nd from his
throat, and rose to my feet. He rose too with one spring. He was very
white, and there was foam on his lips.

"What next, captain?" he demanded thickly. "Your score is mounting up
rather rapidly. What next?"

"This," I replied, and with the other thong fastened him, despite his
struggles, to the young maple beneath which we had wrestled. When the
task was done, I first drew his sword from its jeweled scabbard and laid
it on the ground at his feet, and then cut the leather which restrained
his arms, leaving him only tied to the tree. "I am not Sir Thomas Dale,"
I said, "and therefore I shall not gag you and leave you bound for an
indefinite length of time, to contemplate a grave that you thought
to dig. One haunted wood is enough for one county. Your lordship will
observe that I have knotted your bonds in easy reach of your hands, the
use of which I have just restored to you. The knot is a peculiar one;
an Indian taught it to me. If you set to work at once, you will get it
untied before nightfall. That you may not think it the Gordian knot and
treat it as such, I have put your sword where you can get it only when
you have worked for it. Your familiar, my lord, may prove of use to us;
therefore we will take him with us to the haunted wood. I have the honor
to wish your lordship a very good day."

I bowed low, swung myself into my saddle, and turned my back upon
his glaring eyes and bared teeth. Sparrow, his prize flung across his
saddlebow, turned with me. A minute more saw us out of the hollow, and
entered upon the glade up which had come the Italian. When we had gone
a short distance, I turned in my saddle and looked back. The tiny hollow
had vanished; all the forest looked level, dreamy and still, barren of
humanity, given over to its own shy children, nothing moving save the
slow-falling leaves. But from beyond a great clump of sumach, set like
a torch in the vaporous blue, came a steady stream of words, happily
rendered indistinguishable by distance, and I knew that the King's
minion was cursing the Italian, the Governor, the Santa Teresa, the Due
Return, the minister, the forest, the haunted wood, his sword, the knot
that I had tied, and myself.

I admit that the sound was music in mine ears.

CHAPTER XV IN WHICH WE FIND THE HAUNTED WOOD

ON the outskirts of the haunted wood we dismounted, fastening the horses
to two pines. The Italian we gagged and bound across the brown mare's
saddle. Then