d aside at the other's face--"by the murderer, M. de Pincornet!
Now let us mark this fox that doubles on himself."

The long, curled wig of the Frenchman and the younger man's handsome
head with the hair gathered back into a black ribbon bent lower over the
map. "Forrest's forge, the mill, the ford, he passed these places under
such and such circumstances--here, where I rest the pen, stands the
guide-post. This line is your silvered ribbon, this is the main road
that makes a sweep around the broken country. This heavy, black, and
jagged line is the river road. They both took the river road, as both
had said they would--my brother to me, the murderer to a man at the
Cross Roads Inn. The negro boy kept on by the main road. Where is this
riven oak?" He dipped the quill into the ink-well. "I correct my map
according to my better knowledge. That tree stands two miles below Red
Fields, just above the turn where, fifty years ago, was the Indian
ambush. We'll mark it here, black and charred. Here is the bank, crowned
by woods. The growth is very thick between it and"--his hand, holding
the pen, travelled across the sheet--"the river road just east of Indian
Run."

He laid down the pen, and turned from the table to the open door. "The
moon is not bright enough, or I would go to-night. I want sunlight, or I
want storm-light, for that ride across from road to road! Five hours
till morning." He returned to the dancing master. "When, in your
country, the man you loved was to be avenged, and his murderers
punished, you were glad of aid, were you not? I shall be thankful for
every least thing that you can tell me."

"He came," said the emigre, "like Pluto out of the earth. He was
breathless as one out of prison--his linen was torn. There was," the
narrator's voice halted, then hardened in tone,--"there was blood upon
his sleeve. At the time I supposed that, in bursting through that grille
of the forest, branch or briar had drawn it. There was blood, sir, about
your brother?"

"Yes. If the murderer stooped to know if life was out, it might have
happened so."

"He was not pale, I think, but he spoke in a strange voice. 'Ha!' he
said, 'I started a doe ten minutes since, and gave her chase through the
wood. Now I will rejoin my boy a little way down the road. Are you on
your way to Charlottesville?' I told him I would go to Red Fields, upon
which he said adieu and turned his horse. A little later he and his boy
passed me, riding in