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Rh den ran on and on, without sight, without hearing, and without plan save for an instinct, a certainty that he was in the right path; till suddenly, as he plunged down into a gully that cleft an open space through the woods on either side, a plan flashed into his head, and he stopped, panting, blind with sweat and tears.

Beyond, just above the little hill that wound sharply upward before him, he knew that the highway forked into two roads, both of which ran past the great triangle of the Barclay farm. Lee might come by either. The thought of deliberate waiting, of ambush, filled him with nausea. But there must be no mistake,—that creature must not have the devil's luck to get by. He grounded his gun in the dust, and looked about the little clearing.

"It must be here," he thought, and, for all his hurry in the sun, was struck cold and shuddered.

The clearing, an old dry watercourse, slanted down from the left in a tangle of low bushes and weeds. Marden chose the upper