line, the law would not
follow him. He was satisfied of that from what Molly had told him.

He bided his time until one stormy night when wind and rain drove the
bloodhound within the shelter of the guard tent and, thrashing through
the branches of the oaks and flapping the canvas of the big tent,
drowned out to all ears but his own the rasp of a file on steel. Next
day the continued rain made road work impossible, and as he hobbled back
and forth to feed the mules, chewing gum hid two triangular cuts in his
shackles. Again that night, storm and rain drowned out the sound that
came from the tent where he sat hunched forward on his cot, sawing
patiently and methodically away.

Hours before dawn he slipped out of the rear of his tent and walked
quickly toward the mule sheds, where he stood listening. Then, hat
pulled down low, he hurried through the grove, across a field, and made
for the black rim of the surrounding forest.

He could not have picked a better night had choice been given him. The
rain, falling steadily, was washing his trail. It was the season of full
moon and in spite of storm clouds the night was dimly luminous. He
struck straight for the bottoms and the creek, whose swollen turbulence
sounded above the rain. He plunged into the water, which at the deepest
places came no higher than his waist, and partly by feeling, partly by
sight, now and then stumbling over boulders, now and then having to push
aside thick underbrush, he made his way for something like two miles
up-stream.

Carefully he chose the spot where he left the creek. His eyes, grown
accustomed to the night, picked out a tree that grew out of the ground
at a distance from the bank, then bent over it. He caught hold of the
branches, swung himself up, felt his way like an opossum along the
trunk, swung to another tree, and did not touch ground until he was some
hundred feet from the shore.

An indistinct, dripping dawn that showed low-driving clouds found him,
wet to the skin, like an old fox who has run all night, but confident,
like one who has covered up all trace of a trail, making his steady way
with long mountaineer's stride across tangled bottoms, into stretches of
woodland, over hills that grew ever steeper and higher, through
undergrowth that grew ever denser.

His face was very serious, but not anxious. His nerve was too cool, his
courage too steady for him to feel any impulse to run. His lifelong
experience as a hunter who trav