sten, and if possible learn whether he is being
followed.

Whether or not, he fancies it; again starting off, with terror in his
looks, and trembling in his limbs. The _sangfroid_ he exhibited while
bending over the dead body of his victim, and afterwards concealing it,
has quite forsaken him now. Then he was confident, there could be no
witness of the deed--nothing to connect him with it as the doer. Since,
there is a change--the unthought-of presence of the dog having produced
it. Or, rather, the thought of the animal having escaped. This, and
his own imagination.

For more than a mile he keeps on, in headlong reckless rushing. Until
fatigue overtaking him, his terror becomes less impulsive, his fancies
freer from exaggeration; and, believing himself far enough from the
scene of danger, he at length desists from flight, and comes to a dead
stop.

Sitting down upon a log, he draws forth his pocket-handkerchief, and
wipes the sweat from his face. For he is perspiring at every pore,
panting, palpitating. He now finds time to reflect; his first
reflection being the absurdity of his making such precipitate retreat;
his next, its imprudence.

"I've been a fool for it," he mutters. "Suppose that some one has seen
me? 'Twill only have made things worse. And what have I been running
away from? A dead body, and a living dog! Why should I care for
either? Even though the adage be true--about a live dog better than a
dead lion. Let me hope the hound won't tell a tale upon me. For
certain the shot hit him. That's nothing. Who could say what sort of
ball, or the kind of gun it came from? No danger in that. I'd be
stupid to think there could be. Well, it's all over now, and the
question is: what next?"

For some minutes he remains upon the log, with the gun resting across
his knees, and his head bent over the barrels. He appears engaged in
some abstruse calculation. A new thought has sprang up in his mind--a
scheme requiring all his intellectual power to elaborate.

"I shall keep that tryst," he says, in soliloquy, seeming at length to
have settled it. "Yes; I'll meet her under the magnolia. Who can tell
what changes may occur in the heart of a woman? In history I had a
royal namesake--an English king, with an ugly hump on his shoulders--as
he's said himself, `deformed, unfinished, sent into the world scarce
half made up,' so that the `dogs barked at _him_,' just as this brute of
Clancy's has been d