“He sees me,” thought Heywood, and held himself ready, trembling.  But the fellow made no sign, the broad squat features no change.  The pose was that of vague, comfortable thought.  Yet his vision seemed to rest, true as a plumb-line, on the hiding-place.  Was he in doubt?—­he could reach down lazily, and feel.

Worst of all, the greenish pallor in the eastern sky had imperceptibly turned brighter; and now the ribbed edge of a roof, across the way, began to glow like incandescent silver.  The moon was crawling up.

The head and the dangling goblet were slowly pulled in, just before the moonlight, soft and sullen through the brown haze of the heat, stole down the wall and spread upon the tiles.  The shutter remained open.  But Heywood drew a free breath:  those eyes had been staring into vacancy.

“Now, then,” he thought, and sat up to the cranny; for the rattle of the abacus had stopped.

“The counting is complete,” announced the Red Wand slowly, “the hours are numbered.  The day—­”

Movement, shadow, or nameless instinct, made the listener glance upward swiftly.  He caught the gleam of yellow silk, the poise and downward jab, and with a great heave of muscles went shooting down the slippery channel of the cock’s blood.  A spearhead grazed his scalp, and smashed a tile behind him.  As he rolled over the edge, the spear itself whizzed by him into the dark.

“The chap saw,” he thought, in mid-air; “beastly clever—­all the time—­”

He landed on the spear-shaft, in a pile of dry rubbish, snatched up the weapon, and ran, dimly conscious of a quiet scurrying behind and above him, of silent men tumbling after, and doors flung violently open.

He raced blindly, but whipped about the next corner, leaving the moon at his back.  Westward, somebody had told him, to the gate where dragons met.

There had been no uproar; but running his hardest down the empty corridors of the streets, he felt that the pack was gaining.  Ahead loomed something gray, a wall, the end of a blind alley.  Scale it, or make a stand at the foot,—­he debated, racing.  Before the decision came, a man popped out of the darkness.  Heywood shifted his grip, drew back the spear, but found the stranger bounding lightly alongside, and muttering,—­

“To the west-south, quick!  A brother waits.  I fool those who follow—­”

Obeying, Heywood dove to the left into the black slit of an alley, while the other fugitive pattered straight on into the seeming trap, with a yelp of encouragement to the band who swept after.  The alley was too dark for speed.  Heywood ran on, fell, rose and ran, fell again, losing his spear.  A pair of trembling hands eagerly helped him to his feet.

“My cozin’s boy, he ron quick,” said Wutzler.  “Dose fellows, dey not catch him!  Kom.”

They threaded the gloom swiftly.  Wutzler, ready and certain of his ground, led the tortuous way through narrow and greasy galleries, along the side of a wall, and at last through an unlighted gate, free of the town.