"Come along," said the doctor.
There was no need of saying so, for in a moment the three were as if animated by one spirit, and away they scudded across the fields, with the speed of a race horse.
In a few minutes they were better than half a mile away from the spot.
"In absence of all authentic information," said the doctor, speaking as well as he could, and blowing prodigiously between each word, as though he were fetching breath all the way from his heels, "I think we may conclude we are safe from them. We ought to thank our stars we came across them in the way we did."
"But, doctor, what in the name of Heaven induced you to make such a noise, to frighten them, in fact, and to tell them some one was about?"
"They were too much terrified to tell whether it was one, or fifty. By this time they are out of the county; they knew what they were talking about."
"And perhaps we may meet them on the road where we are going, thinking it a rare lonely spot where they can hide, and no chance of their being found out."
"No," said the doctor; "they will not go to such a place; it has by far too bad a name for even such men as those to go near, much less stop in."
"I can hardly think that," said Charles Holland, "for these fellows are too terrified for their personal safety, to think of the superstitious fears with which a place may be regarded; and these men, in such a place as the one you speak of, they will be at home."