The hut stood in a very small clearing, and Charlie had no difficulty in seeing the track by which the cart had come, for the marks of the wheels were still visible in the soft soil.  He followed this until, after about two miles’ walking, he came to the edge of the wood.  Then he retraced his steps for a quarter of a mile, turned off, and with some difficulty made his way into a patch of thick undergrowth, where, after first cutting a formidable cudgel, he lay down, completely exhausted.

Late in the afternoon he was aroused from a doze by the sound of footsteps, and, looking through the screen of leaves, he saw his late jailers hurrying along the path.  The charcoal burner carried a heavy axe, while the Jew, whose head was bound up with a cloth, had a long knife in his girdle.  They went as far as the end of the forest, and then retraced their steps slowly.  They were talking loudly, and Charlie could gather, from the few words he understood, and by their gestures, something of the purport of their conversation.

“I told you it was of no use your coming on as far as this,” the Jew said.  “Why, he was hardly strong enough to walk.”

“He managed to knock you down, and afterwards to drag you into the house,” the other said.

“It does not require much strength to knock a man down with a heavy club, when he is not expecting it, Conrad.  He certainly did drag me in, but he was obliged to sit down afterwards, and I watched him out of one eye as he was making his preparations, and he could only just totter about.  I would wager you anything he cannot have gone two hundred yards from the house.  That is where we must search for him.  I warrant we shall find him hidden in a thicket thereabouts.”

“We shall have to take a lantern then, for it will be dark before we get back.”

“Our best plan will be to leave it alone till morning.  If we sit outside the hut, and take it in turns to watch, we shall hear him when he moves, which he is sure to do when it gets dark.  It will be a still night, and we should hear a stick break half a mile away.  We shall catch him, safe enough, before he has gone far.”

“Well, I hope we shall have him back before Ben Soloman comes,” the charcoal burner said, “or it will be worse for both of us.  You know as well as I do he has got my neck in a noose, and he has got his thumb on you.”

“If we can’t find this Swede, I would not wait here for any money.  I would fly at once.”

“You would need to fly, in truth, to get beyond Ben Soloman’s clutches,” the charcoal burner said gruffly.  “He has got agents all over the country.”

“Then what would you do?”

“There is only one thing to do.  It is our lives or his.  When he rides up tomorrow, we will meet him at the door as if nothing had happened, and, with my axe, I will cleave his head asunder as he comes in.  If he sees me in time to retreat, you shall stab him in the back.  Then we will dig a big hole in the wood, and throw him in, and we will kill his horse and bury it with him.