“Yes,'” answered one from below, in a similar tone. “All right. Make haste!” Colin's heart leaped within him for joy. Now was he well rewarded for all his pain and trouble:--to think that he had succeeded at last, notwithstanding all his mother's and Fanny's fears! Hastily he drew up the hempen ladder after him, and, sitting upon the top of the wall, fixed it on the other side, in order to enable James Woodruff to ascend. “Put your feet in, and hold by the sides,” said Colin, as he saw dimly that the figure was coming up. “Yes, yes,” replied he. “Stop there till I get safe to the top.” And in the next minute, when the body was half above the wall, Colin received a heavy blow on the head from a short bludgeon, accompanied by a fierce exclamation and an oath, that if he did not surrender that instant his brains should be blown out! Regardless of the height of the wall, he instantly dropped, and, though half stunned, and sprained in the leg besides, he endeavoured to make off. The fellow who, it was now evident, had been stationed in the yard on purpose to draw him into this trap,--poor Woodruff had been kept in his cell,--was afraid to risk his limbs or his neck by following Colin's example; but, instead of so doing, he began to bawl lustily for assistance. Colin heard two blunderbusses fired, and afterwards the crash of pursuers through the plantations behind him. Conscious that the injury he had received from the fall would prevent him from escaping them by flight, he raised himself up against a gate-post, with his arms close against his sides. In this situation he had the pleasure, two minutes afterwards, of both hearing and seeing a couple of stout fellows rush past within a yard of him, one of whom, by his voice and language, Colin recognised to be Mr. Palethorpe. Within a short period, having “lost scent,” they returned, and lingered a few moments about the gate, as though irresolute which way to take. During this brief interval he plainly overheard the following conversation. “Dang him, I wish we'd hit him! It would have saved us all this trouble.” “Ay, ay, and hit him I will,” replied Palethorpe, “if I can once get sight of him. Meesis was quite right, you see, in what she overheard him say--a young vagabone! She told me afore I came out, if I _did_ get a shot at him, to pepper him well; and so I will. If we kill him in trespass and burglary, I think the law will stand at our backs. Dang him!--we lost sound of him somewhere here about, and I should not wonder if he 's crept under some of these bushes. I'll fire in, and chance it.”