be His avenging angel. Yes, Jupe; I'm off
again, on that scoundrel's track. This shall be my last trial. If it
turn out as hitherto, you may never see me more--you, nor any one else.
Failing, I shan't care to face human kind, much less her I love. Ah!
I'll more dread meeting my mother--her death unavenged. Bah! There's
no fear, one way or the other. So don't you have any uneasiness about
the result; but do as I've directed. Make back to the river, and wait
there at the crossing. Brasfort goes with me; and when you see us
again, I'll have a spare horse to carry you on to our journey's end;
that whose shoes made those scratches--just now, I take it, between the
legs of Dick Darke."

"Dear masser," rejoins Jupiter, in earnest protest. "Why need ye go
worryin' after that man now? You'll have plenty opportunities any day.
He aint likely to leave Texas, long's that young lady stays in it.
Besides, them cut-throats at the creek, sure come after me. They'll be
this way soon's they find me gone, an' set their eyes on that streak o'
red colour I left ahind me in the tent. Take my advice, Masser Charle,
an' let's both slip out o' thar way, by pushin' straight for the
settlement."

"No settlement, till I've settled with him! He can't have got far away
yet. Good, Brasfort! you'll do your best to help me find him?"

The hound gives a low growl, and rollicks around the legs of the horse,
seeming to say:--

"Set me on the scent; I'll show you."

Something more than instinct appears to inspire the Molossian. Though
weeks have elapsed since in the cypress swamp it made savage
demonstrations against Darke, when taking up his trail through the San
Saba bottom it behaved as if actuated by the old malice, remembering the
smell of the man! And now conducted beyond the place trodden by
Borlasse and the others, soon as outside the confusion of scents, and
catching his fresher one, it sends forth a cry strangely intoned,
altogether unlike its ordinary bay while trailing a stag. It is the
deep sonorous note of the sleuth-hound on slot of human game; such as
oft, in the times of Spanish American colonisation, struck terror to the
heart of the hunted aboriginal.

As already said, Brasfort has a strain of the bloodhound in him; enough
to make danger for Richard Darke. Under the live-oak the hound would
have pulled him from his saddle, torn him to pieces on the spot, but for
Jupiter, to whom it was consigned, holding it hard