There might have been a quarter of a minute between the moment when Willoughby seated himself, with his book in his hand, and that in which the door opened.  Short as was this interval, it sufficed for Nick to remove the piece of log last cut, and to take away the handle of the saw; the latter change permitting the blanket to hang so close against the logs as completely to conceal the hole.  The sentinel who appeared was an Indian in externals, but a dull, white countryman in fact and character.

“I thought I heard the sound of a saw, major,” he said listlessly; “yet everything looks quiet, and in its place here!”

“Where should I get such a tool?” Willoughby coolly replied; “and what is there here to saw?”

“’Twas as nat’ral, too, as the carpenter himself could make it, in sound!”

“Possibly the mill has been set in motion by some of your idlers, and you have heard the large saw, which, at a distance, may sound like a smaller one near by.”

The man looked incredulously at his prisoner for a moment; then he drew to the door, with the air of one who was determined to assure himself of the truth, calling aloud as he did so, to one of his companions to join him.  Willoughby knew that no time was to be lost.  In half-a-minute, he had passed the hole, dropped the blanket before it, had circled the slender waist of Maud with one arm, and was shoving aside the bushes with the other, as he followed Nick from the straitened passage between the lean-to and the rock.  The major seemed more bent on bearing Maud from the spot, than on saving himself.  Her feet scarce touched the ground, as he ascended to the place where Joyce had halted.  Here Nick stood an instant, with a finger raised in intense listening.  His practised ears caught the sound of voices in the lean-to, then scarce fifty feet distant.  Men called to each other by name, and then a voice directly beneath them, proclaimed that a head was already thrust through the hole.

“Here is your saw, and here is its workmanship!” exclaimed this voice.

“And here is blood, too,” said another.  “See! the ground has been a pool beneath those stones.”

Maud shuddered, as if the soul were leaving its earthly tenement, and Willoughby signed impatiently for Nick to proceed.  But the savage, for a brief instant, seemed bewildered The danger below, however, increased, and evidently drew so near, that he turned and glided up the ascent.  Presently, the fugitives reached the descending path, that diverged from the larger one they were on, and by which Nick and Maud had so recently come diagonally up this cliff.  Nick leaped into it, and then the intervening bushes concealed their persons from any who might continue on the upward course.  There was an open space, however, a little lower down; and the quick-witted savage came to a stand under a close cover, believing flight to be useless should their pursuers actually follow on their heels.