The feeble
grasp that his shaken intellect kept of the events of the night
relaxed, the disguised Lance, the story of his son, the murder, slipped
into nothingness; there remained only the one idea, his nightly watch
by the diamond pit. The instinct of long habit was stronger than the
darkness or the onset of the storm, and he kept his tottering way over
stream and fallen timber until he reached the spot. A sudden tremor
seemed to shake the lambent flame that had lured him on. He thought he
heard the sound of voices; there were signs of recent
disturbance,--footprints in the sawdust! With a cry of rage and
suspicion, Fairley slipped into the pit and sprang toward the nearest
opening. To his frenzied fancy it had been tampered with, his secret
discovered, the fruit of his long labors stolen from him that very
night. With superhuman strength he began to open the pit, scattering
the half-charred logs right and left, and giving vent to the
suffocating gases that rose from the now incandescent charcoal. At
times the fury of the gale would drive it back and hold it against the
sides of the pit, leaving the opening free; at times, following the
blind instinct of habit, the demented man would fall upon his face and
bury his nose and mouth in the wet bark and sawdust.
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