longer reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a wavering
finger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.

With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was some
little distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst with
death, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion through
the wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to come
upon a sentry.

Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guarded
than that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, spared
by my father twenty years before to be a grouse and pheasant cover, and
fetching a compass of half a mile or more across the maize fields, came
in among the oaks and hickories of the manor grounds.

Still there was no sight nor sound of any enemy; no light of candles at
the house, or of camp-fires beneath the trees.

A little way within the grove, where the interlacing tree-tops made the
darkness like Egyptian night, Jennifer went on all fours to feel around
as if in search of something on the sward. Whereat I called softly to
know what he would be at.

He rose, muttering, half as to himself: "I thought I'd never be so far
out of reckoning." Then to me: "A few hours since, the Cherokees were
encamped just here. You are standing in the ashes of their fire."

"So?" said I. "Then they have gone?"

"Gone from this safely enough, to be sure. They have been gone some