Rising to a crouching position, he ran to the fence across the way from Mrs. Chester’s and flung himself over. And, again started in flight, the terror that had driven him in the first place came back with additional force; and this was augmented by the sound of voices shouting after him—the voices of the two men on the street, who had seen his shadowy figure as he vaulted the fence.
“There he is!” “That’s him!” “There he goes!” “Stop! stop!”
Crying after him in this manner, they came on in pursuit. Venturing to look back, he saw them tumbling over the fence he had leaped, and once more he strained every nerve.
There was now no doubt in his mind; they were after him. Perhaps before the coming of the end Roy Hooker’s mind had cleared sufficiently for him to tell who struck the fatal blow. Perhaps Roy’s father, running from the house, had been hurrying to set the officers at work.
In advance, he perceived a dark, straggling line of bushes and low trees. Amid them he turned sharply to the left, hoping somehow to double on his tracks and baffle the pursuers. Through a thicket of shrubbery he plunged, with the tiny branches viciously whipping his face and tearing at his clothes, as if even they sought to grasp and hold him.
Suddenly he stopped short, his mouth wide open, that he might listen the better. The two men had reached the growth, and he could hear them floundering amid it.
“This way!” one of them cried. “He went this way!”
“Keep still!” urged the other. “We ought to be able to hear him. Keep still a minute.”
The crashing sounds ceased, and the listening boy knew the men were listening also. Through a great effort of self-command, he kept himself from resuming the flight, waiting until the noise of their own movements should prevent them from hearing what sounds he might make.
They soon grew impatient and began beating about in the underbrush in an aimless search.