An owl hooted mournfully, a frog croaked in a near-by pool, and a cricket chirped pleasantly from the grass.
“’Twas the owl,” I said, and I passed on.
Again I heard a dry twig snap as if some heavy animal or a man had stepped on it. This time, as I halted to looked about I heard not far off the howl of a lone wolf.
“It was the wolf,” I muttered, “after a stray sheep,” and I walked on, for the night was chill, and I was not warmly clad.
I had reached the inn, and hurried to my room. Then I looked from the window, and I saw passing across the fields the figure of a man.
“Ho,” I whispered, “it was no wolf then.”
But I looked again and saw that the man was Sir George Keith.
“Aye, it was a wolf,” I said.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN SALEM GAOL.
I dreamed that night I was back in Pemaquid, with the cannon pounding away at the fort, bringing the stout timbers down about my ears. I fought the fight over again, and suddenly awoke in the gray dawn of the morning to hear a thundering summons at my door.