it was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all save the principal fact of the carrying off of mistress margery and her maid was hazy enough.

pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress and her tire-woman had been captured.

so far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen nothing. there had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of indian yells, shouts from the men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. after which he knew no more till some one—his master, as he thought—kicked him alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to appleby hundred, crying the news as he went that mistress margery stair and her maid had been kidnapped by the indians.

pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. pinned again, it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his orders was his master. in the darkness and confusion he could make sure of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and the wording of the message he carried.

when we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him once more a-gallop on the road to appleby hundred. that done, a hurried council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one. jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and ephraim yeates and the catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without a second thought, sided indifferently with him. for my part, i was for going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy exhaustion, starvation and failure.

we grew hot upon it, richard and i; he with a young lover's unrecking rashness, and i with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn; and ephraim yeates and the catawba drew aside and let us have it out. dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age in my face and swearing hotly that i knew not so much as the alphabet of love.

the taunts were passed in silence, since i would set them over against the irrevocable wrong i had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of jealous wrath.

but when he would give me space i set the hopelessness of pursuit, all unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. the chase might well be a long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. the hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer heat we would be forced to kill daily. on the other hand, with horses, a bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should be in some more hopeful case; and, notwithstanding the delay in starting, could make far better speed.

for all the good it did i might have spared my pains and saved my breath. jennifer broke me in the midst, crying out that i was even now killing the precious minutes; and so our ill-starred venture had its launching in the frenzied haste that seldom makes for speed. one small concession i wrung out of his impatience—this with the help of yeates and the catawba. we went back to the breakfast camp, rekindled the fire, and cooked what we could keep and carry of the venison.

in spite of this delay it was yet early in the forenoon of that memorable sunday, the twentieth of august, when we set our faces southward and took up the line of march to the ford of the ambushment. by now the sky was wholly overcast, and the wind was blowing fresher in the tree-tops; but though as yet the storm held off, the air was the cooler for the threatened rain and this was truly a blessing, since the old hunter put us keen upon our mettle to keep pace with him.

we marched in indian file, ephraim yeates in the lead, uncanoola at his heels, and the two of us heavier-footed ones bringing up the rear. knowing the wooded wilderness by length and breadth, the old man held on through thick and thin, straight as an arrow to the mark; and so we had never a sight of the road again till we came out upon it suddenly at the ford of violence.

here i should have been in despair for the lack of any intelligible hint to point the way; and i think not even jennifer, with all his woodcraft, could have read the record of the onfall as yeates and the catawba did. but for all the overlapping tangle of moccasin and hoof prints neither of these men of the forest was at fault, though ten minutes later even their skill must have been baffled, inasmuch as the first few spitting raindrops were pattering in the tree-tops when we came upon the ground.

"that's jest about what i was most afeard of," said the borderer, with a hasty glance skyward. "down on your hunkers, chief, and help me read this sign afore the good lord takes to sending his rain on the jest and the unjest," and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground like trained dogs nosing for a scent.

we stood aside and watched them, richard and i, realizing that we were of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the laying on of hearty blows. after the closest scrutiny, which took account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in the dusty road, yeates and the indian gave over and came to join us under the sheltering branches of an oak.

"'tis a mighty cur'is sign; most mighty cur'is," quoth the hunter, slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every precious grain. "ez i allow, i never heerd tell of any injuns a-doing that-away afore; have you, chief? hey?"

the catawba's negative was his guttural "wah," and ephraim yeates, having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.

"mighty cur'is, ez i was a-saying. them injuns fixed up an ambushment, blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up with a tomahawk and knife rush,—lessen that there afrikin was too plumb daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. and, spite of all this here rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole enduring scrimmage! mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? and that ain't all: some o' them same injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing boots with spurs onto 'em. what say, chief?"

uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other. "sebben injun; one pale-face," he said, in confirmation.

i looked at richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty curse to speed it.

"falconnet!" said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and i nodded.

"'twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez i reckon," drawled yeates. "maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving at."

jennifer shook his head, and i, too, was silent. 'twas out of all reason to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. it was a curious mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.

"and yit that ain't all. whilst some o' the injuns was a-whooping it up acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the side o' the road. then mister hoss-captain picks up the afrikin, chucks him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after which he climbs his hoss and makes tracks hisself—not to ketch up with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across the creek and down the road to the southward.

jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest fashion, and after all could only say: "you are sure you have the straight of it, eph?"

the borderer appealed to uncanoola. "come, chief; give us the wo'th of your jedgment. has the old gray wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read them sign like they'd ort to be read?"

"wah! the gray wolf has sharp eye—sharp nose—sharp tongue, sometime. sign no can lie when he read 'um."

jennifer turned to me. "what say you, jack? 'tis all far enough beyond me, i'll confess."

i was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do seemed plain enough.

"never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis mistress margery's hazard that concerns us," i would say. and then to ephraim yeates: "will this rain kill the trail, think you?"

he shook his head dubiously. "i dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o' differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. ez it starts out, with the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the run."

"then let us be at it," said i. "we can very well afford to let the mystery untangle itself as we go." and with this the pursuit began in relentless earnest.

the trail of the two horses ridden by margery and her woman cut a right angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could follow at a smart dog-trot.

in this speeding the old hunter and the indian easily outwearied jennifer and me. they both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse. mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when, well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, i was fain to follow jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.

this breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began again, ephraim yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail, measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. when we came up with him he was mumbling to himself.

"um-hm; jes' so. they was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure; larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. now, says i to myself, what's the tarnation hurry? ain't they got all the time there is to get where they're a-going, immejitly, if not sooner?" then he turned upon me. "cap'n john, can't you and the youngster lay your heads side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up to? it do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his injuns leave a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could follow at a canter."

richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was to the full as blank as his. i made sure some deep-laid plot was at the bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all its devilish ingenuity.

but now "forward," was the word, and we fell in line again, and again the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack of weariness. happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day dusk came early; and though yeates and the indian, running now with their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long after richard jennifer and i were bat-blind for any seeing of the hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were, fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a scanty supper.

after the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the full as miserable.

fagged as i was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget; a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. what grievous hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was i to blame for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? was it a sharp foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her into sending the appeal for help?

with this, i fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message, hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own. though i made sure she did not love me,—had never loved me as other than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond the pale of sentiment,—yet i had hoped this friendship-love would give her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.

was i the one to whom her message had been sped? suddenly i remembered what richard had said; that the arrow was the catawba's. if uncanoola were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had been sent.

his burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and i could hear his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild creature—as, truly, he was—sleeping with all the senses alert to spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. a word would arouse him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.

i thought of all this, and yet, when i would have wakened the indian, a shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. for while the doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me, making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. and in that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender chance for hope i should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in her service.

so i forebore to wake the indian; and following out this thought of service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather fresh strength for the new day's measure.