tlements were still small and sparse—the wild horse's fear of human enemies kept both himself and his pursuers out of man's way. The spot where the long chase had its ending was as lonely as the remotest wilderness.
To Northwind, after his long journey, that spot seemed a paradise. To Corane the Raven, viewing it cautiously from the cover of the woods about noon of a warm cloudless June day, it seemed to combine all the conditions essential for his success. A dry level meadow carpeted with short thick grass and shaped like a broad spearhead, lay between a converging river and creek which came together at the meadow's lower end. There, and for some distance along the shore, the land sloped sharply to the river, forming a little bluff about ten feet in height; while beyond the river lay vast marshes stretching for miles towards the hazy line of woods on the barrier isles.
The Raven took in these things at a glance; noted, too, with satisfaction that here and there in the meadow stood clumps of some dense, stiff-branched bush of a kind unknown in the mountains. Then, well pleased, his plan complete to the smallest detail, he let his eyes rest again upon that feature of the scene which was the most important and most gratifying of all.
Almost in the center of the meadow stood North-
