Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/102

90 It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the woman at my feet was the victim. But whom?

Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without matches, I heard the movement repeated. Some one was quickly receding — escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.

I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the wall of the wood.

In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of the fugitive, whether a man or woman, was marvellous. I considered myself a fairly good runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-ploughed land in the darkness, and carrying my gun, soon caused me to pant and blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.

Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in two directions, I lost all trace of the person who fled from me. Whoever it