Then Smith stopped speculating and stood still. The rock on which he had left Elizabeth was bare; she was not there either awake or sleeping. Under his black beard he grew deathly white. Then, cursing, he stepped rapidly into the woods. After a while he returned to the rock. Elizabeth was still not there. He stepped out again in a different direction, and this time he was longer away. When he returned a second time, he stared with a terror which had ceased to be intelligent. His journey and his meal had made his absence long. She could not have gone to fetch those black-coated police! Some one would kill him if she had; he knew that, but in his confusion he was not sure whether it would be Sheldon or the police. The girl had said that they could be punished for past crimes. Again, now without any conscious plan, he plunged into the woods. * * * * * When Elizabeth reached the house of Colonel Thomas, not much more than a quarter of an hour after she had accosted the stranger on the roadside, she saw that old gentleman sitting, as usual, on his porch. As usual, he did not wait for his visitors to come to him, but rose and walked to the porch steps. The kindly stranger bade Elizabeth sit still in the car and went to meet him. “I was stopped on the Cashtown road by a young woman named Elizabeth Scott, who says that her brother has been carried off into the mountain. She has come to find you and the constabulary. My car is at your service, if you need it.” Colonel Thomas said “Wait!” and vanished indoors. His voice could be heard, first shouting to his family, then into a telephone. When he reappeared a hat was set rakishly on his head, and he was answering over his shoulder protests of some one indoors. “Of course I’m going!” said he. In another instant his foot was on the car step. “Two State police, Garnett and Byers, rode toward Fairfield not fifteen minutes ago. We can catch them and there is a cross-road. Why, Miss Scott, don’t cry _now_!” Elizabeth looked at him tearfully. The great car was turning; she felt like a child who had been lost and who sees at last some hope of rescue. Within five minutes they had caught up with the two horsemen who left their mounts at a farmhouse and got into the machine. The driver bent a little over his wheel and again they were off. Before they started to climb the last hill, Colonel Thomas leaning forward shouted to the driver to stop. “We’d better make our plans,” said he nervously. His eyes sparkled; one could imagine how he had looked before going into a charge. He had had, alas, a letter from the editor of General Adams’s “Recollections,” who had explained that the letter from which Colonel Thomas’s quotation was taken had been partially destroyed and that the row of asterisks indicated a missing sheet. He wished that he had not mentioned his inquiry to Elizabeth. Elizabeth recounted hurriedly the history of the last few days.