He had felt secure in the dead hour of night and the thick darkness, and the distance had precluded him from being warned by the stoppage of the train. He stood in motionless indecision for an instant, until Moses Carter, who was a little in advance of the others, made an effort to seize him, exclaiming, “This fire ez ye hev kindled, Painter Brice, will burn ye in hell forever!” He spoke at a venture, not recognizing the dark shadow, but there was no mistaking the supple spring with which the man threw himself upon his enemy, nor the keen ferocity that wielded the sharp knife. Hearing, however, in the ebb of the wind, voices approaching from the hill below, and realizing the number of his antagonists, the Panther tore himself loose, and running in the dark with the unerring instinct and precision of the wild beast that he was, he sped up the precipitous slope, and was lost in the gloomy night. “Gin us the slip!” exclaimed Joel Ruggles, in grievous disappointment, as he came up breathless. “A cussed painter if ever thar war one.” “Mebbe he won’t go fur,” said Moses Carter. “He done cut my arm a-nigh in two, but thar air suthin’ adrippin’ off ’n my knife what I feels in my bones is that thar Painter’s blood. An’ I ain’t a-goin ter stop till he air cotched, dead or alive. He mought hev gone down yander ter the Widder Yates’s house, ez him an’ Mark air thicker’n thieves. Come ter think on’t,” he continued, “Mark war a-settin’ with this hyar very Painter Brice an’ the t’others yander ter the still-house nigh ’pon eight o’clock ter-night, an’ like ez not he holped Painter an’ the t’others ter fire the church.” For there was a strong impression prevalent that wherever Panther Brice was, his satellite brothers were not far off. Nothing, however, was seen of them on the way, and the pursuers burst in upon the frightened widow and her son with little ceremony. Her assertion that Mark had not left home since the eleven o’clock train passed was disregarded, and they dragged the young fellow out to the door, demanding to know where were the Brices. “I hain’t seen none of ’em since I lef’ the still ’bout’n eight or nine o’clock ter-night,” Mark protested. “Ef the truth war knowed,” said Moses Carter, jeeringly, “ye never lef’ the still till they did. War it ye ez holped ’em ter fire the church?” “I never knowed the church war burnin’ till ye kem hyar,” replied young Yates. He was almost overpowered by a sickening realization of the meaning of those covert insinuations which he had heard at the still; and he remembered that the Panther’s assertion that the church was safer with the Brices in it than out of it, was made while he sat among the brothers in Moses Carter’s presence. He saw the justice of the strong suspicion. “You know, though, whar Painter Brice is now--don’t ye?” asked Carter.