"Barton Smith!" called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party. There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold. His conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his suspicion?
"Smith! _Smith_" cried the irascible officer. "Hey, there! Is the man deaf!"
"Not deef, edzac'ly," Meddlesome's voice sounded reproachfully; "jes a leetle hard o' hear in'." She had administered a warning nudge.
"Hey? What ye want?" said the "Wolf's Head," suddenly checking his horse.
"Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?" demanded the officer, sternly.
"Just acrost the gorge," the guide answered easily.
"I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in."
"That tree? It's away back yander," observed one of the posse, reluctant and disaffected.
"Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now," said the guide.
"Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told," said the sheriff, discontentedly; "but this is a long ja'nt. Ride up! Ride up!"
Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths were diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,--such tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints, was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a mere gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas across the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods filled with moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which differentiates its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour 'of cultivated Scenes--something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a meaning addressed to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or words express.
With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by slight standards.