scape. Nothing moving was in sight. Suddenly, just as
they cleared the bridge, and began to mount the opposite grade, there
came a sharp report, sounding so close at hand the chauffeur clamped on
his brake, and glanced anxiously over the side of the car.

"Blow-out, wasn't it, sir?"

"No," said West shortly, staring himself out into the thicket of trees at
their left. "It was a shot fired over there; a revolver I should say.
Wait a second, Sanders, until I see what has happened."

It was largely curiosity which led him to leave the car. The very
conviction that it was a revolver which had been discharged brought a
desire to learn the cause of the shot. The sound of either a rifle or a
shot-gun in that lonely spot would have been instantly dismissed as
natural enough, but a pistol was different. That was no place for such a
weapon. It somehow had a grimly sinister sound. Led forward by a dim
path, he plunged down the sharp incline of the hill, and pressed his way
through the thick fringe of trees beyond. Behind these ran a wire fence,
guarding a stretch of meadow, the high, uncut grass waving in the wind.
Nothing was in sight except this ripening field of clover sweeping upward
to the summit of an encircling ridge. The silence was profound; the
loneliness absolute.

It was this fact which startled West from curiosity into suspicion.
Surely there had been a shot fired--a revolver shot--almost on the very
spot where he stood. He could not doubt the evidence of his own ears. Yet
who had fired? For what purpose? and how had the party disappeared so
completely during that narrow margin of time? There was no place where a
man could hide unless he lay flat in the clover; and what occasion would
any one have to thus seek concealment? Even if the shooter knew of the
passing automobile, or heard his approach through the trees, there could
be no reasonable cause for concealment. Determined now to learn exactly
what had happened, West pressed his passage forward through the vines of
the fence, and emerged into the field beyond. A half dozen yards and he
found the clover trampled, as though a man had passed that way. The trail
led into a shallow depression, past a rather large boulder, near which
the trampling of the grass was even more plainly revealed, as though the
stranger had remained here for some time, had even seated himself, and
then, abruptly ended a few yards away. Evidently the fellow had turned
back at this point, and