Wogan dropped the door-handle and turned.  That last blow had thrown him into a violent rage.  Possessed by rage, he was no longer conscious of wounds or danger; he was conscious only of superhuman strength.  The knife was already lifted to strike again.  Wogan seized the wrist which held the knife, grappled with the innkeeper, and caught him about the body.  The door of the room, now behind him, was flung violently open.  Wogan, who was wrought to a frenzy, lifted up the man he wrestled with, and swinging round hurled him headlong through the doorway.  The three men were already on the threshold.  The new missile bounded against them, tumbled them one against the other, and knocked them sprawling and struggling on the floor.

Wogan burst into a laugh of exultation; he saw his most dangerous enemy striving to disentangle himself and his sword.

“Aha, my friend,” he cried, “you handle a sword very prettily, but I am the better man at cock-shies.”  And shutting the door to be ran down the passage into the road.

He had seen a house that afternoon with a high garden wall about it a quarter of a mile away.  Wogan ran towards it.  The mist was still thick, but he now began to feel his strength failing.  He was wounded in the shoulder, he was stabbed in the back, and from both wounds the blood was flowing warm.  Moreover, he looked backwards once over his shoulder and saw a lantern dancing in the road.  He kept doggedly running, though his pace slackened; he heard a shout and an answering shout behind him.  He stumbled onto his knees, picked himself up, and staggered on, labouring his breath, dizzy.  He stumbled again and fell, but as he fell he struck against the sharp corner of the wall.  If he could find an entrance into the garden beyond that wall!  He turned off the road to the left and ran across a field, keeping close along the side of the wall.  He came to another corner and turned to the right.  As he turned he heard voices in the road.  The pursuers had stopped and were searching with the lantern for traces of his passage.  He ran along the back of the wall, feeling for a projection, a tree, anything which would enable him to climb it.  The wall was smooth, and though the branches of trees swung and creaked above his head, their stems grew in the garden upon the other side.  He was pouring with sweat, his breath whistled, in his ears he had the sound of innumerable armies marching across the earth, but he stumbled on.  And at last, though his right side brushed against the wall, he none the less struck against it also with his chest.  He was too dazed for the moment to understand what had happened; all the breath he had left was knocked clean out of his body; he dropped in a huddle on the ground.

In a little he recovered his breath; he listened and could no longer hear any sound of voices; he began to consider.  He reached a hand out in front of him and touched the wall; he reached out a hand to the right of him and touched the wall again.  The wall projected then abruptly and made a right angle.