As they stepped out on the veranda Collins rode up in alarm.
“I followed this road to a cross-road where it becomes a bridle-path and runs off into the forest. There I lost all trace of the lady, but here is her riding-crop.”
“Cooke, take your prisoner to the caboose; and, Collins, come with me,” commanded Ardmore; and a moment later he and the reporter rode off furiously in search of Jerry Dangerfield.
CHAPTER XIII.
MISS DANGERFIELD TAKES A PRISONER.
A dozen men carrying rifles across their saddle-bows rode away from Habersham’s farm on the outskirts of Turner Court House and struck a rough trail that led a devious course over the hills. At their head rode the guide of the expedition—a long, silent man on a mule. Griswold and Habersham followed immediately behind him on horseback. Their plans had been carefully arranged before they left their rendezvous, and save for an occasional brief interchange between the prosecuting attorney and the governor’s special representative, the party jogged on in silence. Habersham’s recruits were, it may be said, farmers of the border, who had awaited for years just such an opportunity as now offered to avenge themselves upon the insolent Appleweights. Nearly every man of the party had some private score to settle, but they had all been sworn as special constables, and were sobered by the knowledge that the power of the state of South Carolina was back of them.
Thus, at the very hour that Mr. Ardmore and his lieutenants rode away from the lonely anchorage of the caboose, Professor Griswold and his cavalcade set out for Mount Nebo Church. While the master of Ardsley was revenging himself upon the Duke of Ballywinkle, his dearest friend, against whom he had closed the doors of his house, was losing no time in setting forth upon a mission which, if successful, would seriously interfere with all Mr. Ardmore’s hopes and plans. Ardmore’s scarlet fever telegram no longer rankled in the breast of the associate professor of admiralty of the University of Virginia, for Griswold knew that no matter what might be the outcome of his effort to uphold the dignity of the sovereign state of South Carolina, his participation in any such adventure would so cover his friend with envy that he would have him for ever at his mercy. Thomas Ardmore deserved punishment—there was no doubt of that, and as Professor Griswold was not more or less than a human being, he took comfort of the reflection.
The guide of the expedition pushed his mule forward at a fast walk, making no excuses to Griswold and Habersham for the roughness of the trails he chose, nor troubling to give warning of sharp turns where a horse, being less wise than a mule, tobogganed madly before finding a foothold. Occasionally a low-hanging limb switched the associate professor sharply across the face, but his temper continued serene where the trail was darkest and steepest, and he found himself ignoring Habersham’s occasional polite questions about the university in his effort to summon up in memory certain ways of Barbara Osborne which baffled him. He deplored the time he had given to the study of a stupid profession like the law, when, if he had applied himself with equal diligence to poetry, he might have made for himself a place at least as high in belles-lettres. In his college days he had sometimes thrummed a guitar, and there was a little song in his heart, half formed, and with only a line or two as yet tangible, which he felt sure he could write down on paper if it were not that the bugles summoned him to war; it was a song of a white rose which a lover wore in his heart, through winter and summer, and it never changed, and the flight of the seasons had no manner of effect on it.
“Check up, cain’t you?” snarled the man on the mule, laying hold of Griswold’s rein; and thus halted, Griswold found that they had been circling round a curiously symmetrical, thickly wooded hill, and had finally come to a clearing whence they were able to gaze far off toward the north.
“We are almost out of bounds,” said Habersham, pointing. “Over there somewhere, across the hills, lies North Carolina. I am as thoroughly lost as you can possibly be; but these men know where they are.—How far is it, Billy”—he addressed the silent guide—“to Mount Nebo?”
“About four mile, and I reckon we’d better let out a leetle now, or they’ll sing the doxology before we git thar.”