He shunned the
scattered farms and the infrequent settlements, for the fear was
strong with him that he might be followed either by Murrell or
Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across the land, the
great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him forth into
the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger
smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of
bitter loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.
"I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried--" he told himself, with
quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and
the tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before
him he saw the scattered lights of a settlement. All his
terrors, the terrors that grouped themselves about the idea of
pursuit and capture, rushed back upon him, and in a panic he
plunged into the black woods again.
But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived
a whole day without food, a whole day without speech. He began
to skirt the settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of
the woods, and presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a
small clearing in the center of which stood a log dwelling. The
place seemed deserted. There was no sign of life, no light shone
from the window, no smoke issued from the stick-and-mud chimney.
Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was
sleeping. The hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He
yawned and stretched himself, thrusting out his fat legs and
extending his great arms.
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