chance he had blundered on one of Saleratus Bill's outlaw retreats.

Hastily he skirted the walls of the tiny valley. They were unbroken. The river swept by tortured and tumbled. He ran to the head of the cove. No sunken ledge there rewarded him. Instead, the river at that point swept inward, so that the full force of the current washed the very shores.

Bob searched the prospect with eager eye. Twelve or fifteen feet upstream, and six or seven feet out from the cliff, stood a huge round boulder. That alone broke the shadowy expanse of the river, which here rushed down with great velocity. Manifestly it was impossible to swim to this boulder. Bob, however, conceived a daring idea. At imminent risk and by dint of frantic scrambling he worked his way along the cliff until he had gained a point opposite the boulder and considerably above it. Then, without hesitation, he sprang as strongly as he was able sidewise from the face of the cliff.

He landed on the boulder with great force, so that for a moment he feared he must have broken some bones. Certainly his breath was all but knocked from his body. Spread out flat on the top of the rock, he moved his limbs cautiously. They seemed to work all right. He backed cautiously until he lay outspread on the upstream slope of the boulder. At just this moment he caught the sinister figure of Saleratus Bill moving along the sunken ledge.

For the first time Bob remembered the tracks he must have left and the man's skill at trailing. A rapid review of his most recent actions reassured him at one point; in order to gain to the first of the minor cliff projections by means of which he had spread-eagled along the face of the rock, he had been forced to step into the very shallow water at the stream's edge. Thus his last footprints led directly into the river.

The value of this impression, conjoined with the existence of a ledge below over which he had already waded safely,

was not lost on Bob's preception. As has been stated, his earlier experience in river driving had given him an intimate knowledge of the action of currents. Casting his eye hastily down the moonlit river, he seized his hat from his head and threw it low and skimming toward an eddy opposite him as he lay. The river snatched it up, tossed it to one side or another, and finally carried it, as Bob had calculated, within a few feet of the ledge along which Saleratus Bill was still making his way.

The gun-man, of course, caught sight of it, and even made an attempt to capture it as it floated past, but without avail. It served, however, to prepossess his mind with the idea that Bob had been swept away by the river, so that when, after a careful examination of the tiny cove, he came to the trail leading into the water, he was prepared to believe that the young man had been carried off his feet in an attempt to wade out past the cliff. He even picked up a branch, with which he poked at the bottom. A short and narrow rock projection favoured his hypothesis, for it might very well happen that merely an experimental venture on so slanting and slippery a footing would prove fatal. Saleratus Bill examined again for footprints emerging; threw his branch into the river, and watched the direction of its course; and then, for the first time, slipped the worn and shiny old revolver into its holster. He spent several moments more reëxamining the cove, glanced again at the river, and finally disappeared, wading slowly back around the sunken ledge.

Bob's next task was to regain solid land. For some minutes he sat astride the boulder, estimating the force and directions of the current. Then he leaped. As he had calculated, the stream threw him promptly against the bank below. There his legs were immediately sucked beneath the overhanging rock that had convinced Saleratus Bill of his captive's fate. It seemed likely now to justify that conviction. Bob clung desperately, until his muscles cracked, but was unable so far to draw his legs from underneath the rock

as to gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder root offered itself to his grasp. This frail shrub, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied to it would tear it away, it held. Inch by inch he drew himself from the clutch of the rushing water, until at length he succeeded in getting the broad of his chest against the bank. A few vigorous kicks then extricated him.

For a moment or so he lay stretched out panting, and considering what next was to be done. There was a chance, of course — and, in view of Saleratus Bill's shrewdness, a very strong chance that the gun-man would add to his precautions a wait and a watch at the entrance to the cove. If Bob were to wade out around the ledge, he might run fairly into his former jailer's gun. On the other hand, Saleratus Bill must be fairly well convinced of the young man's destruction, and he must be desirous of changing his wet clothes. Bob's own predicament, in this chill of night, made him attach much weight to this latter consideration. Besides, any delay in the cove meant more tracks to be noticed when the gun-man should come after the horses. Bob, his teeth chattering, resolved to take the chance of instant action.

Accordingly he waded back along the sunken ledge, glided as quickly as he could over the rock apron, and wormed his way through the grasses to the dry wash leading up the side of the mountains. Here fortune had favoured him, and by a very simple, natural sequence. The moon had by an hour sailed farther to the west; the wash now lay in shadow.

Bob climbed as rapidly as his wind would let him, and in that manner avoided a chill. He reached the road at a broad sheet of rock whereon his footsteps left no trace. After a moment's consideration, he decided to continue directly up the mountainside through the thick brush. This travel must

be uncertain and laborious; but if he proceeded along the road, Saleratus Bill must see the traces he would indubitably leave. In the obscurity of the shady side of the mountain he found his task even more difficult than he had thought possible. Again and again he found himself puzzled by impenetrable thickets, impassable precipices, rough outcrops barring his way. By dint of patience and hard work, however, he gained the top of the mountain. At sunrise he looked back into Bright's Cove. It lay there peacefully deserted, to all appearance; but Bob, looking very closely, thought to make out smoke. The long thread of the road was quite vacant.

B

XXIX

OB had no very clear idea of where he was, except that it was in the unfriendly Durham country. It seemed well to postpone all public appearances until he should be beyond a chance that Saleratus Bill might hear of him. Bob was quite satisfied that the gunman should believe him to have been swept away by the

current.

Accordingly, after he had well rested from his vigorous climb, he set out to parallel the dim old road by which the two had entered the Cove. At times this proved so difficult a matter that Bob was almost on the point of abandoning the hillside tangle of boulders and brush in favour of the open highway. He reflected in time that Saleratus Bill must come out by this route; and he shrewdly surmised the expert trailer might be able from some former minute observation to recognize his footprints. Therefore he struggled on until the road dipped down toward the lower country. He remembered that, on the way in, his captor had led him first down the mountain, and then up again. Bob resolved to abandon the road and keep to the higher contours, trusting to cut the trail where it again mounted to his level. To be sure, it was probable that there existed some very good reason why the road so dipped to the valley - some dike, ridge or deep cañon impassable to horses. Bob knew enough of mountains to guess that. Still, he argued, that might not stop a man afoot.

The rest of a long, hard day he spent in proving this latter proposition. The country was very broken. A dozen times Bob scrambled and slid down a gorge, and out again,