r a
moment in a strip of open, running as a man does who runs for his life,
with a furious recklessness of all obstacles. Charles saw he was making
for the rocky thickets below the house, where the uneven ground and the
bracken would give him a better chance. Did he remember the deep sunken
wall which, broken down in places, still separated the wilderness of the
garden from the wilderness outside? Charles was lean and active, and he
soon out-distanced the other pursuers, but a man is hard to overtake who
has such reasons for not being overtaken as Raymond, and do what he
would he could not get near him. He bore down to the left, but Raymond
seemed to know it, and, edging away again, held for the woods a little
higher up. Charles tacked, and then as he ran he saw that Raymond was
making with headlong blindness through the shrubbery direct for the deep
sunk wall which bounded the Arleigh grounds. Would he see it in the
uncertain light? He must be close upon it now. He was running like a
madman. As Charles looked he saw him pitch suddenly forward out of sight
and heard a heavy fall. If Charles ever ran in his life, it was then. As
he swiftly let himself drop over the wall, lower than Raymond had taken
it, he saw Ralph and Dare, followed by the others, come streaming down
the slope in the moonlight, spreading as they came. It was now or never.
He rushed up the fosse under cover of the wall, and almost stumbled over
a prostrate figure, which was helplessly trying to raise itself on its
hands and knees.

"Danvers, it's me," gasped Raymond, turning a white tortured face feebly
towards him. "Don't let those devils get me."

"Keep still," panted Charles, pushing him down among the bracken. "Lie
close under the wall, and make for the house again when it's quiet;" And
darting back under cover of the wall, to the place where he had dropped
over it, he found Dare almost upon him, and rushed headlong down the
steep rocky descent, roaring at the top of his voice, and calling wildly
to the others. The pursuit swept away through the wood, down the hill,
and up the sandy ascent on the other side; swept almost over the top of
Charles, who had flung himself down, dead-beat and gasping for breath,
at the bottom of the gully.

He heard the last of the heavy lumbering feet crash past him, and heard
the shouting die away before he stiffly dragged himself up again, and
began to struggle painfully back up the slippery hill-side, down which
he