attempts to do so, but did
not care to grapple in earnest with a powerful young man, evidently
desperate, and of whose crime they knew nothing.

As soon as he felt sure that Chebron was quite safe from pursuit, he
turned off from the road he was following and struck across the
country. A quarter of an hour's running took him fairly beyond the
villas and detached houses scattered so thickly round Thebes. The
ground here was closely cultivated. It was intersected everywhere by
channels conveying the water needed for the irrigation of the crops.
The holdings were small, and in the center of each stood a little
hut.

Some of these were inhabited, but for the most part the cultivators
lived in the villages, using the huts only when it was necessary to
scare away the birds and keep a close watch over their fruit. In some
of these patches the fruit trees were thick, and Amuba took advantage
of the cover to turn off at right angles to the course he had been
pursuing, and then shaping his course so as to keep in shelter of the
trees, ran until he arrived at a hut whose door stood open. A glance
within showed that it was not at present used by the owner. He entered
and closed the door behind him, and then climbed up a ladder, and
threw himself down on some boards that lay on the rafters for the
storage of fruit, pulling the ladder up after him.

The last glimpse he had of his pursuers showed him that they were
fully four hundred yards behind him when he turned off from the line
he had been following, and he would have kept on and trusted to his
speed and endurance to outrun them had he not been sure that many of
the cultivators whom he had passed in his flight, and who had
contented themselves with shouting threats at him for crossing their
land, would, on learning from his pursuers the crime with which he was
charged, join in the pursuit. Thus fresh runners would be constantly
taking up the chase, and he would eventually be run down; he therefore
thought it best to attempt to conceal himself until night fell.

Scarcely had he thrown himself down when he heard loud shouts rise
close at hand, and had no doubt that some laborer unobserved by him
had noticed him enter the hut. He sprang down again from the loft, and
seizing a stake which with several others was standing in a corner, he
again sallied out. As he did so he was suddenly grasped. Twisting
himself free he saw a powerful Nubian armed with a hoe. Without a
moment's hes