“And you will go there without a second?”

“If necessary; yes.”

“I declare, Price, you are hardly fitted to be at large!  Why, you act as if you were tired of life.  There’s Yancy—­there’s Cavendish!”

The judge gave him an indulgent but superior smile.

“Two very worthy men, but I go to Boggs’ attended by a gentleman or I go there alone.  I am aware of your prejudices, Solomon; otherwise I might ask this favor of you.”

Mr. Mahaffy snorted loudly and turned to the door, for Yancy and Cavendish were now approaching the house, the latter with a meal sack slung over his shoulder.

“Here, Solomon, take one of my pistols,” urged the judge hastily.  “You may need it at Belle Plain.  Goodby, and God bless you!”

Just where he had parted from Ware, Carrington sat his horse, his brows knit and his eyes turned in the direction of the path.  He was on his way to a plantation below Girard, the owner of which had recently imported a pack of bloodhounds; but this unexpected encounter with Ware had affected him strangely.  He still heard Tom’s stammering speech, he was still seeing his ghastly face, and he had come upon him with startling suddenness.  He had chanced to look back over his shoulder and when he faced about there had been the planter within a hundred yards of him.

Presently Carrington’s glance ceased to follow the windings of the path.  He stared down at the gray dust and saw the trail left by Hues and his party.  For a moment he hesitated; if the dogs were to be used with any hope of success he had no time to spare, and this was the merest suspicion, illogical conjecture, based on nothing beyond his distrust of Ware.  In the end he sprang from the saddle and leading his horse into the woods, tied it to a sapling.

A hurried investigation told him that five men had ridden in and out of that path.  Of the five, all coming from the south, four had turned south again, but the fifth man—­Ware, in other words —­had gone north.  He weighed the possible significance of these facts.

“I am only wasting time!” he confessed reluctantly, and was on the point of turning away, when, on the very edge of the road and just where the dust yielded to the hard clay of the path, his glance lighted on the print of a small and daintily shod foot.  The throbbing of his heart quickened curiously.

“Betty!” The word leaped from his lips.

That small foot had left but the one impress.  There were other signs, however, that claimed his attention; namely, the bootprints of Slosson and his men; and he made the inevitable discovery that these tracks were all confined to the one spot.  They began suddenly and as suddenly ceased, yet there was no mystery about these; he had the marks of the wheels to help him to a sure conclusion.  A carriage had turned just here, several men had alighted, they had with them a child or a woman.  Either they had reentered the carriage and driven back as they had come, or they had gone toward the :fiver.  He felt the soul within him turn sick.