It was a hunt by sight now, with the fugitive making for a long strip of timber between some hills. Frank felt that the man stood a good chance of escaping if he got into those woods. A fence lay before the man in advance. It was a high, zigzag affair. Without seeking an opening, he made straight for it. Frank was watching. He saw the horse try to clear the fence, saw the animal strike, saw the man and beast go down. “Hurrah!” shouted the boy. “That’s a check!” But neither the man nor horse got up. Both were hidden beyond the bushes that grew along the base of the fence. Before long Frank was close to that fence, and he was lying flat on the back of his horse, half expecting the one he was pursuing was crouching behind the bushes, ready to stop the pursuit with a second shot. With his usual reckless disregard of consequences in times of great danger, Merriwell rode at the fence, rose in the saddle, and jumped his horse over. Man and horse lay under the bushes. The latter lifted his head and struggled to rise, but fell back. The man lay quite still, with his head curled under his body in a cramped position. Out of the saddle leaped the boy, and he was bending over the man a moment later. Still the man did not stir, but the horse regarded the boy with a look of pain and appeal in its eyes, and whinnied pitifully. Frank turned the man over, and the bloated face of Bill Wade, the hostler, was exposed. The man was stone dead, his neck being broken, and the horse had broken a leg. “Poor fellow!” muttered Frank, but he was thinking of the horse. Then he stooped and looked at the horse’s feet. “Just as I thought!” he cried. “The shoes are set the wrong end forward on the creature, and I might have been fooled if I had not seen Wade riding into the timber. It was a clever trick, but it failed.” Then he turned and looked down at the man once more. “In at the death!” he grimly said. CHAPTER XXVIII—A CHANGE OF SCENE With the death of Wade, the paid tool of Stephen Fenton, the latter took alarm and disappeared from Springbrook Farm, leaving a clear field to Harry Harden. Before leaving Springbrook, Frank was forced to repeat the story of the hunt so many times that he became heartily tired of it. He was also tired of being regarded as a hero, and hearing compliments from all sides. A less level-headed lad might have become inflated with his own importance, but “swelled head” was a disease that never secured a hold on Frank Merriwell. But the boys all voted that they had enjoyed themselves hugely at Springbrook, and each and every one of them was forced to promise that it would not be the last visit to the place. They might have remained longer, as it was, but the fall term of college was at hand, and several of them were impatient to return to dear Old Yale. “I want to get back and take a rest,” said Browning. “A big, long rest. I think I need it.”