“Hooker!” groaned Shultz. “Oh, Hooker, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!”
The figure halted ten feet away. A hand was uplifted and extended accusingly. A voice—the voice of Hooker—demanded:
“Shultz, where did that other ace come from?”
The words sounded in a low, monotonous, dead-level tone. To Shultz, the voice seemed hollow and lifeless, like the voice of the dead.
He could not answer, but, flinging off the benumbing spell that had chained him in his tracks, he whirled and fled again. Through the woods he crashed and plunged like mad, almost blind with terror. Again and again he half collided with trees. Vines and low branches tripped him. Falling, he scrambled up and ran on, absolutely heedless of what course he followed.
In this manner he plunged at last into a deep gully. As he fell he tried to leap, and down he went in an upright position. When he struck the bottom, one foot twisted beneath him, and he dropped in a heap. A pain shot through his leg.
Getting his breath after the shock, he started to rise; but the moment he tried to bear his weight on his right foot the pain jabbed him frightfully, and he toppled over.
“My leg is broken!” he sobbed. “Now I’m done for, sure!”
[CHAPTER XX—THE SEARCH.]
In the midst of troublesome dreams, Ned Osgood, half-awake, fancied he heard hail beating against the windows of his sitting room. Fully awake at last, he lifted his head from the pillow and listened; but, hearing it no more, he decided that it must have been a figment of his distasteful dreams.