would find him eventually, unless he were fortunate enough to intercept the English party on their way back, was certain, for they would find his tracks in the forest and follow them as a hound follows the scent of a fox. His hope, therefore, lay in reaching the Indian trail to the south while darkness still held and there lying in wait for his friends. After that his fate was in the hands of Providence. If his pursuers came first, his efforts would have been in vain.
Midges or some other small insects annoyed him while he rested, and once a prowling animal, no larger than a small dog, slunk out of the gloom but a pace away and startled him with the green fires of its staring eyes. David moved but his foot and the beast was gone with a snarl. Up the slope he went then, from shadow patch to shadow patch, the trees thinning, and presently the open ground, rock-strewn, bush-grown, lay before him in the soft radiance of the stars. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, for somehow emerging from the gloom of the forest seemed like stepping from a dark prison into freedom. But freedom was not yet his, as he well knew, and, glancing uneasily to the left toward where, perhaps a quarter of a mile
