“I thanked him for his information and set out along the road at an easy pace; but when I had gone a little way, I lengthened my stride so as to increase my speed without altering the rhythm of my footfalls.  As I went, I speculated on the intentions of my friend and noted with interest and a little surprise that I was quite without fear of him.  I suspected him of being a footpad, one of the gang of which Grayson had spoken, and I had set forth along this unfrequented road in a spirit of mere curiosity to see if it were really so.

“Presently I came to a gate at the entrance of a cart-track and here I halted to listen.  From the road behind me came the sound of footsteps; quick steps but not sharp and crisp; rather of a shuffling, stealthy quality.  I climbed quietly over the gate and took up a position behind the trunk of an elm that grew in the hedgerow.  The footsteps came on apace.  Soon round a bend of the moon-lighted road a figure appeared moving forward rapidly and keeping in what shadow there was.  I watched it through the thick hedge as it approached and resolved itself into a seedy-looking man carrying a thick knobbed stick.

“Opposite the gate the man halted and, as I could see by his shadow, looked across the silvery fields that stretched away down to the valley and listened, but only for a few moments.  Then he started forward again at something between a quick walk and a slow trot.

“As soon as he had gone I came out and began to walk down the cart-track.  My figure must have stood out conspicuously on the bare field and must have been plainly visible from the ridge-way.  I did not hurry.  Pursuing my way quietly down the gentle slope, I went on for some three hundred yards until the ground fell away more steeply; and here, before descending, I looked over my shoulder.

“A man was getting over the gate.

“I walked on more quickly now until I topped a second rise and then I again looked back.  The figure of the man stood out on the brow of the hill, black against the moonlit sky.  And now he was hurrying forward in undisguised pursuit.

“I quickened my pace and looked about me.  The night was calm and lovely, the fields bathed in silvery light and the wooded uplands shrouded in a soft, gray shadow, from the heart of which a single lighted window gleamed forth, a spot of rosy warmth.  The bark of a watch-dog came softened by distance from some solitary farmstead, and far away below, the hoot of a steamer, creeping up the river to the twinkling anchorage.

“Presently I came to a spot where the rough road divided.  One well-worn track led down towards the footpath that ultimately enters the London Road; a fainter track led, as I knew, to an old chalk-pit where, in mysterious caverns, the farm carts rested through the winter months.  Here I halted for a moment as if in doubt.  The man was now less than a hundred yards behind me and walking as fast as he could.  I turned round and looked at him, he appeared once more to hesitate, and then started at a run along the track to the chalk-pit.