finite long way off.

Shalah on foot kept in the rear, and I gathered from him that the
danger he feared was behind. Suddenly as I stared ahead something fell
ten yards in advance of us in a long curve, and stuck, quivering in the
soil.

It was an Indian arrow.

We would have reined up if Shalah had not cried on us to keep on. I do
not think the arrow was meant to strike us. 'Twas a warning, a grim
jest of the savages in the wood.

Then another fell, at the same distance before our first rider.

Still Shalah cried us on. I fell back to the rear, for if we were to
escape I thought there might be need of fighting there. I felt in my
belt for my loaded pistols.

We were now in a coppice again, where the trees were short and sparse.
Beyond that lay another meadow, and, then, not a quarter-mile distant,
the welcome line of the mist, every second drawing down on us.

A third time an arrow fell. Its flight was shorter and dropped almost
under the nose of Elspeth's horse, which swerved violently, and would
have unseated a less skilled horsewoman.

"On, on," I cried, for we were past the need for silence, and when I
looked again, the kindly fog had swallowed up the van of the party.

I turned and gazed back, and there I saw a strange sight. A dozen men
or more had come to the edge of the trees on the hill-side. They were
quite near, not two hundred yards distant, and I saw them clearly. They
carried bows or muskets, but none offered to use them. They were tall
fellows, but lighter in the colour than any Indians I had seen. Indeed,
they were as fair as many an Englishman, and their slim, golden-brown
bodies were not painted in the maniac fashion of the Cherokees. They
stood stock still, watching us with a dreadful impassivity which was
more frightening to me than violence. Then I, too, was overtaken by the
grey screen.

"Will they follow?" I asked Shalah.

"I do not think so. They are not hill-men, and fear the high places
where the gods smoke. Further-more, there is no need."

"We have escaped, then?" I asked, with a great relief in my voice.

"Say rather we have been shepherded by them into a fold. They will find
us when they desire us."

It was a perturbing thought, but at any rate we were safe for the
moment, and I resolved to say nothing to alarm the others. We overtook
them presently, and Shalah became our guide. Not that more guiding was
needed than Ringan or I could have given, for the lift of the ground