Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/254

 the flaccid skin slowly took on some semblance of its former ponderosity, the watery eyes slowly lost their dead and vapid stare.

And with increase of strength came a corresponding increase of mental activity. All day long he kept turning things over in his tired brain. Hour by silent hour he would ponder the problem before him. It was more rumination than active thought. Yet up from the stagnating depths of his brooding would come an occasional bubble of inspiration.

Binhart, he finally concluded, had gone north. It was the natural thing to do. He would go where his haul was hidden away. Sick of unrest, he would seek peace. He would fall a prey to man's consuming hunger to speak with his own kind again. Convinced that his enemy was not at his heels, he would hide away somewhere in his own country. And once reasonably assured that this enemy had died as he had left him to die, Binhart would surely remain in his own land, among his own people.

Blake had no proof of this. He could not