East looked after them, and then put his horse into a steady trot, muttering,
“Like me! yes, devilish like me; I know that well enough. Didn't I always play cat's-paw to his monkey at school? But that convict don't seem such a bad lot after all.”
Meantime, Tom and Harry struck away over the heath, as the darkness closed in, and the storm drove down. They stumbled on over the charred furze roots, and splashed through the sloppy peat cuttings, casting anxious, hasty looks over their shoulders as they fled, straining every nerve to get on, and longing for night and the storm.
“Hark! wasn't that a pistol-shot?” said Tom, as they floundered on. The sound came from the road they had left.
“Look, here's some on 'em, then,” said Harry; and Tom was aware of two horsemen coming over the brow of the hill on their left, some three hundred yards to the rear. At the same instant his horse stumbled, and came down on his nose and knees. Tom went off over his shoulder, tumbling against Harry, and sending him headlong to the ground, but keeping hold of the bridle. They were up again in a moment.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Come along, then,” and Tom was in the saddle again, when the pursuers raised a shout. They had caught sight of them now, and spurred down the slope towards them. Tom was turning his horse's head straight away, but Harry shouted,—
“Keep to the left, Master Tom,—to the left, right on.”
It seemed like running into the lion's jaws, but he yielded, and they pushed on down the slope on which they were. Another shout of triumph rose on the howling wind; Tom's heart sank within him. The enemy was closing on them at every stride; another hundred yards, and they must meet at the bottom of the slope. What could Harry be dreaming of? The thought had scarcely time to cross his brain, when down went the two yeomen, horse and man, floundering in a bog above their horses' girths. At the same moment the storm burst on them, the driving mist and pelting rain. The chase was over. They could not have seen a regiment of men at fifty yards' distance.