Dent and Doherty were wandering toward this light, neither actually intending to go so far, nor yet knowing quite how far they would go, when a mild voice hailed them from under just such a tree as should have met their needs. "I say," it said, "you fellows!" "Hullo?" cried Denis, stopping in his stride. "Steady!" returned the voice in an amused undertone. "Mum's the word--if you don't mind coming nearer." The pair stole up to the tree. A slight young man stood against the trunk in the shaded starlight; it was his voice that conveyed his youth; they could barely see him at arm's length. "Thanks awfully," he went on. "I have no idea who you are, but I should like awfully to shake hands with you; unfortunately, I haven't a hand at liberty--feel." What Denis felt was a coil of rope, and another, and another, as he ran his hand up and down. "Tied up!" he whispered. "And robbed," added the complacent young man. "Of much?" asked Denis, getting out his knife. "Only the result of five months' hard labour on Bendigo; only my little all," the young man murmured with a placid sigh. "But it might be worse: they sometimes truss you up with all your weight on your neck, and then you can't make yourself heard if you try. Isn't there a fire somewhere behind me?" "A good way off there is." "It's not so far as you think. I heard them light it. But it would be just as well not to let them hear us." "Why shouldn't they?" asked Denis, as he worked a flat blade between the young man's middle and the rope; whereupon Doherty put in his first word in an excited whisper. "Don't you savvy? They're the blokes what done it, mister!" "Exactly," said the mild young man. "And that's about all I know of them, though I've been in their company all day. But my name is Moseley; you might make a note of it, in case anything happens. My father's Rector of Much Wymondham, in Silly Suffolk--as you might expect from his imbecile son." "I don't see where the imbecility comes in, much less what can happen now," said Denis, encouragingly; as he spoke, he loosened the severed coil, and the late captive stumbled stiffly into the open. "I ought to be ashamed to own it," he went on in whispers, squatting in the grass to bend his limbs in turn, "but I met these chaps on the way into town--with my poor little pile, heigho!--and took them for father and son, as they professed to be. I thanked Providence for putting me in such respectable hands, and stuck to them like a leech till they lured me out here to camp with the result you found. As for nothing happening now, they swore they'd murder me if I uttered a sound; they've camped within earshot to be handy for the job; and I give them leave to do it, if I don't get even with them now." Doherty rubbed his hands in glee; but Denis was quite unprepared for this spirited resolution, voiced as it was in the spiritless tone which distinguished the other young man; and he asked Moseley whether he was armed.