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274 one pistol, drawn another, and turned to fire it with every furrow of that fine brow showing in the glare. But Tom heard the man behind fire first, and saw those furrows leap into space like snapped fiddle-strings; and he galloped through the gate alone.

Whether the slayer came to grief over the slain, or how else to account for it, Tom never knew; but he now got a start which he was destined to keep and to increase. Now also he began for the first time to appreciate the piece of hard-bitten horse-flesh between his knees. He had taken the dead Italian’s roan, which had been led riderless to the farm, and was thus comparatively fresh. It was a great gaunt brute, with a mouth like leather, as Tom had discovered to his cost in the skirmish. Once through the gate, however, he felt that no more: the beast had run away without his knowing it.

Indeed he knew very little for the first few minutes except that the moon was setting at his back, and he was once more heading for the sea. This he gathered from the grotesque shadow leaping along between the roan’s ears; his first conscious effort was to keep that shadow dead ahead. Now he lost it where the timber thickened, now he found it in an open glade. At length the shadow failed and vanished, and it was very dark indeed. But on went the roan with Tom on its withers to avoid invisible boughs; and when the sky lightened he could have shouted for joy, for the roan’s ears took shape against its lightest point.

He did not shout because his pursuers would have heard him; for all this time he had heard them at intervals; and whenever the ground changed from hard to soft, their hoofs rang out the instant the roan’s were muffled.