CHAPTER XIV.

HARRY'S GRAND SCHEME.


This wholesale appropriation of horses caused, of course, a great
commotion in the vicinity of Akeville, and half the male population
turned out the next day in search of George Mason and the five horses.

Even Harry was infected with the general excitement, and, mounted on old
Selim, he rode away after dinner (there was no school that afternoon) to
see if he could find any one who had heard anything. There ought to be
news, for the men had been away all the morning.

About two miles from the village, the road on which Harry was riding
forked, and not knowing that the party which had started off in that
direction had taken the road which ran to the northeast, as being the
direction in which a man would probably go, if he wanted to get away
safely with five stolen horses, Harry kept straight on.

The road was lonely and uninteresting. On one side was a wood of
"old-field pines"--pines of recent growth and little value, that spring
up on the old abandoned tobacco fields--and on the other a stretch of
underbrush, with here and there a tree of tolerable size, but from which
almost all the valuable timber had been cut.

Selim was inclined to take things leisurely, and Harry gradually allowed
him to slacken his pace into a walk, and even occasionally to stop and