s as to allow
time for the captured logs to be put underground before another demand
for them could be made.

This disposition of the captive was only known to the old man, who
had, unobserved, removed the oars from Peveril's skiff; and so it was
generally supposed that he would return directly to his camp at
Laughing Fish.

Rothsky, the Bohemian, who was one of those working near the log raft,
had instantly recognized Peveril, and at sight of him his hatred
blazed up with redoubled fury. To be sure, his broken jaw had healed,
but so awry as to disfigure his face and render it more hideous than
ever. Now to find the man who had done him this injury again
interfering with his plans filled him with rage.

Although he had no opportunity for venting it at the moment, he easily
learned from Peveril's late followers the location of their camp, and,
believing that the young man would be found there, he planned an
attack upon it for that very night. He had no difficulty in inducing
the two other car-pushers who had been driven from the White Pine to
join him, and as soon as they quit work that evening they set forth on
foot.

They had not settled on any plan of action, and, though Rothsky was
determined to kill the man he hated, his associates imagined that the
young fellow was only to be punished in such a way as would cause him
a considerable degree of suffering and at the same time afford them
great amusement. They did not anticipate any interference with their
plans, even should they be discovered, for the fishermen of the cove
were their fellow-countrymen, bound to them by the ties of a common
hatred against all native-born Americans.

Now it so happened that the only daughter of the erratic old
mine-owner had set forth that afternoon, accompanied only by her
ever-present body-guard, a great, lean stag-hound, on a long gallop
over the wild uplands surrounding her home. For that desolate little
mining village was the only home Mary Darrell had known since the
death of her mother, five years before, or when she was but twelve
years of age.

Until then she had lived in New England, and had only seen her father
upon the rare occasions of his visits from the mysterious West in
which his life was spent. To others he was a man of morose silence,
suspicious of his fellows, secretive and unapproachable, but to his
only child, the one light of his darkened life, and the sole hope of
his old age, he was ever the loving fathe