d. As
Clancy went out about the middle of the day, he could not have gone to
such a distance for his dog to have been nearly all night getting back.

Could he himself have fired the bullet, whose effect is before their
eyes?

A question almost instantly answered in the negative; by old
backwoodsmen among the mustered crowd--hunters who know how to interpret
"sign" as surely as Champollion an Egyptian hieroglyph. These having
examined the mark on the hound's skin, pronounce the ball that made it
to have come from a _smooth-bore, and not a rifle_. It is notorious,
that Charles Clancy never carried a smooth-bore, but always a rifled
gun. His own dog has not been shot by him.

After some time spent in discussing the probabilities and possibilities
of the case, it is at length resolved to drop conjecturing, and commence
search for the missing man. In the presence of his mother no one speaks
of searching for his _dead body_; though there is a general
apprehension, that this will be the thing found.

She, the mother, most interested of all, has a too true foreboding of
it. When the searchers, starting off, in kindly sympathy tell her to be
of good cheer, her heart more truly says, she will never see her son
again.

On leaving the house, the horsemen separate into two distinct parties,
and proceed in different directions.

With one and the larger, goes Clancy's hound; an old hunter, named
Woodley, taking the animal along. He has an idea it may prove
serviceable, when thrown on its master's track--supposing this can be
discovered.

Just as conjectured, the hound does prove of service. Once inside the
woods, without even setting nose to the ground, it starts off in a
straight run--going so swiftly, the horsemen find it difficult to keep
pace with it.

It sets them all into a gallop; this continued for quite a couple of
miles through timber thick and thin, at length ending upon the edge of
the swamp.

Only a few have followed the hound thus far, keeping close. The others,
straggling behind, come up by twos and threes.

The hunter, Woodley, is among the foremost to be in at the death; for
_death_ all expect it to prove. They are sure of it, on seeing the
stag-hound stop beside something, as it does so loudly baying.

Spurring on towards the spot, they expect to behold the dead body of
Charles Clancy. They are disappointed.

There is no body there--dead or alive. Only a pile of Spanish moss,
which appear