There was no alarm in his voice and Nathaniel caught the flashing gleam of white teeth as Neil smiled grimly back at him, running in the lead.  From the man’s eyes the master of the Typhoon had sized up his companion as a fighter.  The smile—­daring, confident, and yet signaling their danger—­assured him that he was right, and he followed close behind without question.  A dozen rods up the path Neil turned into a dense thicket of briars and underbrush and for ten minutes they plunged through the pathless jungle.  Now and then Nathaniel saw the three red stripes of the whipper’s lash upon the bare shoulders of the man ahead and to these every step seemed to add new wounds made by the thorns.  As they came out upon an old roadway the captain stripped off his coat and Neil thrust himself into it as they ran.

Even in these first minutes of their flight Nathaniel was thrilled by another thought than that of the peril behind them.  Whom had he saved?  Who was this clear-eyed young fellow for whom the girl had so openly sacrificed herself at the whipping-post, about whom she had thrown her arms and covered with the protection of her glorious hair?  With his joy at having served her there was mingled a chilling doubt as these questions formed themselves in his mind.  Obadiah’s vague suggestions, the scene in the king’s room, the night visits of the girl to the councilor’s cabin—­and last of all this incident at the jail flashed upon him now with another meaning, with a significance that slowly cooled the enthusiasm in his veins.  He was sure that he was near the solution of the mysterious events in which he had become involved, and yet this knowledge brought with it something of apprehension, something which made him anticipate and yet dread the moment when the fugitive ahead would stop in his flight, and he might ask him those questions which would at least relieve him of his burden of doubt.  They had traveled a mile through forest unbroken by path or road when Neil halted on the edge of a little stream that ran into a swamp.  Pointing into the tangled fen with a confident smile he plunged to his waist in the water and waded slowly through the slough into the gloom of the densest alder.  A few minutes later he turned in to the shore and the soft bog gave place to firm ground.  Before Nathaniel had cleared the stream he saw his companion drop to his knees beside a fallen log and when he came up to him he was unwrapping a piece of canvas from about a gun.  With a warning gesture he rose to his feet and for twenty seconds the men stood and listened.  No sound came to them but the chirp of a startled squirrel and the barking of a dog in the direction of St. James.

“They haven’t turned out the dogs yet,” said Neil, holding a hand against his heaving chest.  “If they do they can’t reach us through that slough.”  He leaned his rifle against the log and again thrusting an arm into the place where it had been concealed drew forth a small box.