Mandy Ann had entirely disappeared, but here and there in the sand he
saw her footprints, the toes spread wide apart, and knew he was right.
Suddenly there came a diversion, and he leaned against a tree and
breathed hard and fast, as one does when a shock comes unexpectedly. His
ear had caught the sound of voices at no great distance from him. A
negro's voice--Mandy Ann's, he was sure--eager, excited, and pleading;
and another, soft and low, and reassuring, but wringing the sweat from
him in great drops, and making his heart beat rapidly. He knew who was
with Mandy Ann, and that she, too, was hurrying on to the clearing,
still in the distance. Had there been any doubt of her identity, it
would have been swept away when, through an opening in the trees, he
caught sight of a slender girlish figure, clad in the homely garments of
what Ted called poorwhite trash, and of which he had some knowledge.
There was, however, a certain grace in the movements of the girl which
moved him a little, for he was not blind to any point of beauty in a
woman, and the beauty of this girl, hurrying on so fast, had been his
ruin, as he in one sense had been hers.

"Eudora!" he said, with a groan, and with a half resolve to turn back
rather than go on.

Tom Hardy in their talk while the boat waited for them at Palatka, had
told him what _not_ to do, and he was there to follow Tom's
advice--though, to do him justice, there was a thought in his heart that
possibly he might do what he knew he ought to do, in spite of Tom.

"I'll wait and see, and if--" he said at last, as he began to pick his
way over the palmetto stumps and ridges of sand till he came upon the
clearing.