t more than two hundred
yards behind him.

He waited. The clatter of hoofs was growing louder with each passing
second. The police must certainly be near the top of the rise now.
Bill was well away. He was well in the bush by this time.

Hark! Yes. There they were. The moon was hidden just now, but even so
Charlie could see the bobbing figures at the hilltop.

Suddenly he rammed his heels into his horse's flanks and dashed off up
the slope which he had so recently descended. As he went he drew his
revolver and fired two shots in swift succession in the direction of
the horsemen approaching. Well enough he knew, as he raced on toward
the village, that the police were beyond his range, but his purpose
was that there should be no doubt in their minds that he--he was their
quarry--that he was the man they had already been pursuing so far.

* * * * *

Ten men made up the tally of the pursuers riding with Inspector Fyles.
McBain was not among them. He had remained with the abandoned
buckboard while the rest of the police were scouring the neighborhood
for the fugitives from the first encounter.

As Fyles came over the rise, and beheld the culvert below him, and
heard the two defiant shots hurled in his direction, a thrill of
satisfaction swept through him. The man was less than three hundred
yards ahead of him with a long hill to climb, and something over a
mile to go before the village, and the possibility of safety, was
reached.

There was no match in the country for Peter when it came to a long,
uphill chase. He told himself the man hadn't a dog's chance with Peter
hard on his heels.

"We've got him, boys," he cried to his men, in his moment of
exuberance. "He ought to have been half a mile on by the start he got.
It's the poor devil of a horse playing out. He's beat--beat to death.
Now, boys, hard on my heels for a spurt."

Peter leaped ahead under the sharp reminder of the spur, and, in a few
moments, the clatter of iron-shod hoofs left the wooden culvert behind
it, and the race up the hill began.

The moon now blazed out, as though at last it had definitely decided
to throw its weight in against the fugitive. The summer clouds were
lifting and vanishing with that wonderful rapidity with which, once
the brilliant moon gains sway, she seems to sweep all obstruction from
her chilly path.

The steely light poured down upon the slim back of the fugitive, and
left both horse and r