rs were all
men's, one being clad in moccasins. Beyond this point the path trended
downward, winding along the face of the hill and much more easily
followed. Sam, still ahead, started to clamber across the trunk of a
fallen tree, but came to a sudden halt, staring downward at something
concealed from our view on, the other side.

"Good Lord o' mercy!" he exclaimed, excitedly.

"What's dat?"

I was close beside him by this time and saw the thing also--the body of
a man lying on the ground. The light was so dim only the bare outlines
of the recumbent figure were visible, and, following the first shock of
discovery, my earliest thought was to spare the girl.

"Wait where you are, Rene!" I exclaimed, waving her back. "There is a
man lying here beyond the log. Come, Sam; we will see what he looks
like."

He was slow in following, hanging back as I approached closer to the
motionless form, and I could hear the muttering of his lips.
Unquestionably the man was dead; of this I was assured before I even
knelt beside him. He lay prone on his face in a litter of dead leaves,
and almost the first thing I noticed was the death wound back of his
ear, where a large caliber bullet had pierced the brain. His exposed
hands proved him a negro, and it was with a feeling of unusual
repugnance that I touched his body, turning it over sufficiently to see
the face. The countenance of a negro in death seldom appears natural,
and under that faint light, no revealed feature struck me, at first, as
familiar. Then, all at once, I knew him, unable to wholly repress a
cry of startled surprise, as I stared down into the upturned face--the
dead man, evidently murdered, shot treacherously from behind, was Free
Pete. I sprang to my feet, gazing about blindly into the dim woods, my
mind for the instant dazed by the importance of this discovery. What
could it mean? How could it have happened? By what means had he
reached this spot in advance of us, and at whose hand had he fallen?
He could have been there only for one purpose, surely--in an attempt to
guide Eloise Beaucaire and the quadroon Delia. Then what had become of
the women? Where were they now?

I stumbled backward to the support of the log, unable to answer any one
of these questions, remembering only in that moment that I must tell
Rene the truth. Her eyes already were upon me, exhibiting her fright
and perplexity, her knowledge that I had viewed something of horror.
She