"'Tis that or nothing!" she whispered, and, still under cover of the shrubbery, she hurried toward the rubbish heap.
In the meantime, Jack, whose quick eye had descried that ancient opening in the wall, perceived by neither of his companions, was standing just within the wall gazing about for some clue to his prey's location.
Phœbe leaped upon the refuse heap and scrambled to the top. To her dismay, there was a great crashing of dead wood as she sank nearly to her knees in the accumulated rubbish.
Jack uttered a loud exclamation of triumph and leaped toward the thicket. Poor Phœbe heard his cry, and for an instant all seemed hopeless. But hers was a brave young soul, and, far from fainting in her despair, a new vigor possessed her.
Grasping the limb of a tree beside her, she drew herself up until, with one foot she found a firm rest on the top of the wall. Then, forgetting her tender hands and limbs, straining, gripping, and scrambling, she knew not how, she flung herself over the wall and fell in a bruised and ragged heap on the grass beyond.
When her pursuer reached the thicket, he was confounded to find no one in sight.
Phœbe lay for one moment faint and relaxed upon the ground. The landscape turned to swimming silhouettes before her eyes, and all sounds were momentarily stilled. Then life came surging back in a welcome tide and she rose unsteadily to her feet. She walked as quickly as she could to where the three horses stood loosely tied by their bridles to a tree. At any moment the man she feared might appear again at the opening in the wall.
She untied all three horses and, choosing a powerful gray for her own, she slipped his bridle over her arm so as to leave both hands free. Then, bringing together the bridles of the other two, she tied them together in a double knot, then doubled that, and struck the two animals sharply with the bridle of the gray. Naturally they started off in different directions, and, pulling at their bridles, dragged them into harder knots than her weak fingers could have tied.
She laughed in the triumph of her ingenuity and scrambled with foot and knee and hand into place astride of the remaining steed. Thus in the seclusion of the pasture had she often ridden her mare Nancy home to the barn.
There was a shout of anger and amazement from the road, and she saw the two men who had elected to walk farther on running toward her.