my own
escape; for I felt that if this man saw me there he would rush up
the hill and murder me. Within pistol-shot of the very place where my
grandfather had been murdered--a lonely place, an unholy spot, and I was
looking at the hand that did it.

The thought of this made me tremble so, though well aware that my death
might ensue from a twig on the rustle, or a leaf upon the flutter, that
my chance of making off unseen was gone ere I could seize it. For now
the man was taking long strides over the worn-out planks of the bridge,
disdaining the hand-rail, and looking upward, as if to shun sight of the
footing. Advancing thus, he must have had his gaze point-blank upon my
lair of leafage; but, luckily for me, there was gorse upon the ridge,
and bracken and rag-thistles, so that none could spy up and through the
footing of my lurking-place. But if any person could have spied me,
this man was the one to do it. So carefully did he scan the distance
and inspect the foreground, as if he were resolved that no eye should be
upon him while he was doing what he came to do. And he even drew forth
a little double telescope, such as are called "binoculars," and fixed
it on the thicket which hid me from him, and then on some other dark
places.

No effort would compose or hush the heavy beating of my heart; my lips
were stiffened with dread of loud breath, and all power of motion left
me. For even a puff of wind might betray me, the ruffle of a spray, or
the lifting of a leaf, or the random bounce of a beetle. Great peril
had encompassed me ere now, but never had it grasped me as this did, and
paralyzed all the powers of my body. Rather would I have stood in the
midst of a score of Mexican rovers than thus in the presence of that one
man. And yet was not this the very thing for which I had waited, longed,
and labored? I scorned myself for this craven loss of nerve, but that
did not enable me to help it. In this benumbed horror I durst not even
peep at the doings of my enemy; but presently I became aware that he had
moved from the end of the planks (where he stood for some time as calmly
as if he had done nothing there), and had passed round the back of the
hawthorn-tree, and gone down to the place where the body was found, and
was making most narrow and minute search there. And now I could watch
him without much danger, standing as I did well above him, while his
eyes were steadfastly bent downward. And, not content with eyesight
o