"No, I am sorry to' say. I have to get home over there" (he nodded
indefinitely to the right), "and I feel as you do--that it is quite
enough for my legs to do before bedtime."

The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after
which, shaking hands at the door and wishing each other well, they
went their several ways.

In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the coomb. They
had decided on no particular plan of action, and, finding that
the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they
seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all
directions down the hill, and straightway several of the parties
fell into the snare set by nature for all misguided midnight
ramblers over the lower cretaceous formation. The "lynchets," or
flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen
yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and, losing their
footing on the rubbly steep, they slid sharply downward, the lanterns
rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their
sides till the horn was scorched through.

When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as
the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them
round these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather
to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in
the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed, and
in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was
a grassy, briery, moist channel, affording some shelter to any
person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and