Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/157

Rh would find him eventually, unless he were fortunate enough to intercept the English  party on their way back, was certain, for they  would find his tracks in the forest and follow  them as a hound follows the scent of a fox. His hope, therefore, lay in reaching the Indian trail to the south while darkness still held and there lying in wait for his friends. After that his fate was in the hands of Providence. If his pursuers came first, his efforts would have been in vain.

Midges or some other small insects annoyed him while he rested, and once a prowling animal, no larger than a small dog,  slunk out of the gloom but a pace away and  startled him with the green fires of its staring  eyes. David moved but his foot and the beast was gone with a snarl. Up the slope he went then, from shadow patch to shadow patch,  the trees thinning, and presently the open ground, rock-strewn, bush-grown, lay before  him in the soft radiance of the stars. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, for somehow  emerging from the gloom of the forest  seemed like stepping from a dark prison into  freedom. But freedom was not yet his, as he well knew, and, glancing uneasily to the left  toward where, perhaps a quarter of a mile