“Broke the skin, my lad—­a little water will make that all right.  Glad it was no worse.  The fellow out-ran me.”

“He got away?”

“Well, the fact is, Galesworth, I do not really know where he went.  The last glimpse I had he was dodging into that clump of bushes, but when I got there he was gone.”

“Ran along the fence,” broke in Bell, pointing.  “You couldn’t see him for the vines.  See, here’s his tracks—­sprinting some, too.”

We traced them easily as long as we found soft ground, but the turf beyond left no sign.  Yet he could not have turned to the left, or Bell and I would have seen him.  The fellow evidently knew this, yet if he ran to the right it would take him to the house.  It hardly seemed possible he would go there, but he had been a guest there for some time, and probably knew the place well; perhaps realized he would be safer within—­where no one would expect him to be—­than on the road.  This was the conception which gradually came to me, but the others believed he had gone straight ahead, seeking the nearest Confederate outpost.  Able to walk alone by this time, I went in through the back door, and bathed my face at the sink, leaving Hardy and Bell to search for further signs of the fugitive.

As I washed I thought rapidly over the situation.  Le Gaire knew that Chambers’ force would be along the pike within a few hours—­probably long before the appearance of any Federal advance in the neighborhood, as he was unaware that I had sent back a courier.  The house was the very last place in which we would seek for him, and the easiest place to attain.  Once inside, stowed away in some unused room, he could wait the approach of Chambers’ troops, escape easily, and become a hero.  The whole trick fitted in with the man’s type of mind.  And he could have come in the same way I had, sneaking through the unguarded kitchen—­why, in the name of Heaven, had Miles neglected to place a guard there?—­and then up the servants’ stairs.  I dried my face on a towel, rejoicing that the derringer blow had left little damage, and opened the door leading to the upper story.  It was a narrow stairway, rather dark, but the first thing to catch my eye was a small clod of yellow dirt on the second step, and this was still damp—­the foot from which it had fallen must have passed within a very short time.  I had the fellow—­had him like a rat in a trap.  Oh, well, there was time enough, and I closed the door and locked it.

I talked with the sergeant, and had him send Foster to watch the kitchen door, and detail a couple of men for cooks, with orders to hurry up breakfast.  Miles had seen nothing of Le Gaire, and when Hardy and Bell returned, they acknowledged having discovered no trace of the fugitive.  I let them talk, saying little myself, endeavoring to think out the peculiar situation, and determine what I had better do.  Already there was heavy cannonading off to the right, but at considerable distance.  The battle was