The termination of this train of thought was the sudden suspicion that this very being was at that moment in close proximity.  Unconsciously, Harvey rose to the sitting position and looked around, half expecting to descry the too well remembered figure.

“Supper is waiting, and so is our appetites, be the same token in your stomachs that is in mine.  How bees it with yourself, Mistress Cora?”

The young wife had risen to her feet, and the husband was in the act of doing the same, when the sharp crack of a rifle broke the stillness, and Harvey plainly heard and felt the whiz of the bullet as it passed before his eyes.

“To the devil wid yer nonsense!” shouted Teddy, furiously springing forward, and glaring around him in search of the author of the well-nigh fatal shot.  Deciding upon the quarter whence it came, he seized his ever-ready rifle, which he had learned to manage with much skill, dashed off at the top of his speed, not heeding the commands of his master, nor the appeals of Mrs. Richter to return.

Guided only by his blind rage, it happened, in this instance, that the Irishman proceeded directly toward the spot where the hunter had concealed himself, and came so very near that the latter was compelled to rise to his feet to escape being trampled upon.  Teddy caught the outlines of a tall form tearing hurriedly through the wood, as if in terror of being caught, and he bent all his energies toward overtaking him.  The gloom of the night, that had now fairly descended, and the peculiar topography of the ground, made it an exceedingly difficult matter for both to keep their feet.  The fugitive, catching in some obstruction, was thrown flat upon his face, but quickly recovered himself.  Teddy, with a shout of exultation, sprung forward, confident that he had secured their persecutor at last, but the Irishman was caught by the same obstacle and “floored” even more completely than his enemy.

“Bad luck to it!” he exclaimed, frantically scrambling to his feet, “but it has knocked me deaf and dumb.  I’ll have ye, owld haythen, yit, or me name isn’t Teddy McFadden, from Limerick downs.”

Teddy’s fall had given the fugitive quite an advantage, and as he was fully as fleet of foot as the Irishman, the latter was unable to regain his lost ground.  Still, it wasn’t in his nature to give in, and he dashed forward as determinedly as ever.  To his unutterable chagrin, however, it was not long before he realized that the footsteps of his enemy were gradually becoming more distant.  His rage grew with his adversary’s gradual escape, and he would have pursued had he been certain of rushing into destruction itself.  All at once he made a second fall, and, instead of recovering, went headlong down into a gully, fully a dozen feet in depth.

Teddy, stunned by his heavy fall, lay insensible for some fifteen or twenty minutes.  He returned to consciousness with a ringing sensation in his ears, and it was some time before he could recall all the circumstances of his predicament.  Gradually the facts dawned upon him, and he listened.  Everything was oppressively still.  He heard not the voice of his master, and not even the sound of any of the denizens of the wood.