“Leave him to me,” returned Lewis eagerly; and bending forward, with a bound like that of a tiger he sprang upon him. The poacher was taken so completely by surprise (his back being turned towards his assailant) that Lewis, encircling him with a grasp of iron, was enabled to pinion his arms to his sides. Like a wild bull caught in the toils, his struggles to free himself were tremendous; but Lewis, now in the full vigour of his strength, was an adversary not easily to be shaken off, and despite his unrivalled powers, the poacher failed to extricate his arms. Shouting, therefore, to his companion for assistance, he desired him, with an oath, to shoot the ------ keeper; but that individual was unable to comply with his comrade’s benevolent suggestion by reason of certain well-directed blows wherewith Sam Jones, the under-keeper, was producing a marked alteration in the general outline of his features. In the meantime, Millar, drawing forth a piece of cord, began coolly to tie Hardy’s wrists together, disregarding a series of ferocious kicks with which he assailed him. At this moment the other poachers, to the number of some half-dozen, attracted by the sound of blows, reached the scene of action, but the party led by Lord Bellefield were equally on the alert, and the fight became general. And now the capture of the poacher Hardy appeared certain: exhausted by his unavailing struggles to free himself from Lewis’s encircling arms, he could offer no effectual resistance to Millar, who continued most methodically to bind his wrists, in no way diverted from his purpose by the storm of blows which raged around him, many of which fell on his unprotected person, when suddenly the report of a pistol rung sharply above the other sounds of the combat, and an acute, stinging pain darted through Lewis’s left shoulder, causing him such agony for the moment that he involuntarily relaxed his grasp. Hardy was not slow to avail himself of the opportunity thus offered. Flinging off the young tutor with so much violence that he would have fallen had not one of the gamekeeper’s assistants caught him and prevented it, he wrenched his hands from Millar’s grasp, and raising them, still bound together as they were, struck the keeper such a severe blow on the side of the head that he reeled and fell; then seeing that his companions, overpowered by numbers and disheartened by his supposed capture, were giving way on all sides, he turned, and dashing into the bushes, disappeared, not so quickly, however, but that Lewis, who, despite his wound, had never taken his eyes off him for a moment, perceived the movement.