“I bet they are!” said Colonel Thomas.
“This afternoon I was to bring the paper to the old woman’s cabin and they were to bring Herbert. I expect they are there now. Instead I came to get you.”
The driver of the car touched a button and the car moved. Elizabeth indicated the turn into the wood road above the house. One of the police leaned forward.
“Hadn’t you better get out, miss?”
“Oh, no!” answered Elizabeth.
“And you, sir?” said he to Colonel Thomas.
“Of course not!” said Colonel Thomas.
Each of the constabulary took something from his hip pocket. Elizabeth looked back at them smiling in a pale sort of way, and they smiled at her.
“Never you mind, miss; they won’t give much trouble.”
Herbert, sitting at the foot of a tree with his captors beside him, heard the car first. The mountaineers stood about, guns in hand, first one, then another going off toward the spot where Black Smith was supposed to have left Elizabeth. More than an hour had passed since he had left them and there had been no sign of his return. The crying of Mammy Sheldon was almost continuous; she seemed to believe that now they had come to fetch her will. There were moments when she screamed for fear that they would bury her as she was. It was no wonder that they did not hear the car.