must pick his way. Archie, as ever, kept his wits the best of us.
'Make straight for the burn,' he shouted in a hoarse whisper;
we'll beat him on the slope.'

We passed the boulders and slithered over the outcrop of
red rock and the patches of sea-pink till we reached the
channel of the Dyve water, which flows gently among pebbles
after leaving the gully. Here for the first time I looked back
and saw nothing. I stopped involuntarily, and that halt was
nearly my undoing. For our pursuer had reached the burn
before us, but lower down, and was coming up its bank to cut
us off.

At most times I am a notable coward, and in these days I
was still more of one, owing to a quick and easily-heated
imagination. But now I think I did a brave thing, though more
by instinct than resolution. Archie was running first, and had
already splashed through the burn; Tam came next, just about
to cross, and the black man was almost at his elbow. Another
second and Tam would have been in his clutches had I not
yelled out a warning and made straight up the bank of the
burn. Tam fell into the pool - I could hear his spluttering
cry - but he got across; for I heard Archie call to him, and the
two vanished into the thicket which clothes all the left bank of
the gully. The pursuer, seeing me on his own side of the water,
followed straight on; and before I knew it had become a race
between the two of us.

I was hideously frightened, but not without hope, for the
screes and shelves of this right side of the gully were known to