“Bes’ take ter the bresh,” Jepson remarked in an undertone. “They mought hev set a lookout ter watch the road.” Despite its denudation by the autumnal storm, the “brush” still afforded a dense covert, by reason of the young growth of the pines, whose lower branches jutted out level with the ground, and the predominance in its midst of the ever-green laurel. The crestfallen Clem kept close at Jepson’s heels, as he pushed cautiously through the shrubs, laden with the white rime and glittering with the moon. Now and again some dry fallen bough cracked beneath Clem’s careless, heavy tread, and thorns of stripped bushes caught and tore his garments, the rending of the fabric loud in the dumbness of the windless autumn night. And when this chanced Jepson cast over his shoulder a warning glance, imposing silence and heed, so freighted with the spirit of their expedition, so oblivious of all else, that Clem, preposterously hopeful, began to breathe more freely. Surely he had not so definitely committed himself as he had feared. In the excitement of the moment, he perchance did not distinguish between what he thought and what he said. Jepson doubtless had not comprehended; had he not stood like a stock in the road and stared, motionless and mute? When he saw Jepson pause beneath the gnarled, low-hanging boughs of a chestnut, gray with lichen, and here and there glimmering icily as if in presentiment of the coming snows, this idea had so possessed him that he had no apprehension that his coadjutor had aught of significance to say. Jepson lifted grave, intent eyes as Clem came stumbling up. He was leaning, as he waited, against the tree. His hat was thrust far back, and his face was all unshaded; it seemed melancholy, but the light was pensive, and his voice had always those falling inflections. “She war agin it, then,” he said, and the tone had none of the spirit of interrogation. Clem took an unguarded step backward, recoiling as if he had been struck. Then he clumsily recovered his equilibrium, standing unsteadily on the uneven ground. He made some feint of self-defense. “Who air ye a-talkin’ ’bout?” he demanded gruffly, slouching his heavy shoulders forward and fixing his long, narrow, gleaming eyes surlily on Jepson. “Marcelly Strobe,” Jepson answered promptly. “Ye said she ’lowed them men war like hounds on a trail. She war agin ’em, then.” Clem made still another desperate effort to shield himself. “She said some men—ginerally. How’d she know ennythin’ ’bout our goin’s on?” “How’d she know? Kase ye told her,” retorted the discerning Jepson. “An’ it air ez much ez yer life air wuth.” This knowledge, familiar enough to his own consciousness, became doubly impressive and coercively veracious in another man’s words. Clem Sanders, stout-hearted as he was, felt the sudden thrill of panic. It sharpened his faculties.