could make it, in
sound!"

"Possibly the mill has been set in motion by some of your idlers, and
you have heard the large saw, which, at a distance, may sound like a
smaller one near by."

The man looked incredulously at his prisoner for a moment; then he drew
to the door, with the air of one who was determined to assure himself
of the truth, calling aloud as he did so, to one of his companions to
join him. Willoughby knew that no time was to be lost. In half-a-
minute, he had passed the hole, dropped the blanket before it, had
circled the slender waist of Maud with one arm, and was shoving aside
the bushes with the other, as he followed Nick from the straitened
passage between the lean-to and the rock. The major seemed more bent on
bearing Maud from the spot, than on saving himself. Her feet scarce
touched the ground, as he ascended to the place where Joyce had halted.
Here Nick stood an instant, with a finger raised in intense listening.
His practised ears caught the sound of voices in the lean-to, then
scarce fifty feet distant. Men called to each other by name, and then a
voice directly beneath them, proclaimed that a head was already thrust
through the hole.

"Here is your saw, and here is its workmanship!" exclaimed this voice.

"And here is blood, too," said another. "See! the ground has been a
pool beneath those stones."

Maud shuddered, as if the soul were leaving its earthly tenement, and
Willoughby signed impatiently for Nick to proceed. But the savage, for
a brief instant, seemed bewildered The danger below, however,
increased, and evidently drew so near, that he turned and glided up the
ascent. Presently, the fugitives reached the descending path, that
diverged from the larger one they were on, and by which Nick and Maud
had so recently come diagonally up this cliff. Nick leaped into it, and
then the intervening bushes concealed their persons from any who might
continue on the upward course. There was an open space, however, a
little lower down; and the quick-witted savage came to a stand under a
close cover, believing flight to be useless should their pursuers
actually follow on their heels.

The halt had not been made half-a-dozen seconds, when the voices of the
party ascending in chase, were heard above the fugitives. Willoughby
felt an impulse to dash down the path, bearing Maud in his arms, but
Nick interposed his own body to so rash a movement. There was not time
for a discussion, and the soun