jaw suddenly fell; his eyes
widened with a ghastly distension. With an unsteady arm extended he
pointed silently. Distinctly outlined on the lid of-the coffin was the
simulacrum of the figure of aman.

One of his comrades, seated on the tailboard of the wagon, had discerned
a significance in the abrupt silence. As he turned, he, too, caught a
fleeting glimpse of that weird image on the coffin-lid. But he was of
a more mundane pulse. The apparition roused in him only a wonder whence
could come this shadow in the midst of the moon-flooded road. He lifted
his eyes to the verge of the bluff above, and there he descried an
indistinct human form, which suddenly disappeared as he looked, and at
that moment the simulacrum vanished from the lid of the box.

The mystery was of instant elucidation. They were suspected, followed.
The number of their pursuers of course they could not divine, but at
least one of the revenue-officers had trailed the wagon between the
precipice and the great wall of the ascent on the right, which had
gradually dwindled to a diminished height. Deep gullies were here and
there washed out by recent rains, and one of these indentations might
have afforded an active man access to the summit. Thus the pursuer had
evidently kept abreast of them, speeding along in great leaps through
the lush growth of huckleberry bushes, wild grasses, pawpaw thickets,
silvered by the moon, all fringing the great forests that had given way
on the shelving verge of the steeps where the road ran. Had he overheard
their unguarded, significant words? Who could divine, so silent were the
windless mountains, so deep a-dream the darksome woods, so spellbound
the mute and mystic moonlight?

The group maintained a cautious reticence now, each revolving the
problematic disclosure of their secret, each canvassing the question
whether the pursuer himself was aware of his betrayal of his stealthy
proximity. Not till they had reached the ford of the river did they
venture on a low-toned colloquy. The driver paused in midstream and
stepped out on the pole between the horses to let down the check-reins,
as the team manifested an inclination to drink in transit; and thence,
as he stood thus perched, he gazed to and fro, the stretch of dark and
lustrous ripples baffling all approach within ear-shot, the watering
of the horses justifying the pause and cloaking its significance to any
distant observer.

But the interval was indeed limited; t