“She is yet safe. On, on, for the love of God—we may not be too late after all.”
The pace of the pursuers was now accelerated to a run. Suddenly Uncle Lawrence said,
“That dog is nearly up with her; I know it by the quick way in which he cries. Follow the track as fast as you can. I’ll take a short cut through the swamp; I think I can make something by it, though none of the rest can. The cry of the hound will lead me to the right spot.”
He had never ceased running as he spoke; and it was wonderful to see how he could run, with the weight of sixty winters on him; and he now vanished from sight, the bushes crackling as he dashed right into the undergrowth.
Following the trails made by the wild animals, and occasionally breaking through a thicket; now wading in black, slimy water up to his knees, and now plunging into blacker mud ankle-deep; and guiding himself, partly by the cry of the hound, and partly by a woodman’s instinct of the course which he knew Kate must have taken, he reached our heroine, as we have seen, just in time to save her life by shooting the bloodhound that was springing at her throat. Then pausing to reload, with a veteran hunter’s precaution, he leaped into the open space, and confronted Arrison.
Everything now depended on the length of time it would take Major Gordon to come up with his companions. Minutes, at present, were worth hours at any other crisis.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE DEATH-SHOT
With wild surprise,
As if to marble struck devoid of sense. —Thomson.
Amaz’d,
Astonished stood, and blank, while horror chill
Ran through his veins. —Milton.
Arrison was thunderstruck by the sudden apparition of Uncle Lawrence. His first movement was to start back, as if he saw a spirit; for the old man was the last person he had expected to confront him. But in a moment he recovered his usual presence of mind. When he perceived that he was opposed by veritable flesh and blood, and that too in the person of one he hated for his goodness, he secretly exulted; for having no suspicion that Uncle Lawrence had friends at hand, he considered that his long threatened vengeance was certain.