els far had taught him to save his
energy. As the light of the gray day grew stronger he distinguished, at
no great distance ahead, it seemed, the outlines of misty mountains. He
recognized the gap where the highway crossed this first ridge into the
recesses of the mountains, beyond the Tennessee line. On the night after
to-morrow, he calculated, he could tramp up on his porch and Molly would
open the door.

Now and then, as twilight advanced, he stopped and listened. One of the
guards, more kindly disposed than Simmons and the other guard, had,
during the hour of lunch one day, told him something about the
bloodhound, Sheriff. The dog, he said, was not a full-bred bloodhound,
his grandfather was a foxhound. Consequently, he ran a man freely, as a
hound runs a fox, barking on the trail.

He was hard to hold in, the guard had gone on to say, so hard that
Simmons never tried to run him to the leash, but turned him loose to
find the track himself. Then Simmons followed as fast as he could. No
trouble to follow him. "You never heard such a voice as he's got in your
life," the guard had added with a grin. "He usually puts a man up a tree
inside two hours, and keeps him there till Simmons comes up. No danger
of the man comin' down, either--not with that dog at the bottom of the
tree."

And so, remembering these things, old Tom stopped now and then to
listen. No sound but the steady dripping of rain from trees--no sound of
pursuit. Miles lay between him and the camp, and still the rain was
washing his trail.

It was on top of a treeless hill that commanded the sights and sounds of
the country for miles about that he stopped once more to listen--and his
white hair stirred on his head, just as the hair of the old fox who has
run all night might rise on his back. From far behind through the
enveloping mists and over intervening hills, so far that at first he
could not be sure, had come the bay of a solitary hound, trailing.

He stood transfixed, his patriarchal beard dripping. Many a creature,
fox and wolf, and man himself, has through the centuries trembled at
that sound. There was a silence during which he collected his wits,
momentarily upset. Then again, faint and far away, like the ringing of a
distant bell, came the sound. Miles between where he swung himself out
of the creek and where he now stood the hound was coming on his trail.
Tom turned like a stag, brushed aside the bushes and began for the first
time to run.