He and his dog,
which was attached by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out of
the carriage, landed on their heads on the track, and rolled some
way down the bank towards the water. In the rescue which followed
the dog bit somebody, for I could hear the sound of hard swearing.
Presently they had forgotten me, and when after a quarter of a
mile's crawl I ventured to look back, the train had started again and
was vanishing in the cutting.
I was in a wide semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as
radius, and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There
was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water
and the interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the
first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police
that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew
Scudder's secret and dared not let me live. I was certain that they
would pursue me with a keenness and vigilance unknown to the
British law, and that once their grip closed on me I should find
no mercy.
I looked back, but there was nothing in the landscape. The sun
glinted on the metals of the line and the wet stones in the stream,
and you could not have found a more peaceful sight in the world.
Nevertheless I started to run. Crouching low in the runnels of the
bog, I ran till the sweat blinded my eyes.
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