Emmet Prendergast saw the abstracted regard as he came up the trail from the town. He was in an ugly humor. The bag of gold-dust which he had shown to Harry he had not returned to the hiding-place in the wall, and with this in his pocket the faro-table had that day tempted him. The pouch was empty now.
Harry's back was toward him, and the gold-pan in which he had been washing the gravel lay at his feet. With a noiseless, mirthless laugh Prendergast stole into the cabin and reached down from the shelf the bottle into which each day Harry had poured his scanty findings. He weighed it in his hand--almost two ounces, a little less than twenty dollars. He hastily took the empty bag from his pocket.
But just then a shadow darkened the doorway and Harry entered. He saw the action, and, striding forward, took the bottle from the other's hand.
Prendergast turned on him, a sinister snarl under his affectation of surprise. "Can't you attend to your own rat-killing?" he growled. "I guess I've got a right to what I need."
"Not to that," said Harry quietly. "We shall touch the bottom of the flour sack to-morrow. You expect to get your meals here, I presume."
"I still look forward to that pleasure," answered Prendergast with an evil sneer. "Three meals a day and a rotten roof over my head. When I think of the little I have done to deserve it, the hospitality overcomes me! All I have done is to keep you from starving to death and out of quod at the same time. I only taught you a safe way to beat the game--an easier one than you seem to know now--and to live on Easy Street!"
"I am looking for no easy way," responded Harry, "whatever you mean by that. I expect to earn my living as I'm earning it now--it's an honest method, at all events."
"You've grown all-fired particular since you lost your memory," retorted Prendergast, his eyes narrowing. "You'll be turning dominie one of these days! Perhaps you expect to get the town to take up with you, and to make love to the beauty in the green riding-habit that brought you here on her horse the night you were out of your head!"
Harry started. "What do you mean?" he asked thickly.
Prendergast's oily manner was gone now. His savage temper came uppermost.