On the eve of leaving his sequestered haunts in the hills, none but the omniscient Providence could tell for how long, Lem Lutts was loath to turn his eyes toward the blue-grass country. So it was that he lingered, feasting his gaze upon the panoramic view that lay beneath Eagle Crown, every spur and nook and cove and gulch of which he had been familiar with all his life. With a heaviness weighing his heart, but a determination unabated, he swept his eyes over the purple distance with one last farewell, and turning started his descent. His head had disappeared downward when suddenly, as if in response to a voice, he halted and, not knowing his own purpose precisely, he climbed back and stood up on the ledge, sending his gaze afar to the glistening patch of water that marked the Boon Creek ford; immortalized in his soul, with the last beckonings of her whom he adored with a flaming, compelling, deathless love that eclipsed and obliterated all else in life. His gaze dwelt here for a full minute. Then he turned half-way, then looked quickly back. Something there had attracted him. With his hand half raised, he pushed to the brink of the precipice. He now discerned the burnished coat of a blood-bay horse standing in the ford. Lem's mouth dropped ajar. As he strained his eyes downward, his breath paused with the miraculous thought that slowly filtered into his brain. From this vast, hazy height he could not determine whether the equestrian was male or female. But an exciting intuition seized his senses as he descried some object flashing methodically in the sunlight. Unmistakably the distant rider was waving to him! Then the signal changed to something white, flaunting against the azure space, and Lem's heart smote his ribs with a great bound of suffocating joy, as the influx of a scintillating realization obsessed him, and he started down that perilous descent faster than he had ever gone in his life. CHAPTER XXXIII BELLE-ANN COMES BACK When he reached the ground he dashed along the trail like a madman. On past the cabin he ran in great bounds; down the cypress cut, his speed increasing every second. As he rushed headlong down into the loop, a startling thing happened. As Lem shot around a clump of scrub cedars that marked a sharp twist in the trail, the form of a man confronted him with a shotgun leveled at his head. At the same time the ambuscader pulled the trigger with murderous intent. The gun snapped with no report, and the sheer impetus of Lem's body moving at terrific velocity bore him down in a trice. As Lem flashed past, unable to check his headlong speed on the moment, he struck the mystified face a stunning, crashing blow. The man tumbled backward--his head striking a rock with a crushing impact.