Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/169

 fork in the ground was to hold the gun-barrel so the assassin could not miss his mark.

And with this understanding came an appalling sense of my Uncle Abner's negligence. He must have known all this when he stood there in the thicket, and when he knew it, why had he left that gun there? Why had he put it back into its hiding-place? Why had he gone his way thus unconcernedly and left this assassin to accomplish his murder? Moreover, this man riding there through the wood was a man whom Abner knew. His house was the very house at which Abner expected to stop this night. We were on our way there!

It was in one of those vast spaces of time that a second sometimes stretches over that I put these things together and jerked my head toward Abner, but he sat there without the tremor of a muscle.

The next second I saw the frightened horse plunging in the path and I looked to see its saddle empty, or the rider reeling with the blood creeping through his coat, or some ghastly thing that clutched and swayed. But I did not see it. The rider sat firmly in his saddle, pulled up the horse, and, looking idly about him, rode on. He believed the gun had been fired by some hunter shooting squirrels.

"Oh," I cried, "he missed!"

But Abner did not reply. He was standing in his stirrups searching the wood.

"How could he miss, Uncle Abner," I said, "when 156