CHAPTER IX.

A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE. Through the dark fens, and the yielding morass, and the spicy sycamore grove, and the mossy walnut woods of Virginia, stole a gray-faced man; panting, hunger-smitten, weary; starting at every crash of the rotten underbrush, stopping ever with dilating eye to peer from the top of every hill into the valley beneath. And a thin, tawny shadow glided before him with his nose upon the ground, and his eyes flaming ferociously--a blood-hound upon the trail. Thoms had deserted from the army, and was out…