minutes there was a deep
silence where, just before, a very pandemonium had seemed let loose.

Then Jack, the strain over, sat down, and cried like a child.

Half an hour later, listening intently, he heard a deep sound in the
distance. "Here come the soldiers," he muttered, "it is time for me to
be off." He glanced at the steam-gauge, and saw that the steam was
falling, while the water-gauge showed that there was still sufficient
water for safety, and he then opened the window at the back of the
building, and dropped to the ground. In an instant he was seized in a
powerful grasp.

"I thought ye'd be coming out here, and now I've got ye," growled a deep
voice, which Jack recognized as that of Roger Hawking, the terror of
Stokebridge.

For an instant his heart seemed to stand still at the extent of his
peril; then, with a sudden wrench, he swung round and faced his captor,
twisted his hands in his handkerchief, and drove his knuckles into his
throat. Then came a crashing blow in his face--another, and another.
With head bent down, Jack held on his grip with the gameness and
tenacity of a bull-dog, while the blows rained on his head, and his
assailant, in his desperate effort to free himself, swung his body
hither and thither in the air, as a bull might swing a dog which had
pinned him. Jack felt his senses going--a dull dazed feeling came over
him. Then he felt a crash, as his adversary reeled and fell--and then
all was dark.

[Illustration: A LIFE OR DEATH STRUGGLE.]

It could have been but a few minutes that he lay thus, for he awoke with
the sound of a thunder of horses' hoofs, and a clatter of swords in the
yard on the other side of the engine-house. Rousing himself, he found
that he still grasped the throat of the man beneath him. With a vague
sense of wonder whether his foe was dead, he rose to his feet and
staggered off, the desire to avoid the troops dispersing all other ideas
in his brain. For a few hundred yards he staggered along, swaying like a
drunken man, and knowing nothing of where he was going; then he
stumbled, and fell again, and lay for hours insensible.

It was just the faint break of day when he came to, the cold air of the
morning having brought him to himself. It took him a few minutes to
recall what had happened and his whereabouts. Then he made his way to
the canal, which was close by, washed the blood from his face, and set
out to walk to Birmingham. He was too shaken and bruised to ma