ith to stay his hand.

After his hairbreadth escape from Varden, Rudge hid himself in a narrow
street. When the next dawn came, as he searched for some dark den in
which he might lie sheltered till another night, he saw Simon Tappertit
issuing with his noisy apprentice crew from the cellar in which they
held their meetings. He entered its door, made friends with the
villainous blind man who kept it and there established his headquarters.

Once more, one night after the wounded Edward had been taken to his own
home, Rudge hunted out his trembling wife and demanded money,
threatening to bring harm to Barnaby if she refused him, and she gave
him all she had.

But this time dread of him made her desperate. When morning came she
went to Haredale and told him that she and her son could no longer live
on his bounty. The next day, with Barnaby, who carried on his back his
beloved raven, Grip, she left the house afoot, telling no one where they
were going lest her husband find her out, and pushed far into the
country to find a home in some obscure village. And though Rudge, the
murderer, and the blind man (who was much more crafty and cunning than
many men with eyesight) searched for them everywhere, it was a long time
before they found any trace.

Perhaps Joe and Dolly Varden missed poor cheery Barnaby more than did
any one else. But several events occurred soon after this that gave them
other things to think of.

Maypole Hugh, the savage hostler, had continued his spying work for
Edward's father, and Sir John determined it was high time to break off
his son's attachment for Emma Haredale.

One day Dolly was carrying a letter from Emma at The Warren to Edward,
and as she passed through the fields, Hugh attacked her, throwing his
arms around her and pretending to make coarse love to her. She was
dreadfully frightened and screamed as loud as she could. Joe, as it
happened, was walking within sound of her voice, and ran like the wind
to her aid.

In another moment Hugh had leaped the hedge and disappeared and Dolly
was sobbing in her rescuer's arms. She was afraid to tell Joe who had
frightened her, for fear the hostler would take his revenge by harming
him, so she only said she had been attacked by a man whom she had never
seen.

In her scare she had forgotten all about the letter she had carried, and
now she discovered it was gone. It was nowhere to be found.

This, of course, was because Hugh had stolen it. It was to