“There’s no road this way,” explained another voice, with an infinite sadness and gentleness about it which was characteristic of its owner when the devil was rampant in his soul. The ranger recognized it. He remembered the soft languid address which he had listened to in the billiard-room of the Buckhurst Arms, and which had wound up by the mild orator putting his back against the door, drawing a derringer, and asking to see the sharper who would dare to force a passage. “It’s that infernal fool Durton,” he said, “and his white-faced friend.” Both were well-known names in the country round. But the rangers were reckless and desperate men. They drew up to the gate in a body. “Clear out of that!” said their leader, in a grim whisper; “you can’t save the girl. Go off with whole skins while you have the chance.” The partners laughed. “Then curse you, come on!” The gate was flung open and the party fired a straggling volley, and made a fierce rush toward the gravelled walk. The revolvers cracked merrily in the silence of the night from the bushes at the other end. It was hard to aim with precision in the darkness. The second man sprang convulsively into the air, and fell upon his face with his arms extended, writhing horribly in the moonlight. The third was grazed in the leg and stopped. The others stopped out of sympathy. After all, the girl was not for them, and their heart was hardly in the work. Their captain rushed madly on, like a valiant blackguard as he was, but was met by a crashing blow from the butt of Abe Durton’s pistol, delivered with a fierce energy which sent him reeling back among his comrades with the blood streaming from his shattered jaw, and his capacity for cursing cut short at the very moment when he needed to draw upon it most. “Don’t go yet,” said the voice in the darkness. However, they had no intention of going yet. A few minutes must elapse, they knew, before Harvey’s Sluice could be upon them. There was still time to force the door if they could succeed in mastering the defenders. What Abe had feared came to pass. Black Ferguson knew the ground as well as he did. He ran rapidly along the hedge, and the five crashed through it where there was some appearance of a gap. The two friends glanced at each other. Their flank was turned. They stood up like men who knew their fate and did not fear to meet it.