this was the merest
suspicion, illogical conjecture, based on nothing beyond his distrust
of Ware. In the end he sprang from the saddle and leading his horse into
the woods, tied it to a sapling.

A hurried investigation told him that five men had ridden in and out of
that path. Of the five, all coming from the south, four had turned
south again, but the fifth man--Ware, in other words--had gone north. He
weighed the possible significance of these facts.

"I am only wasting time!" he confessed reluctantly, and was on the point
of turning away, when, on the very edge of the road and just where the
dust yielded to the hard clay of the path, his glance lighted on the
print of a small and daintily shod foot. The throbbing of his heart
quickened curiously.

"Betty!" The word leaped from his lips.

That small foot had left but the one impress. There were other signs,
however, that claimed his attention; namely, the bootprints of Slosson
and his men; and he made the inevitable discovery that these tracks
were all confined to the one spot. They began suddenly and as suddenly
ceased, yet there was no mystery about these; he had the marks of the
wheels to help him to a sure conclusion. A carriage had turned just
here, several men had alighted, they had with them a child or a woman.
Either they had reentered the carriage and driven back as they had come,
or they had gone toward the river. He felt the soul within him turn
sick.

He stole along the path; the terror of the river was ever in his
thoughts, and the specter of his fear seemed to flit before him and lure
him on. Presently he caught his first glimpse of the bayou and his legs
shook under him; but the path wound deeper still into what appeared to
be an untouched solitude, wound on between the crowding tree forms,
a little back from the shore, with an intervening tangle of vines
and bushes. He scanned this closely as he hurried forward, scarcely
conscious that he was searching for some trampled space at the water's
edge; but the verdant wall preserved its unbroken continuity, and twenty
minutes later he came within sight of the Hicks' clearing and the keel
boat, where it rested against the bank.

A little farther on he found the spot where Slosson had launched the
skiff the night before. The keel of his boat had cut deep into the
slippery clay; more than this, the impress of the small shoe was
repeated here, and just beside it was the print of a child's bare foot.