"Twenty pounds!" exclaimed Kells, with a strange rapture in his
voice.
"Let me heft it?" asked Pearce, thrillingly.
Joan saw and heard so much, then through a kind of dimness, that she
could not wipe away, her eyes beheld Jim. What was the awful thing
that she interpreted from his face, his mien? Was this a part he was
playing to deceive Kells? The slow-gathering might of her horror
came with the meaning of that gold-belt. Jim had brought back the
gold-belt of the miner Creede. He had, in his passion to remain near
her, to save her in the end, kept his word to Kells and done the
ghastly deed.
Joan reeled and sank back upon the bed, blindly, with darkening
sight and mind.