Just before the sun rose the signal gun pealed its message of life, ONE! TWO! in rapid succession.
Tom sprang to his feet with blazing eyes. One! Two! echoed the guns from another hill, and fainter grew its repeated call from group to group of the searchers.
“There! Glory to God!” He screamed at the top of his voice, the last note of his triumphant shout breaking into sobs. “God be praised! I knew they would find her—she’s not dead, she’s alive! alive! oh! my soul, lift up thy head!”
The tramp of swift feet was heard at the door and Gaston told him with husky stammering voice, “She’s alive Tom, but unconscious. I ’ll have her brought to the house. She was found just where your spring branch runs into the Flat Rock, not five hundred yards from here in those woods. Stay where you are. We will bring her in a minute.”
Gaston bounded back to the scene.
Tom paid no attention to his orders to stay at home, but sprang after him jumping and falling and scrambling up again as he followed. Before they knew it he was upon the excited tearful group that stood in a circle around the child’s body.
Gaston, who was standing on the opposite side from Tom’s approach, saw him and shouted, “My God, men, stop him! Don’t let him see her yet!” But Tom was too quick for them. He brushed aside, the boy who caught at him, as though a feather, crying, “Stand back!”
The circle of men fell away from the body and in a moment Tom stood over it transfixed with horror.
Flora lay on the ground with her clothes torn to shreds and stained with blood. Her beautiful yellow curls were matted across her forehead in a dark red lump beside a wound where her skull had been crushed. The stone lay at her side, the crimson mark of her life showing on its jagged edges.
With that stone the brute had tried to strike the death blow. She was lying on the edge of the hill with her head up the incline. It was too plain, the terrible crime that had been committed.