"If any of his party are mad, they'll try it, and be stooged till the day of judgment. There are bogs in the bottom twenty feet deep. Plague on the fellow, whoever he is, he has dodged us! Look there!"
It was too true. The unknown horseman had evidently dismounted below, and led his horse up on the other side of a long furze-dike; till coming to the point where it turned away again from his intended course, he appeared against the sky, in the act of leading his nag over a gap.
"Ride like the wind!" and both youths galloped across furze and heather at him; but ere they were within a hundred yards of him, he had leapt again on his horse, and was away far ahead.
"There is the dor to us, with a vengeance," cried Gary, putting in the spurs.
"It is but a lad; we shall never catch him."
"I'll try, though; and do you lumber after as you can, old heavysides;" and Cary pushed forward.
Amyas lost sight of him for ten minutes, and then came up with him dismounted, and feeling disconsolately at his horse's knees.
"Look for my head. It lies somewhere about among the furze there; and oh! I am as full of needles as ever was a pincushion."
"Are his knees broken?"
"I daren't look. No, I believe not. Come along, and make the best of a bad matter. The fellow is a mile ahead, and to the right, too."
"He is going for Moorwinstow, then; but where is my cousin?"
"Behind us, I dare say. We shall nab him at least."
"Cary, promise me that if we do, you will keep out of sight, and let me manage him."
"My boy, I only want Evan Morgans and Morgan Evans. He is but the cat's paw, and we are after the cats themselves."
And so they went on another dreary six miles, till the land trended downwards, showing dark glens and masses of woodland far below.
"Now, then, straight to Chapel, and stop the foxes' earth? Or through the King's Park to Stow, and get out Sir Richard's hounds, hue and cry, and queen's warrant in proper form?"
"Let us see Sir Richard first; and whatsoever he decides about my uncle, I will endure as a loyal subject must."
So they rode through the King's Park, while Sir Richard's colts came whinnying and staring round the intruders, and down through a rich woodland lane five hundred feet into the valley, till they could hear the brawling of the little trout-stream, and beyond, the everlasting thunder of the ocean surf.
Down through warm woods, all fragrant with dying autumn flowers, leaving far above the keen Atlantic breeze, into one of those delicious Western Combes, and so past the mill, and the little knot of flower-clad cottages. In the window of one of them
