would have been instant death to him at the pace he
went; he saw it, and gathered all the force and nervous impetus in his
frame to the trial, as he came rushing downward along the slope of the
lane, with his elbows back, and his body straight, as prize-runners run.
The wagon, sideways, stretched across--a solid barrier, heaped up with
fir boughs brought for firing from the forests; the mules stood abreast,
yoked together. The mob following saw too, and gave a hoot and yell of
brutal triumph; their prey was in their clutches; the cart barred his
progress, and he must double like a fox faced with a stone wall.

Scarcely!--they did not know the man with whom they had to deal--the
daring and the coolness that the languid surface of indolent fashion had
covered. Even in the imminence of supreme peril, of breathless jeopardy,
he measured with unerring eye the distance and the need; rose as lightly
in the air as Forest King had risen with him over fence and hedge; and
with a single, running leap cleared the width of the mules' backs, and
landing safely on the farther side, dashed on; scarcely pausing for
breath. The yell that hissed in his wake, as the throng saw him escape,
by what to their slow Teutonic instincts seemed a devil's miracle, was
on his ear like the bay of the slot-hounds to the deer. They might kill
him, if they could; but they should never take him captive.

And the moon was so brightly, so pitilessly clear; shining down in the
summer light, as though in love with the beauty of earth! He looked up
once; the stars seemed reeling round him in disordered riot; the chill
face of the moon looked unpitying as death. All this loveliness was
round him; this glory of sailing cloud and shadowy forest and tranquil
planet, and there was no help for him.

A gay burst of music broke on the stillness from the distance; he
had left the brilliance of the town behind him, and was now in its
by-streets and outskirts. The sound seemed to thrill him to the bone; it
was like the echo of the lost life he was leaving forever.

He saw, he felt, he heard, he thought; feeling and sense were quickened
in him as they had never been before, yet he never slackened his pace
save once or twice, when he paused for breath; he ran as swiftly, he ran
as keenly, as ever stag or fox had run before him; doubling with their
skill, taking the shadow as they took the covert; noting with their
rapid eye the safest track; outracing with their rapid sp