listen. From the road behind me came the sound of footsteps;
quick steps but not sharp and crisp; rather of a shuffling, stealthy
quality. I climbed quietly over the gate and took up a position behind
the trunk of an elm that grew in the hedgerow. The footsteps came on
apace. Soon round a bend of the moon-lighted road a figure appeared
moving forward rapidly and keeping in what shadow there was. I watched
it through the thick hedge as it approached and resolved itself into a
seedy-looking man carrying a thick knobbed stick.

"Opposite the gate the man halted and, as I could see by his shadow,
looked across the silvery fields that stretched away down to the valley
and listened, but only for a few moments. Then he started forward again
at something between a quick walk and a slow trot.

"As soon as he had gone I came out and began to walk down the
cart-track. My figure must have stood out conspicuously on the bare
field and must have been plainly visible from the ridge-way. I did not
hurry. Pursuing my way quietly down the gentle slope, I went on for some
three hundred yards until the ground fell away more steeply; and here,
before descending, I looked over my shoulder.

"A man was getting over the gate.

"I walked on more quickly now until I topped a second rise and then I
again looked back. The figure of the man stood out on the brow of the
hill, black against the moonlit sky. And now he was hurrying forward in
undisguised pursuit.

"I quickened my pace and looked about me. The night was calm and lovely,
the fields bathed in silvery light and the wooded uplands shrouded in a
soft, gray shadow, from the heart of which a single lighted window
gleamed forth, a spot of rosy warmth. The bark of a watch-dog came
softened by distance from some solitary farmstead, and far away below,
the hoot of a steamer, creeping up the river to the twinkling anchorage.

"Presently I came to a spot where the rough road divided. One well-worn
track led down towards the footpath that ultimately enters the London
Road; a fainter track led, as I knew, to an old chalk-pit where, in
mysterious caverns, the farm carts rested through the winter months.
Here I halted for a moment as if in doubt. The man was now less than a
hundred yards behind me and walking as fast as he could. I turned round
and looked at him, he appeared once more to hesitate, and then started
at a run along the track to the chalk-pit.

"There was no disguise about the man's