way up
the hill.

"That's what we've got to guard against," retorted Anderson Crow. The
posse bravely swept up to and across the greensward; but the fox was
gone: There was no sight or sound of him to be had. It is but just to
say that fatigue was responsible for the deep breath that came from each
member of the pursuing party.

"Into the woods after him!" shouted Anderson Crow. "Hunt him down like a
rat!"

In the meantime a coatless young man and a most enticing young woman
were scampering off among the oaks and underbrush, consumed by
excitement and no small degree of apprehension.

"They really seem to be in earnest about it, Jack," urged the young
woman insistently, to offset his somewhat sarcastic comments.

"How the dickens do you suppose they got onto me?" he groaned. "I
thought the tracks were beautifully covered. No one suspected, I'm
sure."

"I told you, dear, how it would turn out," she cried in a panic-stricken
voice.

"Good heavens, Marjory, don't turn against me! It all seemed so easy and
so sure, dear. There wasn't a breath of suspicion. What are we to do?
I'll stop and fight the whole bunch if you'll just let go my arm."

"No, you won't, Jack Barnes!" she exclaimed resolutely, her pretty blue
eyes wide with alarm. "Didn't you hear them say they'd fill you full of
lead? They had guns and everything. Oh, dear! oh, dear! isn't it
horrid?"

"The worst of it is they've cut us off from the river," he said
miserably. "If I could have reached the boat ahead of them they never
could have caught us. I could distance that old raft in a mile."

"I know you could, dear," she cried, looking with frantic admiration
upon his broad shoulders and brawny bare arms. "But it is out of the
question now."

"Never mind, sweetheart; don't let it fuss you so. It will turn out all
right, I know it will."

"Oh, I can't run any farther," she gasped despairingly.

"Poor little chap! Let me carry you?"

"You big ninny!"

"We are at least three miles from your house, dear, and surrounded by
deadly perils. Can you climb a tree?"

"I can--but I won't!" she refused flatly, her cheeks very red.

"Then I fancy we'll have to keep on in this manner. It's a confounded
shame--the whole business. Just as I thought everything was going so
smoothly, too. It was all arranged to a queen's taste--nothing was left
undone. Bracken was to meet us at his uncle's boathouse down there,
and--good heavens, there was a shot!"

The sh