rmine how many were in the hollow, but all were
now afoot but one. We could hear his horse tramping, and hear him
speaking to the others from the saddle above them.

A man with his back toward us lighted a lantern. When he turned to lead
the way up the abutment into the bridge, we caught a flickering picture
of the group. I could make out Lem Marks as the man with the lantern,
and Malan behind him, and I could see the brown shoulder of the horse
and the legs of the rider, but the man's face was above the reach of the
light. It was perhaps Parson Peppers.

They stopped at the sill of the bridge, and the man with the lantern
began to examine the flooring and the ends of the logs set into the
stone of the abutment.

He moved about slowly, holding the lantern close to the ground. Malan
stopped by the horse. I could see the dingy light now moving in the
bridge, now held over the edge of the abutment, now creeping along the
borders of the sill.

Once it passed close to the horse, and I saw his hoofs clearly and his
brown legs, and the club feet of Malan, and the gleam of an axe. They
were on the far side of the river, and the howling of the water tumbled
their voices into a sort of jumble. The man on the horse seemed to give
some directions which were carried out by the one with the lantern. Then
they gathered in a little group and put the thing under discussion.

Lem Marks talked for some minutes, and once Malan pointed with the axe.
I could see the light slip along its edge. Then they all went into the
bridge together.

The tallow candle struggling through the dingy windows of the lantern
lighted the bridge as a dying fire lights a forest, in a little space,
half-heartedly, with all the world blacker beyond that space. They
stopped at the bridge-mouth on our side of the river, and Marks carried
the lantern over the lower end of the abutment. Then he called Malan.
The clubfoot got down on his knees and held the light over by the log
sleeper of the bridge.

I could see where the bark had been burned along the log. I heard Marks
say that this was the place to cut. Then the man on the horse rode out
close to Malan and bent over to look. The clubfoot raised his lantern,
and the rider's face came into the play of the light. My heart lifted
trembling into my throat. It was Woodford!

I grabbed for Jud, and my fingers caught the knee of his breeches. He
was squatted down in the road with a stone in his hand.

Woodford no