[CHAPTER XIX—THE APPARITION IN THE WOODS.]
In the midst of the woods Shultz stopped to rest, seating himself upon a log against which he had stumbled. The clouds having dispersed, the moon was silvering the tree-tops above his head, but it had not yet risen high enough to cast its light upon the ground of the little glade. On every hand were the mysterious night shadows of the woods.
The boy’s legs quivered as he sat there, grateful for this respite, although he felt that time was precious and he should waste no moments. No longer could he hear the village bells; they had ceased to ring, and he was glad of that.
It was a melancholy and terrible thing to feel himself an outcast and a fugitive from justice, practically with the hand of mankind in general turned against him. He had read stories of daring fugitives in similar positions, and always the fugitives had seemed enfolded by a glamor of romance, which had almost made him long to pass through such an experience; but, now that the experience was his, it held no glamor, no single feature of allurement or romance. It was simply a horrible situation, to be freed from which he felt that he would willingly give up years of his life.
That he could escape, he still had a faint hope; but it was faint indeed, and, had he heeded sober judgment, he would have put it aside as something false and deceptive and merely adding to his suspense and torture. With the telephone and telegraph, the surrounding country could be warned and every loophole stopped. With the bulk of the villagers searching for him, it was simply a matter of time before he would be run down.
“I’ll never give up,” he kept telling himself; “I’ll never give up till they catch me.”
He had always thought of the night woods at this season of the year as silent and lifeless. Now, however, resting upon that log, he became aware of many strange sounds all around him. There seemed to be faint rustlings and whisperings, as if the very trees were telling one another that he was there, and pointing him out with their bare, extending arms. Continually he kept turning his head to look first in one direction and then in another. Several times he was startled by shadows that seemed to move, but when he watched them more closely they were motionless enough.
Nevertheless, the fancy that something was drawing nearer, creeping upon him bit by bit, increased with the passing moments. He could feel it approaching silently, stealthily, steadily. He had escaped the two men who had tried to run him down, but there was something he could not escape, and, recalling what he had beheld through the window of his chamber, he leaped up and resumed his reckless flight.
This way and that he turned and darted to avoid the trees and the denser thickets. The woods seemed endless. Long ere this, he told himself, he should have passed through them and reached the Barville road.
Presently before him the moonlight showed a broad open space, and with a gasp of thankfulness he tottered forth from the forest. His clothes were in tatters. There was blood on his legs from the wounds inflicted by the barbed wire fence. His hands and his face were scratched and bruised. Seeing him now, a stranger must surely have wondered with curiosity to know what had brought him to such a pitiful plight.