"Lord love you, master, not they!" says he. "Do you think that dog was his, too? Oh, no! He and I are old enemies. He belongs to my old master the factor, and is kept at the station to hunt poor runaways. I knew the moment I heard his bark that my factor's men were on our heels. Villain! he is shrewd enough to know you would follow in your cousin's steps, and dispatched his men—if he be not himself at their head—to search the road and apprise De Pino of your escape. Now, master, if they had slipped by without being betrayed by the dog they would have spurred on till they overtook De Pino, and finding us not with him would have laid in ambush to take us as we followed after. Do you think I'm far out in my calculation?"
"No," says I; "you're right, I must allow, Matthew; and now for your second reason."
"The second hangs on to the first, master; for it stands to reason that if we ran a fair chance of losing our own liberty by sticking to the road, we were in a poor way to save the female. I went a bit too far maybe in supposing that you had no certain scheme of your own for circumventing De Pino."
"No," says I; "you were in the right again there: I had no fixed purpose."
"You had a notion maybe that we might catch De Pino and his men all napping, and that we might just get away with the female before they woke."
I admitted that if I had any scheme at all it was no better than that.
"Well, master," says Matthew, "we must give the Portugals credit for having sense enough to sleep with one eye open after being warned that you were at large, and so you must see that it would be courting our own destruction to attempt any such design as that."
"Ay," says I, "but I sha'n't be content to escape destruction myself if my cousin is to be abandoned to a worse fate."
"True, master," says he; "but as her escape depends on our existence, we must insure the latter for to compass the former."
"There I agree with you," says I; "but do you, if you can, show me by what means you reckon to get at my Lady Biddy, for up to this you have only led me further away from her."