“It’s all up, John,” said Hues.

“No!” said Murrell, recovering himself.  “You may as well turn me loose—­you can’t arrest me!”

“I’ve done it,” answered Hues, with a laugh.  “I’ve been on your track for six months.”

“How about this fellow?” asked the man, whose pistol still covered Ware.  Hues glanced toward the planter and shook his head.

“Where are you going to take me?” asked Murrell quickly.  Again Hues laughed.

“You’ll find that out in plenty of time, and then your friends can pass the word around if they like; now you’ll come with me!”

Ware neither moved nor spoke as Hues and his prisoner passed back along the path, Hues with his hand on Murrell’s shoulder, and one of his companions close at his heels, while the third man led off the outlaw’s horse.

Presently the distant clatter of hoofs was borne to Ware’s ears—­only that; the miracle of courage and daring he had half expected had not happened.  Murrell, for all his wild boasting, was like other men, like himself.  His bloodshot eyes slid around in their sockets.  There across the sunlit stretch of water was Betty—­the thought of her brought him to quick choking terrors.  The whole fabric of crime by which he had been benefited in the past or had expected to profit in the future seemed toppling in upon him, but his mind clutched one important fact.  Hues, if he knew of Betty’s disappearance, did not connect Murrell with it.  Ware sucked in comfort between his twitching lips.  Stealing niggers!  No one would believe that he, a planter, had a hand in that, and for a brief instant he considered signaling Bess to return.  Slosson must be told of Murrell’s arrest; but he was sick with apprehension, some trap might have been prepared for him, he could not know; and the impulse to act forsook him.

He smote his hands together in a hopeless, beaten gesture.  And Murrell had gone weak—­with his own eyes he had seen it—­Murrell —­whom he believed without fear!  He felt that he had been grievously betrayed in his trust and a hot rage poured through him.  At last he climbed into the saddle, and swaying like a drunken man, galloped off.

When he reached the river road he paused and scanned its dusty surface.  Hues and his party had turned south when they issued from the wood path.  No doubt Murrell was being taken to Memphis.  Ware laughed harshly.  The outlaw would be free before another dawn broke.

He had halted near where Jim had turned his team the previous night after Betty and Hannibal had left the carriage; the marks of the wheels were as plainly distinguishable as the more recent trail left by the four men, and as he grasped the significance of that wide half circle his sense of injury overwhelmed him again.  He hoped to live to see Murrell hanged!

He was so completely lost in his bitter reflections that he had been unaware of a mounted man who was coming toward him at a swift gallop, but now he heard the steady pounding of hoofs and, startled by the sound, looked up.  A moment later the horseman drew rein at his side.