“Would you know again the place where this chase occurred?”

“He came down the bank opposite the blasted oak.”

“Ah!” breathed Cary; then, after a moment, “I stopped my horse beneath that tree this morning, and my eyes rested upon that red bank.  And I did not know!  We are very blind.”  He rose.  “Will you come indoors, sir?  I wish to light the candles again.”

They entered the small bedroom.  Cary lighted the candles, placed them upon the table, and closed the shutters of the one window.  From the breast of his riding-coat he took a rolled paper.  “This is a map of the country below Red Fields.  I made it myself.  Now let us see, sir, let us see!”

He pinned the map down with ink-well, sand-box, book, and candlestick, which done, the two bent over it.  “Call it,” said Cary, “a military map of your country near Mauleon.  Now, sir, look!  Here is what a man did.”

The demonstration proceeded, and it was carried out with keenness and with a very fair approach to accuracy.  “Here is Malplaquet, which one passes about nine in the morning, and there by the candlestick is Red Fields, certainly on the main road and certainly paused at by”—­he glanced aside at the other’s face—­“by the murderer, M. de Pincornet!  Now let us mark this fox that doubles on himself.”

The long, curled wig of the Frenchman and the younger man’s handsome head with the hair gathered back into a black ribbon bent lower over the map.  “Forrest’s forge, the mill, the ford, he passed these places under such and such circumstances—­here, where I rest the pen, stands the guide-post.  This line is your silvered ribbon, this is the main road that makes a sweep around the broken country.  This heavy, black, and jagged line is the river road.  They both took the river road, as both had said they would—­my brother to me, the murderer to a man at the Cross Roads Inn.  The negro boy kept on by the main road.  Where is this riven oak?” He dipped the quill into the ink-well.  “I correct my map according to my better knowledge.  That tree stands two miles below Red Fields, just above the turn where, fifty years ago, was the Indian ambush.  We’ll mark it here, black and charred.  Here is the bank, crowned by woods.  The growth is very thick between it and”—­his hand, holding the pen, travelled across the sheet—­“the river road just east of Indian Run.”

He laid down the pen, and turned from the table to the open door.  “The moon is not bright enough, or I would go to-night.  I want sunlight, or I want storm-light, for that ride across from road to road!  Five hours till morning.”  He returned to the dancing master.  “When, in your country, the man you loved was to be avenged, and his murderers punished, you were glad of aid, were you not?  I shall be thankful for every least thing that you can tell me.”

“He came,” said the emigre, “like Pluto out of the earth.  He was breathless as one out of prison—­his linen was torn.  There was,” the narrator’s voice halted, then hardened in tone,—­“there was blood upon his sleeve.  At the time I supposed that, in bursting through that grille of the forest, branch or briar had drawn it.  There was blood, sir, about your brother?”