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Duke followed the ride for some distance, the clamor of voices around the wrecked train growing every moment less distinct till they died away altogether, and he guessed that he was in the heart of the wood, half a mile from the scene of the disaster. Whether or no he was pursued he had no means of knowing, with such diabolical cunning pitted against him; but, at any rate, no sound of pursuit reached his straining ears, and he began to hope that his break-away had been undetected.

Suddenly the ride turned abruptly to the right, and at the end of a glade, some hundred yards further on, he saw the lights of a dwelling. Across the intervening years came a flash of remembrance. These must be the celebrated coverts of his neighbor, Sir Claude Asprey, and the house ahead must be the keeper’s cottage where, when an Eton boy spending the holidays with his uncle at Prior’s