Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/170

 he was so near to the path and had that fork to rest his gun-barrel in? Did you see him?"

It was some time before Abner answered, and then his reply was to my final query.

"I did not see him," he said deliberately. "He must have slipped away somehow through the thicket."

That was all he said, and for a good while he was silent, drumming with his fingers on the pommel of his saddle and looking out over the distant treetops.

The sun was touching the mountains before Abner began to move the drove. We got the cattle out of the wood and started the line down the long hill. The road forked at the bottom of the hill—one branch of it, the main road, went on to the house of the grazer with whom we had expected to spend the night and the other turned off through the wood.

I was astonished when Abner turned the drove into this other road, but I said nothing, for I presently understood the reason for this change of plans. One could hardly accept the hospitality of a man when he had negligently stood by to see him murdered.

In half a mile the road came out into the open. There was a big new house on a bit of rising land and, below, fields and meadows. I did not know the crossroad, but I knew this place. The man, Dillworth, who lived here had been sometime the clerk of the county court. He had got this land, it was said, by taking advantage of a defective record, and 157