He crawled out of the protecting bushes, and got upon his feet. For a moment or two he stood, listening intently; but now there was no sound from beyond the ravine. Then, with a sort of grim and unhappy determination, he began to descend the slope. At the bottom he paused again, but heard nothing either to lessen or to increase his anxiety. Then he went on, climbing doggedly and steadily to the clump where first had appeared the dark spot, and then the head of a man. The quiet of the place was unbroken. A new and terrible fear laid hold upon him: perhaps the wounded man had already succumbed. It needed all his grit and courage at last to part the branches and look in at the spot where the man had stood. Sam looked, and looked again; and felt that he could not believe the evidence of his eyes. For three or four feet in each direction the brush had been trampled down, but there was nobody there! A great sense of relief filled the boy. At all events, he had not killed anybody! There was even a second in which he cherished wild hope that what he had seen had been merely a vision raised by some trick of over-taxed nerves. But the hope was doomed to swift dismissal. There was blood on the dried leaves on the ground--not much blood, to be sure, but enough to make a fresh, dark stain. Kneeling, Sam examined the sanguinary traces very carefully. As he rose, his expression curiously combined satisfaction and bewilderment. It was manifest that the stranger’s wound had neither bled copiously nor crippled him; and that he had been able to make off. But whither had he gone? Why had he not charged across the gully? And why had he not raised a warning shout to prevent a second shot? “Jiminy!” said Sam to himself. “Jiminy! but I don’t believe he got sight of me at all! I was covered by the bushes, and there was hardly any smoke, and if he were looking another way--why--why----” He broke off, frankly unable to weigh and decide the probabilities of the strange affair. There still remained the possibility of finding and following the man’s trail; but Sam was not especially skilled in such matters. He fancied that for a few yards he could make out evidences of somebody forcing a way through the undergrowth, but then he came to a sort of woods path along the backbone of the ridge, and there lost the slender clews upon which he had depended. Certainly he could discover no more drops of blood. Sam went back to the trampled space, and searched it minutely from end to end, and from side to side. He had his trouble for his pains. He found nothing to throw light upon the mystery.