ning
strength. He also saw that his antagonist was regarding him with a
curious eye.

"You fight well, Yank," said Woodville, "although I ought not to call
you Yank, but rather a traitor, as you're a Kentuckian. Still, I've
put my marks on you. You're bleeding a lot and you'd be a sight if it
weren't for this cleansing rain."

"I've been putting the map of Kentucky on your own face. You don't look
as much like Mississippi as you did. You'll take notice too that you
didn't burn the house. If you'll glance up the side of this ravine
you'll see just a little dying smoke. Eight hundred soldiers put it out
in short order."

Woodville's face flushed, and his eyes for the first time since the
beginning of the encounter shone with an angry gleam. But the wrathful
fire quickly died.

"On the whole, I'm not sorry," he said. "It was an impulse that made me
do it. Our army will come and drive you away, and our house will be our
own again."

"That's putting it fairly. What's the use of burning such a fine place
as Bellevue? Still, we want you. Our colonel has many questions to ask
you."

"You can't take me."

Dick judged that the crucial moment had now come. Woodville was
breathing much more heavily than he was, and seemed to be near
exhaustion. Dick darted boldly in, received a swinging right and left on
either jaw that cut his cheeks and made the blood flow. But he sent his
right to Woodville's chin and the young Mississippian without a sound
dropped to the ground, lying relaxed and flat upon his back, his white
face, streaked with red, upturned to the rain.

He was so still that Dick was seized with fear lest he had killed him.
He liked this boy who had fought him so well and, grasping him by both
shoulders, he shook him hard. But when he loosed him Woodville fell back
flat and inert.

Dick heard the waters of a brook trickling down the ravine, and,
snatching off his cap, he ran to it. He filled the cap and returned just
in time to see Woodville leap lightly to his feet and disappear with the
speed of a deer among the bushes.

CHAPTER II. FORREST

Dick dashed after the fugitive, but he had disappeared utterly, and the
dense bushes impeded the pursuer. He was hot and angry that he had been
deluded so cleverly, but then came the consolation that, after all, he
had won in the fistic encounter with an antagonist worthy of anybody.
And after this came a second thought that caused him to halt abruptly.

He and