“The rascal has made off with my dinner,” he muttered between his clinched teeth.  “That completes the ruin Mary began.  If I should happen to catch up with him, I trust I shall have the moral strength not to knock his head off—­his skull off; it isn’t a head.”

Lynde’s sole hope of overtaking him, and it was a very slender hope, was based on the possibility that the man might fall and disable himself; but he seemed to have the sure-footedness as well as the lightness of a deer.  When Lynde reached the outskirts of the village, on the road by which he had entered, the agile ship-builder was more than halfway up the hill.  Lynde made a fresh spurt here, and lost his hat; but he had no time to turn back for it.  Every instant widened the space between the two runners, as one of them noticed with disgust.  At the top of the ascent the man halted a moment to take breath, and then disappeared behind the ridge.  He was on the down grade now, and of course gaining at each stride on his pursuer, who was still toiling upward.  Lynde did not slacken his pace, however; he had got what runners call their second wind.  With lips set, elbows pressed against his sides, and head thrown forward, he made excellent time to the brow of the hill, where he suddenly discovered himself in the midst of a crowd of men and horses.

For several seconds Lynde was so dazed and embarrassed that he saw nothing; then his eyes fell upon the girl with the long hair and the white gown.  She was seated sidewise on a horse without saddle, and the horse was Mary.  A strapping fellow was holding the animal by the head-stall.

“By Jove!” cried Lynde, springing forward joyfully, “that’s my mare!”

He was immediately seized by two men who attempted to pass a cord over his wrists.  Lynde resisted so desperately that a third man was called into requisition, and the three succeeded in tying his hands and placing him upon a saddle vacated by one of the riders.  All this occupied hardly a minute.

“Will you go along quietly,” said one of the men roughly, “or will you be carried?”

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Lynde, with the veins standing out on his forehead.

He received no reply from any of the group, which seemed to be composed of farmers and laboring-hands, with two or three persons whose social status did not betray itself.  Directly behind the girl and, like her, mounted on a horse led by a couple of rustics, was the white-haired old gentleman who had repulsed Lynde so rudely.  Lynde noticed that his hands were also secured by cords, an indignity which in no wise altered the benevolent and satisfied expression of his face.  Lynde’s saddle and valise were attached to the old gentleman’s horse.  Lynde instinctively looked around for the ship-builder.  There he was, flushed and sullen, sitting on a black nag as bony and woe-begone as himself, guarded by two ill-favored fellows.  Not only were the ship-builder’s arms pinioned, but his feet were bound by a rope fastened to each ankle and passed under the nag’s belly.  It was clear to Lynde that he himself, the old clergyman, and the girl were the victims of some dreadful misconception, possibly brought about by the wretch who had purloined the saddle.