o spear their game, the battue was on
and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied,
doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the
beaters. Not one escaped.

As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon
surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.

Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped,
whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves
mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets,
execrations and curses.

We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three
captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have
collapsed on the earth.

We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we
were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either
elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together,
naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a
few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the
gentlemen came up out of the gully.

Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat
in his hand and mopping his forehead.

"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not
the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"

"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.

"What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two
strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?"

"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined.
"Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their
backs."

They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us
both.

"They've both been branded," said a gentleman's voice.

"Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged
and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I'll have no stranger
ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself."

While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands
off me.

Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very
curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy,
curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and
mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ear