a moment of hoarse whispering; a sudden gruff sound. A shaft
of blazing yellow light darted from the level of the ground into my
dazed eyes. A man sprang at me and thrust something cold and knobby
into my neckcloth. The light continued to blaze into my eyes; it moved
upwards and shone on a red waistcoat dashed with gilt buttons. I
was being arrested.... "In the King's name...." It was a most sudden
catastrophe. A hand was clutching my windpipe.

"Don't you so much as squeak, Mr. Castro," a voice whispered in my ear.

The lanthorn light suddenly died out, and I heard whispers.

"Get him out on to the road.... I'll tackle the other . . .
Darbies. . . . Mind his knife."

I was like a confounded rabbit in their hands. One of them had his fist
on my collar and jerked me out upon the hard road. We rolled down the
embankment, but he was on the top. It seemed an abominable episode, a
piece of bad faith on the part of fate. I ought to have been exempt from
these sordid haps, but the man's hot leathery hand on my throat was like
a foretaste of the other collar. And I was horribly afraid--horribly--of
the sort of mysterious potency of the laws that these men represented,
and I could think of nothing to do.

We stood in a little slanting cutting in the shadow. A watery light
before the moon's rising slanted downwards from the hilltop along the
opposite bank. We stood in utter silence.

"If you stir a hair," my captor said coolly, "I'll squeeze the blood out
of your throat, like a rotten orange."

He had the calmness of one dealing with an everyday incident; yet the
incident was--it should have been--tremendous. We stood waiting silently
for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to break covert before the
beaters. From down the long hill came a small sound of horses' hoofs--a
sound like the beating of the heart, intermittent--a muffled thud on
turf, and a faint clink of iron. It seemed to die away unheard by the
runner beside me. Presently there was a crackling of the short pine
branches, a rustle, and a hoarse whisper said from above:

"Other's cleared, Thorns. Got that one safe?"

"All serene."

The man from above dropped down into the road, a clumsy, cloaked figure.
He turned his lanthorn upon me, in a painful yellow glare.

"What! 'Tis the young 'un," he grunted, after a moment. "Read the
warrant, Thorns."

My captor began to fumble in his pocket, pulled out a paper, and bent
down into the light. Suddenly he paused