“You leave the damned hunks and come with me; don’t you be afraid.  I’ll take care of him.”

The boy thanked him with tears in his eyes, but shuddered and said he “dasn’t risk it”; he said Flint would catch him alone, some time, in the night, and then—­“Oh, it makes me sick, Mr. Riley, to think of it.”

Others said, “Run away from him; we’ll stake you; skip out for the coast some night.”  But all these suggestions failed; he said Flint would hunt him down and fetch him back, just for meanness.

The people could not understand this.  The boy’s miseries went steadily on, week after week.  It is quite likely that the people would have understood if they had known how he was employing his spare time.  He slept in an out-cabin near Flint’s; and there, nights, he nursed his bruises and his humiliations, and studied and studied over a single problem—­how he could murder Flint Buckner and not be found out.  It was the only joy he had in life; these hours were the only ones in the twenty-four which he looked forward to with eagerness and spent in happiness.

He thought of poison.  No—­that would not serve; the inquest would reveal where it was procured and who had procured it.  He thought of a shot in the back in a lonely place when Flint would be homeward bound at midnight—­his unvarying hour for the trip.  No—­somebody might be near, and catch him.  He thought of stabbing him in his sleep.  No—­he might strike an inefficient blow, and Flint would seize him.  He examined a hundred different ways—­none of them would answer; for in even the very obscurest and secretest of them there was always the fatal defect of a risk, a chance, a possibility that he might be found out.  He would have none of that.

But he was patient, endlessly patient.  There was no hurry, he said to himself.  He would never leave Flint till he left him a corpse; there was no hurry—­he would find the way.  It was somewhere, and he would endure shame and pain and misery until he found it.  Yes, somewhere there was a way which would leave not a trace, not even the faintest clue to the murderer—­there was no hurry—­he would find that way, and then—­oh, then, it would just be good to be alive!  Meantime he would diligently keep up his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he would allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about his oppressor.

Two days before the before-mentioned October morning Flint had bought some things, and he and Fetlock had brought them home to Flint’s cabin:  a fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint’s bunk; a huge coil of fuse, which they hung on a peg.  Fetlock reasoned that Flint’s mining operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin now.  He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process,