Tregarvon was the first to regain his feet and to reach the open. The cloud mantlings had been thrust aside for the moment, but the stir was full of gray dust and acrid with the fumes of the explosive. Where the derrick and the new power-plant had stood there was a mass of tangled wreckage, and the burying-ground glade looked as if it had been swept by a tornado. In the wan moonlight Tregarvon caught a glimpse of something moving under the trees beyond the wreck; then the moving object erected itself into the stature of a man. One glance at the tall, frock-coated figure was enough. With a mad yell of rage, Tregarvon snatched the gun from the judge’s hands and gave chase, calling to the frock-coated man to stand or he would shoot. There was an instant of hesitation, seemingly of indecision; then the man turned and fled. And, as if to favor him, another scudding cloud settled upon the mountain top, burying forest and glade, the tangled wreck and the two runners in its fleecy depths. Tregarvon raced on for a breath-cutting space; guided solely by the crashing of the fugitive through the brier tangles and dry-leaf beds. Then he began to get his second wind, and again he shouted the command to halt. Since this seemed only to have the effect of hastening the thudding footsteps on ahead, he fired the gun, holding the muzzle high, as he thought and intended, but apparently not high enough, as the dreadful sequence immediately indicated. For, almost exactly coincident with the report of the gun, there was a shriek, the crash of a falling body, and silence. At this the pursuer came down from the transporting heights of berserk rage with a shock that was sickening. “Oh, good Lord!” he gasped; “I’ve killed him!” Whereupon he flung the offending weapon afar and ran to confirm the horrifying conclusion. He was still running in the direction from which the cry had come when the curious happening befell. As if the solid earth had been whisked away from beneath his feet he found himself whirling through empty space; falling through unfathomable depths of it, it seemed, before he collided with another world--a world of shocks and coruscating pains, of beatings and bruisings, and presently of grateful forgetfulness. XXVIII The Ocoee’s Answer When Tregarvon recovered consciousness he knew at once what had happened to him. In the blind and hurried search for the body of the man he had presumptively shot he had fallen from the cliff edge; how far was still problematical, but far enough, as a painful roaring in his ears, a tightening agony in his forehead, and a bruised and stiffening ankle sufficiently testified.