in. If we follow them to their destination, there I
am convinced shall we find Richard Grenville, if he be still in the land
of the living."

For fully half an hour did the wretched troop continue to file past, and
then captives, white and black, male and female, together with their
countless guards, were engulfed in the eerie shadows of the rocky gorge,
and entirely lost to human ken. Not a sound had the anxious watchers
heard from first to last, and when the hindmost figure vanished from
sight, Leigh could not refrain from rubbing his eyes to see if he were
really awake and not dreaming; then, becoming satisfied that the former
was the case, he seized his rifle, turned eagerly to Kenyon, and begged
him to get on the trail of these nocturnal wanderers without another
moment's delay.

Here, again, however, Leigh's fiery impetuosity was confronted by the
stubborn coolness of the American, that worthy absolutely refusing to
make any movement for at least another hour.

"No, thank you, Leigh," he said; "if yonder poor creatures are captives
to the man who I firmly believe has them in his grip, all I say is just
look out for squalls. You may take my word for it that before you got
your foot inside the pass you would be simply riddled with bullets. I
dare stake my reputation that there are not less than a score of scouts
outlying all around us, and we have to thank this very substantial veil
of mist for saving our lives, for the moment, at all events. In another
hour the entire crowd will have got some way through the gorge, and then
the scouts will draw in, and give us a chance of moving, but it would be
sheer madness on our part to stir from our present position before
dawn."

"Wherever can those blackguards possibly have laid hands on the dozens
of white men and women we saw in the caravan?" asked Leigh.

"Ah! now you are making a great mistake," replied Kenyon. "There were
at most only half-a-dozen white men amongst the captives, and I saw but
one white woman; the rest were unfortunate creatures from one of the
native tribes south of the Great Lakes, and whose habit it is to plaster
their bodies with grey ashes. The first glance under this misty-looking
moon deceived me, too, but I can reassure you on that score. There
were, quite half-a-dozen white men amongst them, though, and as for the
white woman, the less said about her the better, for _she was one of the
slave-drivers_. I think, however, Leigh, that