y I have sworn to sweep from our path.
False Trevlyn, thine hour has come!"

A puff of smoke--a loud report. Cuthbert had flung up his hand to
shield his face, for the barrel was aimed straight at his temple.
He was conscious of a sudden stinging pain in his wrist. A
momentary giddiness seized him, and he stumbled and fell. A
sardonic laugh seemed to ring in his ears. He thought he heard the
banging of a door and the drawing of heavy bolts. Probably the man
who had fired was so certain of his aim that he did not even pause
to see how the shot had told.

"Your tongue will not wag again before the morrow!"

Those words seemed to be ringing in Cuthbert's ears, and then for a
moment all was blackness and darkness, with a sense of distress and
suffocation and stabs of sudden pain.

When he awoke from what he first thought had been a nightmare
dream, he was puzzled indeed to know where he was, and for a while
believed that he was dreaming still, and that he should soon awake
to find himself in his little attic chamber in the bridge house.
But as his senses gradually cleared themselves he became aware that
he was in no such safe or desirable spot. He was lying on some
cloaks in the bow of a large boat, which was being rowed steadily
and silently up stream by four stalwart men. The daylight was gone,
but so too was the fog, and the moon was shining down and giving a
sufficient light. In the stern of the boat sat two other men, whose
faces Cuthbert could dimly see, though their hats were drawn down
over their brows. These faces did not seem entirely unfamiliar, yet
he could not remember where it was he had seen them before. His
senses were cloudy and confused. He felt giddy and exhausted. He
had no disposition to try to move; but he soon found that even had
he been so disposed he could have accomplished little. His feet
were bound together by a cord, and his right hand was bound up and
utterly powerless. He remembered the shot levelled at him in the
garden of the river-side house, and felt certain that his wrist was
broken.

And who were these men who were carrying him away captive, and what
was their motive? He imagined that they must surely be those fierce
pursuers who had striven to capture him upon the river, and who had
followed him into the garden where he had hoped to hide himself
from their malice. Doubtless they had found him as he lay in a
momentary faint, and had borne him back to their boat; though what
was t