cle
round the spot, but could find no trace whatever of their passage,
and returned to the point where he had missed the trail. He relit
the embers of the fire which the bush rangers had made, cooked some
food, and laid himself down--first to think it over, then to sleep,
for it was now just the close of day.

It was clear to him that here, more than anywhere else, the bush
rangers had made a great effort to throw anyone who might be
pursuing them off the trail. He had no doubt that the bush rangers
had muffled their horses' hoofs with cloth, and had proceeded with
the greatest care through the bush, so as to avoid breaking a
single twig in their passage; and the only reason for such greater
caution could be that it was here, and here only, that they wished
to throw the pursuers off the trail. It would have seemed, to a
white man, that they had done this before, especially when they had
kept in the water course; but to black Jim's perception, it
appeared that they had been more careless than would be expected;
and that, while apparently doing their utmost to conceal their
tracks, they had really left sufficient indications to allow a
practised tracker to follow them.

Why then, now that they were far beyond the settlements, and fairly
in the country of their native allies, should they, for the first
time, so hide their trail that he could not discover it?

The result of Jim's thoughts was that, when he awoke at daybreak,
he started back towards the settlements. When he came to the river
which the party had passed, in pursuit of the natives, he kept
along its bank, scrutinizing the ground with the greatest care.
After six miles' walking he suddenly stopped, at a point where the
soft turf near the margin was cut up by the passage of the party of
horsemen. Here was the confirmation of his ideas.

Arguing the matter out with himself, Jim had arrived at the
conclusion that, hitherto, the trail had been a false one, the bush
rangers' object being to lead their pursuers to believe that they
had gone far out into the native country; whereas, in fact, their
hiding place was somewhere among the settlements. Should this be
so, the only way to find them was to search for their back track.
This he had now found and, with a shout of triumph at his own
cleverness, Jim forded the river and followed the track of the
horses.

This was now clear enough, the horsemen taking no pains whatever to
conceal their traces, feeling perfect