The renegade stopped.  It was very dark among the trees.  He could see neither the house behind, nor the city before him.  He did not hear the sound again, but he was troubled.  His pleasant thoughts were disturbed.  It was like waking from a happy dream.  He turned to go back to the house and then he saw a flitting shadow.  The wicked heart of Braxton Wyatt stood still.  If he had not known that Henry Ware was safely in the military prison he would have taken the terrible shadow for him.  He knew too well the great height, the broad shoulders, and the fierce accusing countenance.  Once he had laughed at the Shawnees and Miamis because they had believed in ghosts.  But could it be true?

Braxton Wyatt turned back toward the house, where he might renew his interrupted and pleasant dream, but the next instant the terrible shadow turned itself into a reality more terrible.

A powerful form hurled itself upon him, and he was thrown to the ground.  He looked up and met the eyes of Henry Ware, who knelt upon him.  No, it was certainly not a shadow but the most unpleasant of all facts!

Braxton Wyatt was at first paralyzed by terror and the suddenness of the attack.  When he recovered, one hand of Henry pressed heavily upon his mouth, while the other felt rapidly through his clothing.  “Look for any unusual thickness in his waistcoat; that is probably the place,” Oliver Pollock had said.  Henry’s hand in a few moments ran upon something folded between the cloth and lining of the waistcoat.  He snatched out his knife, cut them apart and out fell several folds of fine, thin deerskin.  He knew that the prize had been secured, and he meant to keep it.

Henry thrust the folds of deerskin in his pocket and sprang to his feet.

“Now, you scoundrel!” he exclaimed, “tell what tale you please and we will prove another!”

Then the terrible reality resolved itself back into a shadow, and was gone.  Braxton Wyatt sprang to his feet, clapped his hand to his mangled waistcoat where the precious package had been, and uttered a strangled cry.  Then he ran through the trees to the house of Alvarez.

* * * * *

A quarter of an hour later Oliver Pollock was sitting at his own window in the little office and his thoughts were not happy.  He wished his fleet of supply canoes to start on the great river journey at once, but it could not depart while such storms were threatening.  Alvarez was too serious a danger, and he must be removed.  But the merchant realized that he had made little progress.  Alvarez seemed to be secure in his plot.

There came a knock at his door, and in reply to his request to enter, a clerk said that the young man, Mr. Ware, had returned.  Mr. Pollock rose to his feet as Henry came in.  Henry carefully closed the door behind him, advanced, and put a small package in Mr. Pollock’s hand.

“There they are!” he said, “the maps drawn up by Braxton Wyatt, and with notes on them in handwriting, which I take to be that of Francisco Alvarez.”