“I must know, whatever happens,” she presently said to herself. Stopping the horse she sprang out and ran back a little way, to where her eyes could command the opposite hill. The horsemen were disappearing over its crest. Her knees were shaking as she hurried back to the buggy, but she pulled herself together and considered what would be the best plan to get the fugitive out of the cave and on to the next station. For she feared to go back openly now, lest some member of the marshal’s party might return. A little farther on, she remembered, was a cross way and striking off from this, a short distance to the westward, an old wood road which ended near the cave. “It used to be there,” she thought anxiously, “but I haven’t been down it since--oh, I don’t know when! I’ll have to take chances on its being there yet.” But on the cross road she met farmer Gilbertson, in a big, deep-bedded wagon filled with a load of loose hay. She told him of her narrow escape. “You better drive in and get him in your little buggy,” he advised, “and I’ll wait out here and take him home with me, under the hay. It’ll be safe enough--this road ain’t traveled much.” It was not long until Rhoda was driving homeward again, deep joy in her heart that the fugitive had escaped such imminent danger, but wondering much how the marshal had discovered the secret of their woodshed. CHAPTER XVI When Mrs. Ware reached home that afternoon she found Marshal Hanscomb and his men, baffled and angry, completing their search of the house. “Mr. Hanscomb, what does this mean?” she demanded. “It means that runaway niggers have been making a hiding place of your house and that we’ve been barely too late to catch one.” “I assure you, Mr. Hanscomb, that nothing of the sort has been going on in my house. Dr. Ware’s sympathies, it is true, are with the anti-slavery cause, but he is not a nigger-stealer.” “If you think so, madam,”--there was the hint of a sneer in his tone--“you’d better go out to the woodshed and look at that room built into the middle of your woodpile and see how lately it’s been occupied.” She turned upon him a face of offended dignity. Her small, plump figure, in its balloon-like skirt, stiffened with a haughtiness which impressed even the angry marshal. “I trust, sir, that you have satisfied yourself there is no one concealed in the house or on the premises.” “We have, madam, for the present. We happened to be a few minutes too late.” “Then I will bid you good-evenin’.” With a stately nod she left him, going at once to her own room, behind whose closed door she remained until her husband’s return.