The race had lasted some minutes now, and the fugitive was in full hope that the alarm had been spread by the inner line of vedettes, when a bright thought flashed across his brain.
He glanced back, and could see about a dozen of the Cavaliers some forty yards behind, and a few hundred yards behind them a couple of regiments.
“They will follow my pursuers,” he argued; and as he came to that conclusion, he drew his right rein, and bore off a little, making straight for a deep hollow where the peat lay thick, and it was impossible for a horse to cross.
If they followed him there, he could swerve off to the right again as he reached the treacherous ground, and edge safely round it, while the main body of his pursuers would in all probability plunge in.
“That would ensure their defeat,” he said to himself, as in imagination he saw the gallant regiments floundering saddle deep in the black, half-liquid peat.
As he had hoped, so it seemed to be. His nearest pursuers turned off after him, so did the main body, and, almost indifferent now as to capture, so long as he could save those at the park, he turned to look back, when, just as the Cavaliers were thundering on to destruction, one horseman dashed in front, waving his plumed hat, and meeting them—sending all but about half a score round to the left, so that they skirted the morass, just as they were on the point of charging in.
“Some one who knows the danger,” muttered Fred, as he galloped on. “Scarlett, of course. It must have been he.”
Another five minutes, with the foremost men not half a dozen yards behind, brought Fred to the top of a hill, beyond which he could see the park, and to his horror the general’s men were only then hurrying up into formation, with their officers galloping excitedly to and fro.
“Hold out, good old horse,” panted Fred,—as he glanced back once more to see that capture must be certain now. “Another five minutes, and I could be with them,” he sobbed out breathlessly; and, as if his horse understood him, or else nerved by the sight of his fellows so near at hand, he lay out like a greyhound, just as a trumpet blast rang out on Fred’s left from the main body of the Cavaliers, a call whose effect was that Fred’s pursuers who had skirted the right of the morass, turned off to the left, and rode on so as to regain their places in the ranks, where their presence would be of more value than in pursuing a few scattered outposts.
To an ordinary commander, the act of the Royalist leader seemed utter madness. The horses of his men were half-blown by a long gallop, and they were about to charge a body of sturdy cavalry, whose mounts were rested and fresh.