“Now,” cried Horace, taking up a pencil, “begin with your description, and I will follow with my drawing.”
“Very well,” replied Hickory, setting himself forward in a way to watch his colleague’s pencil. “I leave the widow’s house by the dining-room door—a square for the house, Byrd, well down in the left-hand corner of the paper, and a dotted line for the path I take—run down the yard to the fence, leap it, cross the bog, and make straight for the woods.”
“Very good,” commented Byrd, sketching rapidly as the other spoke.
“Having taken care to enter where the trees are thinnest, I find a path along which I rush in a beeline till I come to the glade—an ellipse for the glade, Byrd, with a dot in it for the hut. Merely stopping to dash into the hut and out again—”
“Wait!” put in Byrd, pausing with his pencil in midair; “what did you want to go into the hut for?”
“To get the bag which I propose to leave there tonight.”
“Bag?”
“Yes; Mansell carried a bag, didn’t he? Don’t you remember what the stationmaster said about the curious portmanteau the fellow had in his hand when he came to the station?”
“Yes, but—”
“Byrd, if I run that fellow to his death it must be fairly. A man with an awkward bag in his hand cannot run like a man without one. So I handicap myself in the same way he did, do you see?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then; I rush into the hut, pick up the bag, carry it out, and dash immediately into the woods at the opening behind the hut.—What are you doing?”
“Just putting in a few landmarks,” explained Byrd, who had run his pencil off in an opposite direction. “See, that is the path to West Side which I followed in my first expedition through the woods—the path, too, which Miss Dare took when she came to the hut at the time of the fearful thunderstorm. And wait, let me put in Professor Darling’s house, too, and the ridge from which you can see Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage. It will help us to understand—”
“What?” cried Hickory, with quick suspiciousness, as the other paused.
But Byrd, impatiently shaking his head, answered:
“The whole situation, of course.” Then, pointing hastily back to the hut, exclaimed: “So you have entered the woods again at this place? Very well; what then?”
“Well, then,” resumed Hickory, “I make my way along the path I find there—run it at right angles to the one leading up to the glade—till I come to a stony ledge covered with blackberry bushes. (A very cleverly drawn blackberry patch that, Byrd.) Here I fear I shall have to pause.”
“Why?”
“Because, deuce take me if I can remember where the path runs after that.”
“But I can. A big hemlock-tree stands just at the point where the woods open again. Make for that and you will be all right.”
“Good enough; but it’s mighty rough travelling over that ledge, and I shall have to go at a foot’s pace. The stones are slippery as glass, and a fall would scarcely be conducive to the final success of my scheme.”
“I will make the path serpentine.”
“That will be highly expressive.”
“And now, what next?”
“The Foresters’ Road, Byrd, upon which I ought to come about this time. Run it due east and west—not that I have surveyed the ground, but it looks more natural so—and let the dotted line traverse it toward the right, for that is the direction in which I shall go.”
“It’s done,” said Byrd.
“Well, description fails me now. All I know is, I come out on a hillside running straight down to the riverbank and that the highway is visible beyond, leading directly to the station; but the way to get to it—”
“I will show you,” interposed Byrd, mapping out the station and the intervening river with a few quick strokes of his dexterous pencil. “You see this point where you issue from the woods? Very good; it is, as you say, on a hillside overlooking the river. Well, it seems unfortunate, but there is no way of crossing that river at this point. The falls above and below make it no place for boats, and you will have to go back along its banks for some little distance before you come to a bridge. But there is no use in hesitating or looking about for a shorter path. The woods just here are encumbered with a mass of tangled undergrowth which make them simply impassable except as you keep in the road, while the river curves so frequently and with so much abruptness—see, I will endeavor to give you some notion of it here—that you would only waste time in attempting to make any shortcuts. But, once over the bridge—”
“I have only to foot it,” burst in Hickory, taking up the sketch which the other had now completed, and glancing at it with a dubious eye. “Do you know, Byrd,” he remarked in another moment, “that it strikes me Mansell did not take this roundabout road to the station?”
“Why?”
“Because it is so roundabout, and he is such a clearheaded fellow. Couldn’t he have got there by some shorter cut?”
“No. Don’t you remember how Orcutt cross-examined the stationmaster about the appearance which Mansell presented when he came upon the platform, and how that person was forced to acknowledge that, although the prisoner looked heated and exhausted, his clothes were neither muddied nor torn? Now, I did not think of it at the time, but this was done by Orcutt to prove that Mansell did take the road I have jotted down here, since any other would have carried him through swamps knee-deep with mud, or amongst stones and briers which would have put him in a state of disorder totally unfitting him for travel.”
“That is so,” acquiesced Hickory, after a moment’s thought. “Mansell must be kept in the path. Well, well, we will see tomorrow if wit and a swift foot can make
