Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/207

 twenty miles to him at least. After that—well, after that would be to-morrow, and to-morrow's problems were its own.

A half-hour passed. He stopped, leaning against a tree trunk to listen, wiping the trickling drops of perspiration from his face with his jacket sleeve. Softened, mellowed, the boom of the bell still came to him; that, and the evening breeze whispering through the tree-tops, the gurgle of water from the creek upon whose bank he stood—there was no other sound.

He unbuttoned his jacket—the warden's coat was hot and cumbrous around his body. He started to untie the cord that held the garment in place, with the idea of changing his clothes—and knotted it back into place again. Not yet, not while he was still within the zone of immediate pursuit where, if he were seen, he would be recognised—until dark he must trust wholly to speed. They must believe that he had no other clothing than his prison stripes; otherwise, the change would lose almost all the value it possessed. In time they would know that he must have got rid of his tell-tale garb—but it was to-morrow, the next day, the first few days that counted so vitally—and for that length of time they might well believe him to be hiding in the woods, even if far away from the penitentiary walls.

And now he listened attentively again, then parted the branches and looked up and down the narrow creek. Here the opposite bank was densely bush-lined, and, beyond, the land rose in undulating, hilly sweeps, covered with woods as far as the eye could reach. He must have made a good three miles from the