hen they saw that he was riderless, they thought
that I had either been captured or killed. Once at camp, Harry Herndon
drummed up as many of the Independents as would volunteer, and they had
gone in search of me; Whistling Jim heard them riding along the road as
he was coming to the tavern.

The faithful negro had a hundred questions to ask, but I answered him
in my own way. I was determined that none but those directly concerned
should ever know that I had been held a prisoner or that Miss Ryder had
a hand in the night's work; and I wished a thousand times over that I
had not known it myself. The old saying, worn to a frazzle with
repetition, came to me with new force, and I was sadly alive to the
fact that where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.

The night was now far advanced, and once at my quarters I flung myself
on the rude bed that had been provided for me, and all the troubles and
tangles in this world dissolved and disappeared in dreamless slumber.
When morning broke I felt better. My head was sore, but the surgeon
removed the bandage, clipped the hair about the wound, took a stitch or
two that hurt worse than the original blow, and in an hour I had
forgotten the sabre-cut.

Singular uneasiness pervaded my thoughts. More than once I caught
myself standing still as if expecting to hear something. I tried in
vain to shake off the feeling, and at last I pretended to trace it to
feverishness resulting from the wound in the scalp; but I knew this was
not so--I knew that one of the great things of life was behind it all;
I knew that I had come to the hour that young men hope for and older
men dread; I knew that for good or evil my future was wrapped in the
mystery and tangle of which Jane Ryder was the centre. My common-sense
tried to picture her forth as the spider waiting in the centre of her
web for victims, but my heart resented this and told me that she
herself had been caught in the web and found it impossible to get away.

I wandered about the camp and through the town with a convalescent's
certificate in my pocket and the desperation of a lover in my heart;
and at the very last, when night was falling, it was Jasper Goodrum, of
the Independents, who gave me the news I had been looking for all day.

"You'd better pick up and go with us, Shannon; our company is going to
raid the tavern to-night, and to-morrow we take the road. Oh, you are
not hurt bad," he said, trying to interpret the expression o