As the preacher said "Amen" Bear Cat bent tensely forward and caught both of Blossom's hands in his own. "I kain't tarry," he said, "even fer a leetle spell, but I wanted ye ter know thet I done my best ter get hyar afore." She looked at him with dazed eyes which under the intensity of his gaze slowly began to awaken into understanding. Turner went on eagerly, "I started over hyar as soon as I got yore letter, but I was set upon an' wounded. I've been insensible well nigh ever sence then." "Oh, Turney!" she whispered, as the grief which had held her in its thrall of unrelieved apathy suddenly broke into an overflow of tears. "Oh, Turney, I'm glad ye _tried_. He kept callin' fer ye. 'Peared like he wanted to tell ye somethin'." The clods were falling dully on the grave. The crowd held back, fretting against the edict of decorum, as the voices rose in the miserable treble of song, to which two hounds added their anguished howls. At the last words of the verse, an instant clamor of question and discussion broke in eager storm--but Bear Cat had melted into the thicket at his back. With the same mystifying suddenness that had characterized his appearance, he had now disappeared. Excited men rushed hither and thither, calling his name. They beat the woods and tramped the roads, but with as little result as though he had, in fact, appeared out of his grave and returned again to its hiding. The story of that funeral was going with the pervasive swiftness of wind throughout the country-side. It was being mouthed over in dark cabins where toothless grannies and white-shocked grandsires wagged their heads and recalled the manner of Bear Cat's birth. * * * * * When Joe Sanders had left Bear Cat that afternoon at the abandoned cabin, it had been with the impression that Stacy meant to take the path which he had advised; the only path that was not certainly closed to his escape, and seek refuge at Dog Tate's house. He had found an immediate opportunity to report that program to Dog himself, and Dog sought to make use of it in Bear Cat's service. Tate, in recognition of his grievance as an outraged distiller, had been given the leadership of one of the largest of the search parties, which it was his secret purpose to lead far afield on a blind trail. Inasmuch as Bear Cat had been specifically cautioned against going in the direction of his own dwelling place, and yet since that would seem a logical goal, Dog had maneuvered his hunters into territory between the abandoned cabin and Little Slippery. He himself had been in the woods across the waters of the suddenly swollen creek, when an outburst of rifle fire told him that something had gone wrong and brought him running back to the guidance of that musketry.