“Quick, into the saddle. We must follow him.”
Three of the party were injured so that they could not join in the pursuit, and were forced to remain behind.
The others vaulted into the saddle and a few minutes later were following as rapidly as the country would permit on the trail of the fugitive.
He had only a slight start of them and they felt confident of quickly overtaking and capturing him.
In the very heart of the enemy’s country his escape indeed seemed impossible.
CHAPTER II.
THE FUGITIVE SCOUT.
“Look, Mara! Do my old eyes deceive me, or is that a horseman?”
“Where, grandpa?”
“Crossing the ridge yonder.”
They presented a striking picture—one bowed beneath the weight of four-score years, his countenance shrunken and wrinkled, his long, thin lock glistening in the sunlight with the frosts of time; the other just budding into womanhood, fair as a poet’s dream, with hair that vied with the gold of the sun and eyes of a heavenly blue.