He had seen Sir Humphrey Challoner and Mittachip ambling up the hillside. He tried not to lose sight of them, and, if possible, to keep within earshot, but he was driven back by a posse of his pursuers, close upon his heels, and now having succeeded in reaching the road at last, he had the terrible chagrin of seeing that he was too late; the two men were remounting their horses and turning back towards Brassington. "Methinks we have outwitted that gallant highwayman after all," Sir Humphrey was saying with one of those boisterous outbursts of merriment, which to Bathurst’s sensitive ears had a ring of the devil’s own glee in it. "What hellish mischief have those two reprobates been brewing, I wonder?" he mused. "If those fellows at my heels hadn’t cut me off I might have known..." He crept nearer to the two men, but they set their horses at a sharp trot down the road: Jack vainly strained his ears to hear their talk. For the last eight hours he had practically covered every corner of the Heath, backwards and forwards, across boulders and through morass; the hound had had some difficulty in finding and keeping the trail, but now it seemed suddenly to have found it, the yelping drew nearer, but the shouts had altogether ceased. What was to be done? God in heaven, what was to be done? It was at this moment that the plaintive bleating of one or two of the penned-up sheep suddenly aroused every instinct of vitality in him. "The sheep!..." he murmured. "A receipt and tally for some sheep!..." Fresh excitement had in the space of a few seconds given him a new lease of strength. He dragged himself up to his feet and walked almost upright as far as the hut. There certainly was a flock of sheep in the pen: the dog was watching close by the gate, but the shepherd was nowhere to be seen. "The sheep! ... A receipt and tally for some sheep! ... In Sir Humphrey Challoner’s coat pocket! ..." Oh! for one calm moment in which to think ... to think! "The sheep!..." This one thought went on hammering in the poor tired brain, like the tantalising, elusive whisper of a mischievous sprite. And with it all there was scarce a second to be lost. The hound, yelping and straining on the leash, was not half a mile away; the next ten or perhaps fifteen minutes would see the end of this awful man-hunt on the Moor. And yet there close by, behind those clumps of gorse and the thickset hedge of bramble, was the clearing, where just twenty-four hours ago he had danced that mad rigadoon, with her almost in his arms. Instinctively, in the wild agony of this supreme moment, Beau Brocade turned his steps thither. This clearing had but two approaches, there where the tough branches of furze had once been vigorously cut into. Last night he had led her through the one whilst Jock Miggs sat beside the other, piping the quaint sad tune.