ed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down below
her eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here proved
futile, too. Then she began twisting her head from side to side and
hunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort to
loosen the knot at the back of her head, or to scrape the cloth away.

This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds of
the conflict had ceased.

As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongue
and working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her head
about. At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazed
about through the dark, wet trees.

She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to be
seen. Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of Hiram
Hooker, flat on his back. No other human being save herself and Hiram
seemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.

Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart,
but Hiram's lips remained motionless. A great fear clutched at her.
Hiram was dead.

She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and sought
desperately for a way to release herself. She was bound round and
round until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on the
ground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for her
strong, tough muscles. She began striving to bend her knees, and in
this, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, she
was eventually successful. Once she had a start in this tiresome
process, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legs
from their straight position.

She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she was
able to flop over on her side.

In this new position she looked about over the ground for something to
help her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.

As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; nor
had she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act. Not a
word had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight. She
had heard the man yelling about "the paper," though, toward the close
of the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.

The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pine
needles lay five feet beyond her reach. But now she could roll to it,
and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of