It had been the work of a few seconds, and a few seconds more elapsed before the cavalcade came to a standstill.
Then a voice roared orders, half a dozen shots sang about the fugitive, and there were galloping horses quickly in pursuit.
Expecting the shots, Martin had flung himself low on the horse's neck. The animal, frightened by the swinging stirrups and driven by the spur, plunged madly along the road. So long as the road was straight, Martin let the horse go, but at the first bend, when there was no chance of his pursuers seeing him, he checked the animal a little, slipped from his back, and with a blow sent him careering riderless along the road.
"He'll make a fine chase for them, and should find his way back to Witley," said Martin as he crouched down in a ditch which divided the road from a wood. Cracking branches might have betrayed him had he entered the wood just then. Half a dozen horsemen passed him, galloping in pursuit, and when the sounds had died away, and he was convinced that no others followed, he crawled from the ditch and went straight before him into the wood. At a clearing he stopped and looked at the stars, then continued his way along a narrow track that went towards the south-west, in which direction lay Dorchester. He had no mind to enter the town as a prisoner, but he meant to reach it all the same, and as soon as possible.
For an hour he pushed forward, and then came suddenly to the edge of a clearing of some size. He stopped. He saw nothing, he was not sure that he heard anything, but the air seemed to vibrate with some presence besides his own.
Perhaps he had heard the low sound which the opening door of the hut made.
"You're a dead man if you move," said a voice out of the darkness.
Fairley started and made a step forward, but stopped in time.
"I should know that voice. I am Martin Fairley."
"Fairley!"