the mountain. "We've got two or three mile furder to go. Have you had any dinner?"

"I put a cold biscuit and a slice of ham in my pocket," said Craig. "It 'll do me till supper."

Pole mounted and led the way up the unfrequented road.

"I may as well tell you, Mr. Craig, that I used to be a moonshiner in these mountains, an'—"

"Lord, I knew that, Baker. Who doesn't, I'd like to know?"

Pole's big-booted legs swung back and forth like pendulums from the flanks of his horse.

"I was a-goin' to tell you that I had a hide-out, whar I kept stuff stored, that wasn't knowed by one livin' man."

"Well, you must have had a slick place from all I've heerd," said Craig, still in his vast good-humor with himself and everybody else.

"The best natur' ever built," said Pole; "an' what's more, it was in thar that I found the gold. I reckon it ud 'a' been diskivered long ago, ef it had 'a' been above ground."

"Then it's in—a sort of cave?" ventured Craig.

"That's jest it; but I've got the mouth of it closed up so it ud fool even a bloodhound."

Half an hour later Pole drew rein in a most isolated spot, near a great yawning canon from which came a roaring sound of rushing water and clashing winds. The sky overhead was blue and cloudless; the air at that altitude was crisp and rarefied, and held the odor of spruce pine. With a laugh Pole dismounted. "What ef I was to tell you, Mr. Craig, that you was in ten yards o' my old den right now."

Craig looked about in surprise. "I'd think you was makin' fun o' me—tenderfootin', as we used to say out West."

"I'm givin' it to you straight," said Pole, pointing with his riding-switch. "Do you see that pile o' rocks?"

Craig nodded.

"Right under them two flat ones is the mouth o' my den," said Pole. "Now let's hitch to that hemlock, an' I 'll show you the whole thing."

When they had fastened their horses to swinging limbs in a dense thicket of laurel and rhododendron bushes, they went to the pile of rocks.

"I toted mighty nigh all of 'em from higher up," Pole explained. "Some o' the biggest I rolled down from that cliff above."

"I don't see how you are going to get into your hole in the ground," said Craig, with a laugh of pleasant anticipation.

Pole picked up a big, smooth stick of hickory, shaped like a crowbar, and thrust the end of it under the largest rock. "Huh! I 'll show you in a jiffy."

It was an enormous stone weighing over three hundred pounds; but with his strong lever and knotted muscles the ex-moonshiner managed to slide it slowly to the right, disclosing a black hole about two feet square in the ragged stone. From this protruded into the light the ends of a crude ladder leading down about twenty-five feet to the bottom of the cave.

"Ugh!" Craig shuddered, as he peered into the dank blackness. "You don't mean that we are to go down there?"

It was a crisis. Craig seemed to be swayed between two impulses—a desire to penetrate farther and an almost controlling premonition of coming danger. Pole met the situation with his usual originality and continued subtlety of procedure. With his big feet dangling in the hole he threw himself back and gave vent to a hearty, prolonged laugh that went ringing and echoing about among the cliffs and chasms.

"I 'lowed this ud make yore flesh crawl," he said. "Looks like the openin' to the bad place, don't it?"

"It certainly does," said Craig, somewhat reassured by Pole's levity.

"Why, it ain' t more 'n forty feet square," said Pole. "Wait till I run down an' make a light. I've got some fat pine torches down at the foot o' the ladder."

"Well, I believe I will let you go first," said Craig, with an uneasy little laugh.

Pole went down the ladder, recklessly thumping his heels on the rungs. He was lost to sight from above, but in a moment Craig heard him strike a match, and saw the red, growing flame of a sputtering torch from which twisted a rope of smoke. When it was well ablaze, Pole called up the ladder: "Come on, now, an' watch whar you put yore feet. This end o' the ladder is solid as the rock o' Gibralty."

The square of daylight above was cut off, and in a moment the ex-banker stood beside his guide.

"Now come down this way," said Pole, and with the torch held high he led the way into a part of the chamber where the rock overhead sloped, down lower. Here lay some old whiskey-barrels, two or three lager-beer kegs, and the iron hoops of several barrels that had been burned. There were several one-gallon jugs with corn-cob stoppers. Pole swept his hand over them with a laugh. "If you was a drinkin' man, I could treat you to a thimbleful or two left in them jugs," he said, almost apologetically.

"But I don't drink, Baker," Craig said. His premonition of danger seemed to have returned to him, and to be driven in by the dank coolness of the cavern, the evidence of past outlawry around him.

Pole heaped his pieces of pine against a rock, and added to them the chunks of some barrel-staves, which set up a lively popping sound like a tiny fusillade of artillery.

"You see that rock behind you, Mr. Craig?" asked Pole. "Well, set down on it. Before we go any furder, me'n you've got to have a understanding."

The old man stared hesitatingly for an instant, and then, after carefully feeling of the stone, he complied.

"I thought we already—but, of course," he said, haltingly, "I'm ready to agree to anything that 'll make you feel safe."

"I kinder 'lowed you would,'' and to Craig's overwhelming astonishment Pole drew a revolver from his hip-pocket and looked at it, twirling the cylinder with a deft thumb.

"You mean, Baker—'' But Craig's words remained unborn in his bewildered brain. The rigor of death itself seemed to have beset his tongue. A cold sweat broke out on him.

"I mean that I've tuck the trouble to fe............