He listened for a sound among the trees.  None was to be heard but the occasional scamper of a rabbit over the withered leaves.  He threw the light of his lantern through a gap in the hedge, but could see nothing beyond an impenetrable thicket.  It was clear that Manston was not many yards off, but the question was how to find him.  Nothing could be done by the detective just then, encumbered as he was by the horse and Anne.  If he had entered the thicket on a search unaided, Manston might have stepped unobserved from behind a bush and murdered him with the greatest ease.  Indeed, there were such strong reasons for the exploit in Manston’s circumstances at that moment that without showing cowardice, his pursuer felt it hazardous to remain any longer where he stood.

He hastily tied the head of Manston’s horse to the back of his own vehicle, that the steward might be deprived of the use of any means of escape other than his own legs, and drove on thus with his prisoner to the county-town.  Arrived there, he lodged her in the police-station, and then took immediate steps for the capture of Manston.

XX.  THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS

1.  MARCH THE TWENTY-THIRD.  MIDDAY

Thirty-six hours had elapsed since Manston’s escape.

It was market-day at the county-town.  The farmers outside and inside the corn-exchange looked at their samples of wheat, and poured them critically as usual from one palm to another, but they thought and spoke of Manston.  Grocers serving behind their counters, instead of using their constant phrase, ’The next article, please?’ substituted, ‘Have you heard if he’s caught?’ Dairymen and drovers standing beside the sheep and cattle pens, spread their legs firmly, readjusted their hats, thrust their hands into the lowest depths of their pockets, regarded the animals with the utmost keenness of which the eye was capable, and said, ’Ay, ay, so’s:  they’ll have him avore night.’

Later in the day Edward Springrove passed along the street hurriedly and anxiously.  ‘Well, have you heard any more?’ he said to an acquaintance who accosted him.

‘They tracked him in this way,’ said the other young man.  ’A vagrant first told them that Manston had passed a rick at daybreak, under which this man was lying.  They followed the track he pointed out and ultimately came to a stile.  On the other side was a heap of half-hardened mud, scraped from the road.  On the surface of the heap, where it had been smoothed by the shovel, was distinctly imprinted the form of a man’s hand, the buttons of his waistcoat, and his watch-chain, showing that he had stumbled in hurrying over the stile, and fallen there.  The pattern of the chain proved the man to have been Manston.  They followed on till they reached a ford crossed by stepping-stones—­on the further bank were the same footmarks that had shown themselves beside the stile.  The whole of