me to a standstill at
the end of a culvert which spanned a brawling porter-coloured river. I
looked out and saw that every carriage window was closed and no human
figure appeared in the landscape. So I opened the door, and dropped
quickly into the tangle of hazels which edged the line.

it would have been all right but for that infernal dog. Under the
impression that I was decamping with its master's belongings, it
started to bark, and all but got me by the trousers. This woke up the
herd, who stood bawling at the carriage door in the belief that I had
committed suicide. I crawled through the thicket, reached the edge of
the stream, and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards or so behind
me. Then from my shelter I peered back, and saw the guard and several
passengers gathered round the open carriage door and staring in my
direction. I could not have made a more public departure if I had left
with a bugler and a brass band.

Happily the drunken herd provided a diversion. He and his dog, which
was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of the
carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some way down
the bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed the dog bit
somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard swearing. Presently they
had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a mile's crawl I ventured
to look back, the train had started again and was vanishing in the
cutting.

I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as radius,
and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There was not a
sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the
interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time
I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police that I
thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew Scudder's secret
and dared not let me live. I was certain that they would pursue me
with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the British law, and that once
their grip closed on me I should find no mercy.

I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape. The sun glinted
on the metals of the line and the wet stones in the stream, and you
could not have found a more peaceful sight in the world. Nevertheless
I started to run. Crouching low in the runnels of the bog, I ran till
the sweat blinded my eyes. The mood did not leave me till I had
reached the rim of mountain and flung myself panting on a r