led upon, lowering his eyes, again looks at the tracks.
Not for long. A glance gives him evidence that Woodley is right. The
horses which made these outgoing tracks cannot be the same seen coming
across.

And now, the others being more carefully scrutinised, these same two are
discovered among them, with the convexity of the hoof turned towards the
river!

In all this there is strangeness, though it is not the time to inquire
into it. That must be left till later. Their only thought now is,
where are the Indians; for they have certainly not come on along the
road.

"Boys!" says Woodley, "we've been makin' a big roundabout 'ithout
gainin' a great deal by it. Sartin them redskins hev stopped at the
river, an' thar mean squatting for the remainder o' this night. That'll
suit our purpiss to a teetotum. We kin capter 'em in thar camp eezier
than on the backs o' thar critters. So, let's go right on an' grup
'em!"

With this he turns, and runs back along the road, the others keeping
close after.

In ten minutes more they are on the river's bank, where it declined to
the crossing. They see no Indians there--no human creatures of any
kind--nor yet any horses!

CHAPTER SIXTY.

"THE LIVE-OAK."

At a pace necessarily slow, from the narrowness of the path and its
numerous obstructions, the painted robbers, with their captives, have
continued on; reaching their destination about the time Clancy and his
comrades turned back along the ford road.

From this they are now not more than three hundred yards distant, halted
in the place spoken of as a rendezvous.

A singular spot it is--one of those wild forest scenes by which nature
oft surprises and delights her straying worshipper.

It is a glade of circular shape, with a colossal tree standing in its
centre,--a live-oak with trunk full forty feet in girth, and branches
spreading like a banyan. Though an evergreen, but little of its own
foliage can be seen, only here and there a parcel of leaves at the
extremity of a protruding twig; all the rest, great limbs and lesser
branches, shrouded under Spanish moss, this in the moonlight showing
white as flax.

Its depending garlands, stirred by the night breeze, sway to and fro,
like ghosts moving in a minuet; when still, appearing as the water of a
cataract suddenly frozen in its fall, its spray converted into hoar
frost, the jets to gigantic icicles.

In their midst towers the supporting stem, thick and black,