Thus spoke the savage--the descendant of a line of fighting savages, standing there, grasping his savage weapon, surveying the dead and bleeding body of his formidable enemy, not in his own native wilds, but in the peaceful glade of an English game preserve. "Well, come along then, and quick. There's sure to be a keeper not far off." Quickly they took their way to the edge of the wood. They were over the fence and away, but hardly had they gone some fifty yards when a voice behind them shouted:-- "Hi! Stop there! Stop, do 'ee 'ear? I'll shoot 'ee if 'ee don't." And immediately the bang of a discharged gun crashed out upon the night, Haviland laughed. "It's all right, Cetchy. He daren't fire at us, for his life. It's bluff. Come along." And away they raced, but a glance over their shoulder showed them that the keeper was giving chase. That in itself didn't afflict them much, but by and by when they had covered several long fields, they observed with concern that he was still on their heels. As a rule, a keeper was easy to distance, but this one seemed lightly built and in excellent training. Even a dark lane down which they dived, hoping to double on him, proved of no avail; rather did it serve to make matters worse, for the keeper, knowing where they were bound to come out, had wasted neither time nor energy, but made straight for that point: a manoeuvre which brought him alarmingly close when he did emerge. And at all hazards he must not be suffered to head them off from their objective. "Now, then--'ee'd better stop, I tell 'ee!" he shouted, reckoning them done up. But the fugitives knew better than to waste wind, if he did not. They simply raced on, offering no reply. And by degrees their superior wind and training told, the more so that the race was a long one. They saw they were shaking their pursuer off, and it was all important they should do this, because it would never do for them to let him run them all the way back to the school. They might as well surrender at once as that. "My clothes all over blood!" said Anthony at last, when they were safe beyond pursuit. "What I do?" Haviland examined him critically in the moonlight. "So they are," he said. "Well, Cetchy, you must peel them off and stow them away in the ditch, and go in without them. You can think you're back in Zululand again." "So I can. Yes," answered the other, showing his white rows of splendid teeth. Half an hour later, two wearied perspiring figures shinned up the cord under the angle of the chapel wall at Saint Kirwin's, and so ended another night of excitement and adventure--as they thought. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE BOLT FALLS. "I say, you fellows, there's no end of a row on," pronounced Wood major, joining a group of others.