His way took him into the solemn twilight of untouched solitudes.

A cool breath rippled through the depths of the woods and shaped its own soft harmonies where it lifted the great branches that arched the road.

He crossed strips of bottom land where the water stood in still pools about the gnarled and moss-covered trunks of trees.

At intervals down some sluggish inlet he caught sight of the yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the Arkansas coast beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that rose out of the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay along the horizon.
He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a sudden turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three men, and before he could gather up his reins which he held loosely, one of them had seized his horse by the bit.

Norton was unarmed, he had not even a riding-whip.