Strange, too, in the hound having reached home at the hour it did. As Clancy went out about the middle of the day, he could not have gone to such a distance for his dog to have been nearly all night getting back.
Could he himself have fired the bullet, whose effect is before their eyes?
A question almost instantly answered in the negative; by old backwoodsmen among the mustered crowd—hunters who know how to interpret “sign” as surely as Champollion an Egyptian hieroglyph. These having examined the mark on the hound’s skin, pronounce the ball that made it to have come from a smooth-bore, and not a rifle. It is notorious, that Charles Clancy never carried a smooth-bore, but always a rifled gun. His own dog has not been shot by him.
After some time spent in discussing the probabilities and possibilities of the case, it is at length resolved to drop conjecturing, and commence search for the missing man. In the presence of his mother no one speaks of searching for his dead body; though there is a general apprehension, that this will be the thing found.
She, the mother, most interested of all, has a too true foreboding of it. When the searchers, starting off, in kindly sympathy tell her to be of good cheer, her heart more truly says, she will never see her son again.
On leaving the house, the horsemen separate into two distinct parties, and proceed in different directions.
With one and the larger, goes Clancy’s hound; an old hunter, named Woodley, taking the animal along. He has an idea it may prove serviceable, when thrown on its master’s track—supposing this can be discovered.
Just as conjectured, the hound does prove of service. Once inside the woods, without even setting nose to the ground, it starts off in a straight run—going so swiftly, the horsemen find it difficult to keep pace with it.
It sets them all into a gallop; this continued for quite a couple of miles through timber thick and thin, at length ending upon the edge of the swamp.
Only a few have followed the hound thus far, keeping close. The others, straggling behind, come up by twos and threes.