hummed softly
to herself as she plied her needle or gazed into the distance, smiling
at the pictures created by her own fancy. She was rudely awakened from
these pleasing reveries. The door was burst in by a tremendous blow
with a fist and there stood glaring upon her a Caliban with mighty
neck and shoulders, great goggling eyes, a hooked nose, a bush of
coarse hair erect upon his head, and a stout lance in his hand. As
this creature advanced into the room with extended arms she swooned
and did not regain her senses until she had been carried for a mile
or more from her home. She found herself lying across the back of a
horse that was galloping furiously toward the hills with the savage
in the saddle behind her.

The father and mother ran into the road tossing their hands in despair;
a dozen belated rescuers hurried to them, each arrival adding his
screams to the hubbub; then each advising the rest what should be done,
and nobody doing anything. The young planter, Anita's betrothed, was
quickly on the ground, and he alone was resolute and cool. He gathered
the bolder men about him, saw that they were supplied with proper arms
and mounts, and with encouraging words to those who were left behind,
he rode away on the outlaw's trail. Over pastures, through ravines,
across rivers, under forest arches dim as twilight, they hurried on,
a pack of hounds yapping in advance, a broken branch, a trampled bush,
a hoof-print in the margin of a stream also giving proof that they were
on the right path; a herder, who had seen the ruffian pass, likewise
testifying to the fact, and giving his service to the company; and
so they came to a clearing, where they found the marauder's abandoned
and exhausted horse.

Putting their own horses under guard of negroes, twenty of the men
pressed on afoot through tangled vines and thorny bushes, still led
by the dogs, until they brought up at the bottom of a tall cliff,
and here the hounds seemed to be at fault, for they ran around and
around a tree, looking up into it and whining. The herder swung himself
into the branches and scrambled almost to the top. "Nobody here," he
called. Then, when he had partly descended, they heard him utter an
exclamation of surprise. He crept to the end of a long branch and swung
lightly to a shelf on the face of the crag. "Footsteps!" he exclaimed,
in a low, strained voice, and pointed to a thin turf that covered the
jut of rock. The dogs were right. Taito Perico ha