branches that arched the road. He crossed strips of bottom
land where the water stood in still pools about the gnarled and
moss-covered trunks of trees. At intervals down some sluggish inlet
he caught sight of the yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the
Arkansas coast beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that
rose out of the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay
along the horizon.

He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a sudden
turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three men, and before
he could gather up his reins which he held loosely, one of them had
seized his horse by the bit. Norton was unarmed, he had not even a
riding-whip. This being the case he prepared to make the best of an
unpleasant situation which he felt he could not alter. He ran his eye
over the three men.

"I am sorry, gentlemen, but I reckon you have hold of the wrong
person--"

"Get down!" said one of the men briefly.

"I haven't any money, that's why I say you have hold of the wrong
person."

"We don't want your money." The unexpectedness of this reply somewhat
disturbed Norton.

"What do you want, then?" he asked.

"We got a word to say to you."

"I can hear it in the saddle."

"Get down!" repeated the man, a surly, bull-necked fellow. "Come--hurry
up!" he added.

Norton hesitated for an instant, then swung himself out of the saddle
and stood in the road confronting the spokesman of the party.

"Now, what do you wish to say to me?" he asked.

"Just this--you keep away from Belle Plain."

"You go to hell!" said Norton promptly. The man glowered heavily at hire
through the gathering gloom of twilight.

"We want your word that you'll keep away from Belle Plain," he said with
sullen insistence.

"Well, you won't get it!" responded Norton with quiet decision.

"We won't?"

"Certainly you won't!" Norton's eyes began to flash. He wondered
if these were Tom Ware's emissaries. He was both quick-tempered and
high-spirited. Falling back a step, he sprang forward and dealt the
bullnecked man a savage blow. The latter grunted heavily but kept his
feet. In the same instant one of the men who had never taken his eyes
off Norton from the moment he quitted the saddle, raised his fist and
struck the young planter in the back of the neck.

"You cur!" cried Norton, blind and dizzy, as he wheeled on him.

"Damn him--let him have it!" roared the bullnecked man.

Afterward