"Get through this, and wait on the other side: then as they come straggling through, shoot three, knock two on the head, and the rest will kill us."
"Is that all you can think of?" said Gerard.
"That is all."
"Then, Martin Wittenhaagen, I take the lead; for you have lost your head. Come, can you obey so young a man as I am?"
"Oh! yes, Martin," cried Margaret, "do not gainsay Gerard? He is wiser than his years."
Martin yielded a sullen assent.
"Do then as you see me do," said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning round twisted them breast high behind him among the standing shoots. Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had thus painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the bloodhound's deep bay came nearer, and nearer, less and less musical, louder, and sterner.
Margaret trembled.
Martin went down on his stomach and listened.
"I hear a horse's feet."