f. My hope must be in the length of my legs and the
soundness of my wind, but I needed easier ground for that, for I was
not bred a mountaineer. How I longed for a good Afrikander pony!

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge and down into the moor
before any figures appeared on the skyline behind me. I crossed a
burn, and came out on a highroad which made a pass between two glens.
All in front of me was a big field of heather sloping up to a crest
which was crowned with an odd feather of trees. In the dyke by the
roadside was a gate, from which a grass-grown track led over the first
wave of the moor.

I jumped the dyke and followed it, and after a few hundred yards--as
soon as it was out of sight of the highway--the grass stopped and it
became a very respectable road, which was evidently kept with some
care. Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of doing the
same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my best chance
would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees there,
and that meant cover.

I did not follow the road, but the burnside which flanked it on the
right, where the bracken grew deep and the high banks made a tolerable
screen. It was well I did so, for no sooner had I gained the hollow
than, looking back, I saw the pursuit topping the ridge from which I
had descended.

After that I did not look back; I had no time. I ran up the burnside,
crawling over the open places, and for a large part wading in the
shallow stream. I found a deserted cottage with a row of phantom
peat-stacks and an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and
very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of wind-blown firs.
From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking a few hundred yards
to my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another dyke, and almost
before I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance back told me that I was
well out of sight of the pursuit, which had not yet passed the first
lift of the moor.

The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe instead of a mower,
and planted with beds of scrubby rhododendrons. A brace of black-game,
which are not usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house
before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious
whitewashed wing added. Attached to this wing was a glass veranda, and
through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly
watching me.

I stalked over the border of coarse hill