A flash of hope lighted up the renegade’s eyes.
“You should find her, then.”
“Alas! I have no good trailer with me.”
“I could track her.”
“But you won’t!” retorted the colonel. “Roy Funk, I’m not going to set you free and trust to your guidance. Colonel Argent O’Neill is not a condemned fool! But you’ll be free directly—free forever,” and the old malignant look came back to the red-coat’s eyes. “We’re going to leave this place. Curse the winding paths of this American wood! No such forests in England; that is God’s land; this the devil’s. Our guide got bewildered, else we would have been here long ago, and we would have had the girl, too.”
“She will never be yours now, sir.”
“Never! how do you know that?”
“I need not explain. Suffice it to say, Colonel O’Neill, that she will never in this world become your property.”
“Will she ever become yours?” asked the soldier, with a devilish leer, as he leaned forward.
“That remains to be seen,” was the outlaw’s calm reply.