Dick was almost beside himself. It went against his heart to beat a creature so defenceless; and, for the life of him, he knew no other way to rid himself of this unwelcome and, as he began to think, perhaps untrue companion.
“Y’ are mad, I think,” he cried. “Fool-fellow, I am hasting to your foes; as fast as foot can carry me, go I thither.”
“I care not, Dick,” replied the lad. “If y’ are bound to die, Dick, I’ll die too. I would liefer go with you to prison than to go free without you.”
“Well,” returned the other, “I may stand no longer prating. Follow me, if ye must; but if ye play me false, it shall but little advance you, mark ye that. Shalt have a quarrel in thine inwards, boy.”
So saying, Dick took once more to his heels, keeping in the margin of the thicket, and looking briskly about him as he went. At a good pace he rattled out of the dell, and came again into the more open quarters of the wood. To the left a little eminence appeared, spotted with golden gorse, and crowned with a black tuft of firs.
“I shall see from there,” he thought, and struck for it across a heathy clearing.
He had gone but a few yards, when Matcham touched him on the arm, and pointed. To the eastward of the summit there was a dip, and, as it were, a valley passing to the other side; the heath was not yet out; all the ground was rusty, like an unsecured buckler, and dotted sparingly with yews; and there, one following another, Dick saw half a score green jerkins mounting the ascent, and marching at their head, conspicuous by his boar-spear, Ellis Duckworth in person. One after another gained the top, showed for a moment against the sky, and then dipped upon the farther side, until the last was gone.
Dick looked at Matcham with a kindlier eye.
“So y’ are to be true to me, Jack?” he asked. “I thought ye were of the other party.”
Matcham began to sob.