There was one thing that troubled his mind along with its other troubles, and that was to find out who were the active parties in the escape of Colleton.  In all this time, he had not for a moment suspected Munro of connection with the affair—­he had too much overrated his own influence with the landlord to permit of a thought in his mind detrimental to his conscious superiority.  He had no clue, the guidance of which might bring him to the trail; for the jailer, conscious of his own irregularity, was cautious enough in suppressing everything like a detail of the particular circumstances attending the escape; contenting himself, simply, with representing himself as having been knocked down by some persons unknown, and rifled of the keys while lying insensible.

Rivers could only think of the pedler, and yet, such was his habitual contempt for that person, that he dismissed the thought the moment it came into his mind.  Troubled thus in spirit, and filled with a thousand conflicting notions, he had almost reached the rocks, when he was surprised to perceive, on a sudden, close at his elbow, the dwarfish figure of our old friend Chub Williams.  Without exhibiting the slightest show of apprehension, the urchin resolutely continued his course along with the outlaw, unmoved by his presence, and with a degree of cavalier indifference which he had never ventured to manifest to that dangerous personage before.

“Why, how now, Chub—­do you not see me?” was the first inquiry of Rivers.

“Can the owl see?—­Chub is an owl—­he can’t see in the moonlight.”

“Well, but, Chub—­why do you call yourself an owl?  You don’t want to see me, boy, do you?”

“Chub wants to see nobody but his mother—­there’s Miss Lucy now—­why don’t you let me see her? she talks jest like Chub’s mother.”

“Why, you dog, didn’t you help to steal her away?  Have you forgotten how you pulled away the stones?  I should have you whipped for it, sir—­do you know that I can whip—­don’t the hickories grow here?”

“Yes, so Chub’s mother said—­but you can’t whip Chub.  Chub laughs—­he laughs at all your whips. That for your hickories.  Ha! ha! ha!  Chub don’t mind the hickories—­you can’t catch Chub, to whip him with your hickories.  Try now, if you can.  Try—­” and as he spoke he darted along with a rickety, waddling motion, half earnest in his flight, yet seemingly, partly with the desire to provoke pursuit.  Something irritated with what was so unusual in the habit of the boy, and what he conceived only so much impertinence, the outlaw turned the horse’s head down the hill after him, but, as he soon perceived, without any chance of overtaking him in so broken a region.  The urchin all the while, as if encouraged by the evident hopelessness of the chase on the part of the pursuer, screeched out volley after volley of defiance and laughter—­breaking out at intervals into speeches which he thought most like to annoy and irritate.