Lieutenant Tregenna lost not a moment in returning to Hurst, to report the outrage to Squire Waldron, whose lenity could not afford to excuse such a barbarous act as this on the part of his free-traders.
He went by the shortest way this time, taking the foot-track over the hills, by which Parson Langney and his daughter had come on the previous night.
Perhaps the ghastly sight he had just witnessed had sharpened his faculties; for before he had gone far over the worn grass of the path he caught sight of some marks which arrested his attention. Stooping to look at them, and then kneeling on the short turf, peering closely at the ground, he soon satisfied himself that the marks were bloodstains, and that they followed the course he was taking.
Feeling sure that he was on the track of another piece of the free-traders' sanguinary work, he went back on his steps, and traced the bloodstains to a thicket by the side of the footpath, where there were traces, in broken branches and down-trodden bracken, of the wounded creature, whether man or animal, having hidden or rested.
