by clouds, shone brightly. Just now
their veil was thick, and a slight shower was beginning to fall. If
these should part, any one crossing the road before him would show
clearly against the sky.

He dismounted, hid his wheel behind a thick growth of untrimmed poplar
saplings, and made himself comfortable in the dry bed of a ditch which
crossed the road and was bridged over with a few planks. In the shadow
cast by this bridge he crouched and, leaning against a boulder, settled
himself for patient waiting. A great bull-frog, which had dropped out of
sight at his approach, soon returned again, and croaked hoarsely of his
personal affairs. For, in wet weather, this was a marshy spot, and he
remembered happier days. Presently the clouds parted and the moon sent a
brilliant spear shaft through the rent, making it almost like day. A
startled peewit cried out, from his nest under the planking, that he had
overslept, but was calmed into drowsiness by his wife's assuring tones;
and a noisy beetle of some kind boomed and buzzed around, as if
intoxicated by the very thought of daylight. Listening intently, amid
all this soft murmur of sound, Dan presently began to hear afar the
rhythmic beat of footsteps, falling hard and fast upon the beaten soil.
His man was approaching.

He gathered himself together and slowly rose, creeping close to the
wooden buttress of the bridge and staying well in its shadow. The
footsteps grew plainer, and now, into the well-lighted road, a figure
swung with long, wavering strides. It was not tall, but very spare, and
was crowned with a bullet head set between high shoulders. But the face,
as it flashed into and out of the narrow strip of moonlight, seemed
strangely familiar, yet unnatural too.

Dan with difficulty repressed his exclamation of astonishment, and
strained forward to make certain if this really were the man he took him
to be. But turning neither to right nor left, the fellow plodded on,
evidently in a labored way, and was almost instantly swallowed up in the
shadows. The watcher drew a long breath.

"_Was_ it Lozcoski?" he muttered presently. "Why, how did the man get
out? And what does he want around here? He must be crazy to come into
this neighborhood! If Murfree should know he wouldn't be comfortable, I
reckon. I believe I ought to follow him and make certain somehow--I
must! No telling what might happen, if they should meet."

He hurriedly led out his wheel, remounted it, and sped