Did the town know? He snatched at the draft and read the date. More than a year ago, and it had been presented for payment in a distant city, the city near which he had been picked up beside the railroad track. The forged name was the same as his own. Who was David Stires? His father? Had that city been his home once, and that infamous act the forerunner of his flight or exile? He looked at the paper again with painful intentness. It was canceled--therefore had been paid without question. Yet the man it had robbed had stamped it with that venomous hall-mark. Clearly the law had not stepped in--for here he was at liberty, owning his name. He had been let go, then, disowned, to carry his badge of crime here into the wilderness! And how had he lived since then? Harry shuddered.
What now? It was no longer a question only of his life and repute here at Smoky Mountain. The trail led infinitely further; it led to the greater world, into which he had fondly dreamed of going. The words Jessica had spoken on the hillside sounded in his ears: "_Whatever has been_ I have faith in you now." His face lightened. That assurance had swept the past utterly aside, had leaned only on the present. His present, at least, was clean!
He drew a sudden breath and the color faded from his cheek; a baleful suggestion had insinuated itself with a harrowing pain. _Was_ it clean? He had forced an entrance in the dead of night to tread dark halls like a thief--and he had laid that flattering unction to his soul! Suppose he had not gone there innocent of purpose? What if, not alone the memory, but the lusts and vices of the former man were reasserting themselves in sleep? What if the new Hugh Stires, unknown to the waking consciousness, was carrying on the deeds of the old? What if the town was right? What if there was, indeed, good reason for suspecting him?
He stumbled to a chair and sat down, his frame rigid. He thought of the robbed sluice in the gulch below, of his own unhappy adventure of the night. How could he tell what he had done--what he might do? Minutes went by as he sat motionless, his mind catching strange kaleidoscopic pictures that fled past him into the void. At length he rose and went to the window. Far down the hillside, a faint line through the mist spanned the gulch bottom. A groan burst from his lips: