trace
his steps and find a way round. The distance from the bridge to the
place where the three men he was following had got out of their motor,
he had thought to be about two miles; but when he had been traveling
more than an hour, he had not yet reached it. Then, suddenly he came
upon the road for which he was looking; somewhere to the east along it
was the place he sought. He crouched as near to the road as he dared
and where he could look up and down it. This being a main road, was
guarded. A motor-car with armed men in it passed him, and presently
repassed, evidently patroling the road; its lights showed him a man
with a gun standing at the first bend of the road to the east. Eaton
drew further back and moved parallel to the road but far enough away
from it to be hidden. A quarter of a mile further he found a second
man. The motor-car, evidently, was patroling only to this point;
another car was on duty beyond this. As Eaton halted, this second car
approached, and was halted, backed and turned.

Its headlights, as it turned, swept through the woods and revealed
Eaton. The man standing in the road cried out the alarm and fired at
Eaton point blank; he fired a second and third time. Eaton fled madly
back into the shadow; as he did so, he heard the men crying to one
another and leaping from the car and following him. He found low
ground less thickly wooded, and plunged along it. It was not difficult
to avoid the men in the blackness of the woods; he made a wide circuit
and came back again to the road further on. He could still hear for a
time the sounds of the hunt on the turf. Apparently he had not yet
reached the right spot; he retreated to the woods, went further along
and came back to the road, lying flat upon his face again and waiting
till some other car in passing should give him light to see.

Eaton, weak and dizzy from his wounds and confused by darkness and his
struggle through the woods, had no exact idea how long it had taken him
to get to this place; but he knew that it could have been hardly less
than two hours since he had left Harriet. The men he was following,
therefore, had that much start of him, and this made him wild with
impatience but did not discourage him. His own wounds, Eaton
understood, made his escape practically impossible, because any one who
saw him would at once challenge and detain him; and the other man was
still more seriously wounded. It was not his escape that E