CHAPTER IV

To those few who saw Jonathan Zane in the village, it seemed as if he
was in his usual quiet and dreamy state. The people were accustomed to
his silence, and long since learned that what little time he spent in
the settlement was not given to sociability. In the morning he
sometimes lay with Colonel Zane's dog, Chief, by the side of a spring
under an elm tree, and in the afternoon strolled aimlessly along the
river bluff, or on the hillside. At night he sat on his brother's
porch smoking a long Indian pipe. Since that day, now a week past,
when he had returned with the stolen horses, his movements and habits
were precisely what would have been expected of an unsuspicious
borderman.

In reality, however, Jonathan was not what he seemed. He knew all that
was going on in the settlement. Hardly a bird could have entered the
clearing unobserved.

At night, after all the villagers were in bed, he stole cautiously
about the stockade, silencing with familiar word the bristling
watch-hounds, and went from barn to barn, ending his stealthy tramp at
the corral where Colonel Zane kept his thoroughbreds.

But all this scouting by night availed nothing. No unusual event
occurred, not even the barking of a dog, a suspicious rustling among
the thickets, or whistling of a night-hawk had been heard.

Vainly the borderman strained ears to catch some low night-signal
given by waiting Indians to the white traitor within the settlement.
By day there was even less to attract the sharp-eyed watcher. The