nd the infrequent
settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed
either by Murrell or Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across
the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him
forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger
smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter
loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.

"I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried--" he told himself, with
quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and the
tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before him he saw
the scattered lights of a settlement. All his terrors, the terrors that
grouped themselves about the idea of pursuit and capture, rushed back
upon him, and in a panic he plunged into the black woods again.

But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived a whole
day without food, a whole day without speech. He began to skirt the
settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of the woods, and
presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a small clearing in the
center of which stood a log dwelling. The place seemed deserted. There
was no sign of life, no light shone from the window, no smoke issued
from the stick-and-mud chimney.

Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was sleeping. The
hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He yawned and stretched
himself, thrusting out his fat legs and extending his great arms. Then
becoming aware of the small figure which had stolen up the path as
he slept and now stood before him in the uncertain light, he fell to
rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his plump hands. The pale night
mist out of the silent depths of the forest had assumed shapes as
strange.

"Who are you?" he demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his
capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous.

"I'm Hannibal," said the small figure. He was meditating flight; he
glanced over his shoulder toward the woods.

"No, you ain't. He's been dead a thousand years, more or less. Try
again," recommended the man.

"I'm Hannibal Wayne Hazard," said the boy. The man quitted his chair.

"Well--I am glad to know you, Hannibal Wayne Hazard. I am Slocum
Price--Judge Slocum Price, sometime major-general of militia and
ex-member of congress, to mention a few of those honors my fellow
countrymen have thrust upon me." He made a sweeping gesture with his two
hands