them prisoners, bring them back to this spot. Now you have heard my
orders, that's enough. Keep silent and ready. Mind your discipline.
Black Jack is long coming, Orderly; these fellows must travel slow."

"I hear him now," replied Peppercorn.

In the next moment the scout referred to galloped into the circle. His
report was hastily made. It announced that the travellers were moving
leisurely towards the ford, and that not many minutes could elapse
before their arrival. Upon this intelligence Habershaw immediately
marched his troop to the road and posted them in the cover of the
underwood that skirted the river, at the crossing-place. Here they
remained like wild beasts aware of the approach of their prey, and
waiting the moment to spring upon them when it might be done with the
least chance of successful resistance.

Meantime Butler and Robinson advanced at a wearied pace. The twilight
had so far faded as to be only discernible on the western sky. The stars
were twinkling through the leaves of the forest, and the light of the
fire-fly spangled the wilderness. The road might be descried, in the
most open parts of the wood, for some fifty paces ahead; but where the
shrubbery was more dense, it was lost in utter darkness. Our travellers,
like most wayfarers towards the end of the day, rode silently along,
seldom exchanging a word, and anxiously computing the distance which
they had yet to traverse before they reached their appointed place of
repose. A sense of danger, and the necessity for vigilance, on the
present occasion, made them the more silent.

"I thought I heard a wild sort of yell just now--people laughing a great
way off," said Robinson, "but there's such a hooting of owls and piping
of frogs that I mought have been mistaken. Halt, Major. Let me
listen--there it is again."

"It is the crying of a panther, sergeant; more than a mile from us, by
my ear."

"It is mightily like the scream of drunken men," replied the sergeant;
"and there, too! I thought I heard the clatter of a hoof."

The travellers again reined up and listened.

"It is more like a deer stalking through the bushes, Galbraith."

"No," exclaimed the sergeant, "that's the gallop of a horse making down
the road ahead of us, as sure as you are alive; I heard the shoe strike
a stone. You must have hearn it too."

"I wouldn't be sure," answered Butler.

"Look to your pistols, Major, and prime afresh."

"We seem to have ridden a great way,"