He and Selim did not cross the stream.  His mind worked automatically, but it was a trained mind, and knew what the emergency demanded.  He retraced the river road to a point beyond the rock and the mountain ash, and there left it.  Once in the burned herbage under the trees, he looked back to the road.  There was rock and there was black leaf-mould.  If in the latter any hoof-prints showed confusedly, the coming storm held promise of a pelting and obliterating rain.  He pushed into a thick-set wood, and began a desperate ride across country.  It was necessary to strike the main road below Red Fields.

Their way was now dangerous enough, but he and Selim made no stay for that.  They went at speed over stock and stone, between resinous pines, through sumach and sassafras.  Lightnings were beginning to play, and the thunder to roll more loudly.  The sunbeams were gone, the trees without motion, the air hot and laden.  Horse and man panted on.  Rand’s mind made swift calculation.  He had ordered Young Isham to walk the mare.  For all that time had seemed to stop, there at the stream behind him, the minutes were no longer than other minutes, and there had passed of them no great number.  He had ridden from the ford to the stream at speed, and now he was going as rapidly.  He would presently reach the main road, and Young Isham would not have passed.

It fell as he had foreseen.  One last burst through brush and vine and scrub and they reached the edge of the wood.  Before them through the trees he saw the main road.  Rand checked the horse.  “Stand a bit, Selim, while I play the scout.”

Dismounting, he moved with caution through a mass of dogwood and laurel to the bank.  At a distance beneath him lay the road, bare under the storm clouds.  Above and below where he stood it was visible for some rods, and upon it appeared neither man nor beast.  He went back to Selim, mounted, and together they made shift to descend the red bank.  As, with a noise of breaking twigs and falling earth and stone, they reached the road, a man, hitherto hidden by the giant bole of the oak beneath which he had sat down to rest, rose and came round his tree to see what made the commotion.  Between the cause and the investigator was perhaps fifty feet of road.  Rand muttered an oath, then, with a characteristic cool resolve, rode up to M. Achille Pincornet and wished him good-day.

“Good-day, Mr. Rand,” echoed the dancing master, and stared at the bank.  “Parbleu, sir!  Why did you come that way?”

“I left my servant a little way down the road and struck into the woods after a doe I started.  I’ll gallop back and meet him now.  Are you for Charlottesville, Mr. Pincornet?”

“Not to-day, sir.  I have a dancing class at Red Fields.”  Mr. Pincornet still stared.  “I would say, sir, that the chase had been long and hard.”

Rand laughed.  “Am I so torn and breathless?  No, no; it was short but rough—­a few minutes and perhaps half a mile!  Well, I will rejoin my negro and we’ll make for town before the storm breaks.”