No wagon was there.
His eyes followed the road further and further toward the foot of the range, and then along the valley beyond. There, at least two miles distant, was a small moving black object, plainly defined upon the red clay of the road.
Barney was gone! There was no mistake about it. They had taken him away from Goliath Mountain! He was innocent, and Nick knew it, and Nick had made him seem guilty. There was no one near him now to speak a good word for him, not even his palsied old grandmother.
It all came back upon Nick with a rush. His eyes were blurred with rising tears. Unconsciously, in his grief, he made a movement forward, and suddenly clutched convulsively at the ledge.
He had lost his balance. There was a swift, fantastic whirl of vague objects before him, then a great light seemed flashing through his very brain, and he knew that he was falling.
He knew nothing else for some time. He wondered where he was when he first opened his eyes and saw the great stone shaft towering high above, and the tops of the sun-gilded maples waving about him.
Then he remembered and understood. He had fallen from that narrow ledge, hardly ten feet above his head, and had been caught in his descent by the far broader one upon which he lay.
"It knocked the senses out'n me fur a while, I reckon," he said to himself. "But I hev toler'ble luck now, sure ez shootin', kase I mought hev drapped over this ledge, an' then I'd hev been gone fur sartain sure!"
His exultation was short-lived. What was this limp thing hanging to his shoulder? and what was this thrill of pain darting through it?
He looked at it in amazement. It was his strong right arm—broken—helpless.