As soon as the spy was out of sight Humphrey began to descend the tree. "Whither goest thou?" asked Hugo. "Thou shalt see," returned Humphrey. With speed he ran down the hill, breaking a switch of birch as he ran. He hastened to Walter Skinner's horse, cut him loose from his tether, and struck him sharply with the birch rod. Away galloped the horse down the valley, while Humphrey hastened back to his place in the tree. "Fortune may be with him," he said to Hugo, "but his horse is not. Mayhap I need not another dream, for, by the one I had, I think we have got the better of him. Moreover, there will be no more whinnying for our horses to answer." CHAPTER VII Till the set of sun and the dusk of the evening the spy pursued the search, now stumbling over a tree root, now catching his foot in a straggling vine, and every now and then sorely struck in the face by the underbrush through which he pushed his way. But, although he was once very near the concealed horses and hound, he found nothing to reward him. The return to the little vale was even more tiresome than the journey from it had been. No moon would shine for an hour, and it was quite dark when he once more reached the oak in which Hugo and Humphrey had stayed all day, but from which they had a few moments before descended. In climbing the tree, after setting Walter Skinner's horse loose, Humphrey had noticed a hollow in one of the lower branches. "Perchance," he said, "a hedgehog may lodge therein. Knowest thou the ways of hedgehogs?" "Nay," returned Hugo, indifferently. "The lad hath lost heart," said Humphrey to himself, "and all because of the words of this little snipe of a king's man and the slowness of the journey. I will not seem to see it." Then he continued as if Hugo had displayed the greatest interest: "I will tell thee, then, that hedgehogs have many ways. I warrant thee this king's man knoweth naught of them, any more than he knoweth the wood. Had he been some men, we had been caught ere now. I fear him not overmuch. For do but see how he is puffed up with undue pride and importance. And let me tell thee that undue pride and importance and good sense dwell not in the same skull. We shall therefore have the better of him." Hugo made no reply, and Humphrey continued cheerfully: "A hedgehog will find a hollow in a tree, and there he will bide, sleeping all day. At night he will come forth. But first he must reach the ground. And this he will do by rolling into a ball and dropping on the ends of his spines. If the ground is beneath him, no harm is done. If this king's man should be beneath him, I think not that he would cry out that Fortune was with him when the spines of the hedgehog stuck into him." "And how would the king's man be beneath him?" asked Hugo, dully. "If the hedgehog be in the hollow of that low branch," answered Humphrey, "and if the king's man should stand under at such time as the hedgehog was ready to drop, then he would be beneath him."