aton feared;
it was concealment of him. The man had been taken from the car because
his condition was so serious that there was no hope of hiding it; Eaton
thought he must be dead. He expected to find the body concealed under
dead leaves, hurriedly hidden.

The night had cleared a little; to the north, Eaton could see stars.
Suddenly the road and the leafless bushes at its sides flashed out in
the bright light of a motor-car passing. Eaton strained forward. He
had found the place; there was no doubt a car had turned off the road
some time before and stopped there. The passing of many cars had so
tracked the road that none of the men in the motors seemed to have
noticed anything of significance there; but Eaton saw plainly in the
soft ground at the edge of the woods the footmarks of two men walking
one behind the other. When the car had passed, he crept forward in the
dark and I fingered the distinct heel and toe marks in the soft soil.
For a little distance he could follow them by feeling; then as they led
him into the edge of the woods the ground grew harder and he could no
longer follow them in that way.

It was plain to him what had occurred; two men had got out of the car
here and had lifted out and carried away a third. He knelt where he
could feel the last footsteps he could detect and looked around. The
gray of the electric lights to the east seemed growing, spreading;
against this lightness in the sky he could see plainly the branches of
the trees; he recognized then that the grayness was the coming of the
dawn. It would be only a few minutes before he could see plainly
enough to follow the tracks. He drew aside into the deeper cover of
some bushes to wait.

The wound in his shoulder no longer bled, but the pain of it twinged
him through and through; his head throbbed with the hurt there; his
feet were raw and bleeding where sharp roots and branches had cut
through his socks and torn the flesh; his skin was hot and dry with
fever, and his head swam. He followed impatiently the slow whitening
of the east; as soon as he could make out the ground in front of him,
he crept forward again to the tracks.

There was not yet light enough to see any distance, but Eaton,
accustomed to the darkness and bending close to the ground, could
discern the footmarks even on the harder soil. They led away from the
road into the woods. On the rotted leaves and twigs was a dark stain;
a few steps beyond there was ano