Cooper read the note and sighed loudly, as if he found the message burdensome. Then he took goose quill and ink and wrote a note of his own. McAllister watched him write, looking over his shoulder, sighed as heavily as Cooper had, looked at Auguste again. After a moment he nodded and took the judge's note back upstairs. "Well," said Judge Cooper to the courtroom at large, "it seems the jury's a pretty fair distance from a verdict. They can't agree on a lot of things. So, I've given orders that they stay upstairs and keep at it. It looks like we won't have a guilty or not guilty until tomorrow. The prisoner will go back upstairs to his cell. Court will open at nine o'clock in the morning." Auguste heard the rear door of the courtroom slam and knew without looking around that Raoul had left. That night Auguste lay on his corn-husk mattress wondering whether he should try to run away when they took him out. To be shot while trying to escape might be more honorable than hanging. He wished he could see Redbird and Eagle Feather one last time. He wished Nancy would come to visit him. Or at least Nicole, Grandpapa or Frank. But Lieutenant Davis said that for the prisoner's safety no one would be allowed into the village hall tonight. He heard a key turning in his door lock. He climbed to his feet. "Come on," said Davis quickly. "We're taking you out of here." _They've come to kill me_, Auguste thought. It would not be the first time an inconvenient Indian was "shot while trying to escape." But his shaman's insight told him Davis was as trustworthy as any Sauk. "Why? Before the verdict?" "They did reach a verdict today. You are found not guilty." Not guilty! Joy flooded through him as he stood, so amazed that he could not move, staring at the open cell door. When he had recovered enough to move, Auguste followed Davis out of the village hall, to where the two corporals waited with horses in the silent street. The river rippled black and silver in the light of a three-quarter moon. The Ioway bluffs opposite were black bison shapes under a sky spangled with stars. The moonlight helped Auguste guide his horse up the steep road out of the village. Davis led, followed by Auguste, the two corporals bringing up the rear. After weeks of imprisonment, Auguste reveled in the cool night air blowing in his face. They passed the trading post. The road was wider here, and the three soldiers bunched around him. Raoul was surely in there getting drunk, laughing as he looked forward to seeing Auguste swinging at a rope's end. They trotted along the ridge leading to Victoire. Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he approached the place that had been his home. The remains of the mansion sprawled on its hilltop like the skeleton of some huge animal, blackened timbers rearing up in the moonlight. People had died bloody, horrible deaths there. Was the place haunted now? Accursed?