the edge of the wood until
they reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood
utterly still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the
universe. Then he said: "We are quit of them." And Turnbull said: "Where
shall we go now?"

MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
things were bits of written advice that he could read.

Then he said: "The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth
a handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow."

Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go
to sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when
at last he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a
hammer.

Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth
was still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his
fellow-fugitive shook him awake.

"No more sleep, I'm afraid," said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
voice of apology. "They've gone on past us right enough for a good
thirty miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're
coming back."

"Are you sure?" said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
with his hand.

The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a
man struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan
along the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.

* * *

A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
fields and roads were full of white mist--the kind of white mist that
clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the
chase had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very
high discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with
seaweed--evidently the high-shouldered sentinel of some great
gentleman's estate. A yard or two from the wall ran parallel to it a
linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along
the side of the road. It was under thi