Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/208

 remembered the dark, tree-topped stretch of country in this direction that he had glimpsed from the roof of the house the day before.

A moment more he stood silent, every faculty alert, looking, listening; then he whipped off his boots, rolled his two pairs of trousers to the knees and waded quickly across the shallow stream—to run for hours in wet boots, all too heavy as they were already, that would chafe and blister his feet, was a handicap compared to which the loss of time required to make the change counted little. He reached the other side, put on his boots, and, taking a course directly away from the creek now, went on again.

The wondrous strength seemed never to flag. On Varge ran, every muscle of his body co-ordinating with its fellows, every movement eloquent of tremendous power in reserve upon which as yet he had had no need to call; always the same splendid stride, light, elastic, sure; always the same easy, perfect breathing.

Twilight began to fall and the shadows in the woods to deepen and strengthen; and then, gradually, his pace slackened as he became obliged to pick his way more carefully. All about him was silence—long ago the clamour of the bell had ceased to reach his ears. He had come now perhaps a matter of four miles from where he had crossed the creek and taken a course at right angles to the one he had pursued when paralleling the stream, in all he must have covered some seven or eight miles; but he could hardly be much more than five miles in a direct line from the penitentiary. Well that, to all intents and purposes, was as good as ten, for in another half-hour now it would be dark and