But though he searched with his eyes in every direction, Harry could make out no sign of his darling twin sister, and the feeling of hope which had set his heart beating, quickly died, stifled in his breast.
He stole back noiselessly to the others and reported what he had seen, when it was decided to proceed forward at once.
No sooner did the party emerge from the thick trees, than the stallion sprang to attention. Then he wheeled round, got between the troop and the new-comers, and with bent head and nose outstretched, and uttering shrill screams, drove them in front of him pell-mell down the steep slope; the thunder of their hoofs echoing far and wide as they fled from the danger from which he had protected them.
And now for the first time Shag appeared at fault. He ran hither and thither, sniffing the ground, and vainly endeavouring to pick up the scent which he had apparently been following with such ease before. Twenty times or more he returned to the wild horse track, took up the scent right enough, and brought the trail to within thirty feet or so of the clearing; but there he always stopped, completely at fault, and unable to proceed further. At length, with a piteous expression in his honest brown eyes, he raised his head and gave a long, melancholy howl.
“Harry, you know Shag better than any one else, except poor Topsie. Do you think he has led us right so far?” inquired Lady Vane in an anxious voice.
“Sure of it, Aunt Ruby; I would stake my life that the dear old fellow is right so far,” answered the boy. “What do you think, uncle? Perhaps the captors of our poor Topsie have followed this stream downwards, purposely to throw any one following off the scent. I think I will just give Shag a cast along its edges, and see if there is anything in my idea.”
Suiting his action to his words, Harry made Shag follow the left bank of the mountain torrent bed, which, coming from the forest, ran straight down the clearing in the direction of the valley below. The sun had already risen, but its rays had not yet penetrated the dew-besprinkled ground, and scent was therefore necessarily hard to pick up. But Shag, with almost human intelligence, worked carefully along, painstaking and minute in his canine observations.
He was rewarded. Harry suddenly noticed that he pressed his nose tighter against the ground, and began snorting and sniffing loudly; next the dog’s tail moved gently, then fast, next faster. Finally he sprang forward, giving tongue across the clearing, and into the forest on the opposite side.
At once Harry turned and waved his cap. Thank God, the trail had been hit once more! With a cheer Freddy came rushing down the slope to meet him, followed more soberly by Sir Francis, Lady Vane, and Aniwee. But it was no longer such plain sailing as it had been up till then. Shag was making his way slowly along a rough and rocky line indeed. Every now and then the undergrowth of the forest became almost impassable, and recourse had to be had to the party’s short axes to clear a way. Yet every now and then the trackers would notice that the brushwood was beaten down and trampled upon, as though some one had already passed that way.
As may be imagined, progress through such a line of march was but slow, and rendered exceedingly wearisome and difficult, yet all plodded bravely on, and worked their hardest to secure an appreciable advance. They had certainly been four or more hours at their laborious work when they came on a muddy and boggy patch of ground, where Sir Francis decided to call a short halt, and spend half an hour in regaining breath and snatching a brief repose. Shag was called in to heel and bidden to down charge, an order which he obeyed with the greatest reluctance, and indeed evinced a considerable amount of eagerness and impatience.