erly
wild and la'relly" and poroused with cavernous crags. The conspirators
had evidently scattered and melted from sight as bees melt into a
honeycomb.

But Alexander's face grew again serious and pained as she gave her most
important information. "You men come a leetle too late. I driv 'em
off--but them thet went last tuck my saddle-bags away with 'em."

Brent's only response to that was a brief gesture of despair. So after
all the plotting, the counterplotting, the dangers and hardships; after
all her own gallant efforts, the girl had lost the game.

He looked at her as she stood there repressing under a stoical
blankness of expression, emotions which he thought must sum up to a
worm-wood bitterness of spirit.

"We're wasting time here," he announced after a brief and painful
pause. "They can't have gone far--we must comb these woods."

But Alexander shrugged her shoulders.

"Thar hain't no possible way of runnin' 'em down ternight," she said.
"They've scattered like a hover of pa'tridges thet's been shot at, an'
whichever one's got them saddle-bags is in safe hidin' afore now. I've
got one more plan yit, but hit's fer termorrer. Let's go back thar an'
sot thet Halloway feller free."

But halfway back they met a gigantic figure whose wrists jangled with
the clink of steel chains as he swung his long arms. He was calm--even
cheerful--of mood, now that he had appeased his wrath, nor did he seem
concerned as to what might be the fate of the trio he had left behind
him.

The skies had cleared and a moon had risen. No longer refusing the
attendance of her bodyguard, Alexander insisted upon pushing on through
Viper to her kinsman's house at Perry Center. It was as well that her
foes should imagine her forces in full flight.

Though they had all spent arduous days and nights they made the last
stage of the trip at an excellent rate of speed. After Wolf-Pen Gap
and its vicinity had been left behind, the unspeakable wildness of the
country gave way abruptly, as it so often does in Appalachia, to higher
grounds where for a little way the roads run through almost parklike
stretches, now silver and cobalt under a high moon.

Jerry O'Keefe had friends at Perry Center whose doors would open to him
and his companions even at this inhospitable hour between midnight and
dawn, and when they left Alexander at her threshold, she paused for a
moment and turned with the moonlight on her face.

"Boys," she said s