the hapless traitor, and wrenching
himself free from the coiner's grasp, he fled.

Pierre Lenoir stood staring about him a second.

Then he made after him.

Away went pursuer and pursued.

The terror-stricken Murray got over the ground like a hare, and
although the coiner was fleet of foot, he was at first distanced in the
race.

It became a desperate race between them.

Lenoir tore on.

He would have his betrayer now or perish.

But before he had got more than two hundred yards the pace began to
tell upon him.

He felt that he would have to give in.

"I must go easier, or I shall fail altogether."

So reasoning, he slackened his pace, and dropped into that slinging
trot that runners in France know as the _pas gymnastique_.

If your strength and wind are of average quality, you can keep up for a
prodigious time at that.

Murray flew on, anxious to get away from his furious pursuer.

He increased his lead.

But presently the pace told upon him likewise.

He collected his thoughts and his prudence as he went, and rested.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Lenoir come bounding along, a
considerable distance in the rear.

"Savage beast!" thought Murray. "He means mischief."

Murray meant tiring him out.

This, however, was not so easily done.

The Englishman was a capital runner, and had been one of the crack men
of his school-club.

But his _forte_ was pace.

The Frenchman, on the contrary, was a stayer.

It looked bad for Murray.

On they went, and when a good mile had been covered, Murray, on
glancing back, felt convinced that it was only a question of time.

He must tire out the Frenchman in the end, he thought.

He believed that an Englishman must always be more than a match for a
Frenchman at any kind of athletics.

He reckoned without his host, for while he (Murray) was getting blown,
Lenoir swung on at _pas gymnastique_, having got his second wind, and
being, to all appearance, capable of keeping on for any length of time.

"I shall have to give it up," gasped Murray, when, at the end of the
second mile, he looked over his shoulder again.

An unpleasant fact revealed itself.

While he was faltering, the Frenchman was rather improving his pace.

Yes.

The distance between them was lessening.

And now he could hear Lenoir's menaces quite plainly as the coiner
gained upon him.

"I shall have you directly, and I shall beat your skull in!" the
Frenchman said.

Murray's