dea of
the direction or extent of the park land adjoining the highroad.
Nevertheless, further inaction being out of the question, creeping along
the grassy bank, he began to retreat from the entrance to the lane. Some
ten yards he had progressed in this fashion when his hidden watchers
made their first mistake.

A faint sound, so faint that only a man in deadly peril could have
detected it, brought him up sharply. He crouched back against the hedge,
looking behind him. For a long time he failed to observe anything.
Then, against the comparatively high tone of the dusty road, he saw a
silhouette--the head and shoulders of someone who peered out cautiously.

Still as the trees above him he crouched, watching, and presently, bent
forward, questing to right and left, questing in a horribly suggestive
animal fashion, the entire figure of the man appeared in the roadway.

As Paul Harley had prayed would be the case, his pursuers evidently
believed that he had turned in the direction of Lower Claybury. A vague,
phantom figure, Harley saw the man wave his arm, whereupon a second man
joined him--a third--and, finally, a fourth.

Harley clenched his teeth grimly, and as the ominous quartet began to
move toward the left, he resumed his slow retreat to the right--going
ever farther away, of necessity, from the only centre with which he was
acquainted and from which he could hope to summon assistance. Finally
he reached a milestone resting almost against the railings of the Manor
Park.

Drawing a deep breath, he sprang upon the milestone, succeeded in
grasping the top of the high iron railings, and hauled himself up
bodily.

Praying that the turf might be soft, he jumped. Fit though he was, and
hardened by physical exercise, the impact almost stunned him. He came
down like an acrobat--left foot, right foot, and then upon his hands,
but nevertheless he lay there for a moment breathless and temporarily
numbed by the shock.

In less than a minute he was on his feet again and looking alertly about
him. Striking into the park land, turning to the left, and paralleling
the highroad, he presently came out upon the roadway, along which under
shelter of a straggling hedge, he began to double back. In sight of the
road dipping down to Lower Claybury he crossed, forcing his way through
a second hedge thickly sown with thorns.

Badly torn, but careless of such minor injuries, he plunged heavily
through a turnip field, and, bearing alw