this bit o' the country better than you do, and if I aren't mounted on a
horse, I'm mounted on as good a pair o' legs as most men, and deal
better than my brother Nat's."

He said all this in an angry tone, as he made straight for a patch of
woodland at the edge of the moor, when, seeing this, and that the man on
foot was steadily running in Samson's track, the two horsemen
immediately bore away so as to intercept the fugitive on the further
side, and soon disappeared from view.

"I thought you'd do that," said Samson to himself; and he turned sharply
round, ran a few yards towards his pursuer, and then turned along one of
the courses of a stream, and in a minute was out of sight, but only to
double again in quite a different direction along the dry course of
another rivulet, which wound here and there to the south.

"Get round 'em somehow," said Samson; and, settling himself into a slow
trot, he ran on and on for quite a quarter of an hour, to where the
hollow in which he had been running opened out on to open moor all
covered with whortleberry and bracken, offering good hiding should an
enemy be in sight, and with the further advantage of being only about a
mile from the Manor.

"I shall trick 'em now," he said. "Once I've told 'em at the old house,
they may catch me if they like; but they won't care to when they see me
going back to camp."

"Halt!"

A sword flashed in poor Samson's eyes, and he found that the opening of
the dry course was guarded by another mounted man, who spurred up to him
and caught him by the collar before he had dashed away a dozen yards.

"Don't choke a fellow. I give in," grumbled Samson, as the man held
him, and presented his sword-point at his breast. "There, I won't try
to run. It's of no good," he added; and he made no opposition to a
strap being thrown round his neck, drawn tight, and as soon as the man
had buckled the end to his saddle-bow, he walked his horse slowly back
toward the camp.

Before they had gone far, the other two mounted men trotted up, and
seemed ready to administer a little correction with the flat of their
swords.

"Yes, you do," said Samson, showing his teeth; "and as soon as this bit
o' trouble's over, I'll pay you back, or my name aren't what it is."

"Let him alone," said his captor. "Come on, lad."

He spurred his horse to a trot, and Samson ran beside him, while the two
others returned to their posts.

As it happened, Fred was riding along t