"Yer gal was barefut, I reckon," he said. He pointed to the imprint just before where he was standing. "Yep," Uncle Dick answered. There was a little mist over his eyes, as he glanced down. "Yep; hit's her'n." The veteran went forward confidently now. "She was a-steppin' plumb brisk," he declared; "feelin' pretty peart, I 'low; feet kind o' springy-like." Uncle Dick shivered at the words. He had a ghastly vision of Plutina moving at this moment with painfully dragging steps somewhere afar in the fastnesses of the mountains. But he said nothing of the worst fears to his companion. He only followed on, watching closely lest something escape the other's survey. Almost, he found himself hoping they might come on the girl's dead body. Death is not the worst of evils. After a mile, or a little less, the area of the shower was passed. Uncle Dick could hardly distinguish any sign of the footprints in the heavy dust of the trail, but he accepted without question the veteran's assertion that they were easily perceptible to the trained sight. Suddenly, Seth Jones halted, and peered intently, stooping low. Uncle Dick, too, bent to look, but the faint markings in the dirt were without significance to him. The veteran moved to the roadside and searched on hands and knees over the yard of grass between the trail and a thicket. When he stood erect again, he regarded his companion inquiringly. "They seem to be the tracks o' some mighty-big, hefty cuss, what come out o' these-hyar bushes, an' tuk along arter her. Kin ye make a guess who hit mout be, Mister Siddon?" Uncle Dick's face grew black with a rage that was the more frightful because it had no object on which to vent itself. "Hit's him!" he mumbled thickly, choking over the effort for self-control. Abruptly, he abandoned the attempt. His big voice boomed forth in a torrent of blasphemous imprecations. When, finally, he rumbled into silence, and stood panting for breath, the veteran, who had appeared to listen with great interest and perhaps some pleasure, spoke soothingly: "You-all was shore some eloquent, an' I 'low the ornery critter deserves every mite on hit. An', anyhow, I reckon ye done saved yerse'f a stroke. Ye was a-lookin' like ye'd bust, but ye let off the steam a-cussin' 'im out. Now, let's see." He went back to the trail, and advanced very slowly, for the markings were faint even to his skilled eyes. Uncle Dick, trembling a little from the violence of his outburst, followed faithfully, but he could no longer detect traces of the passing of either man or girl.