But how? By a flying leap? This would expose him to the view of any one on watch, for though the night was dark, it was not so black but that a moving object could be seen. By clambering over? This would be attended by the same risk and by others. He might indeed scramble over at the expense of torn hands and clothing, though there was the danger of being held fast by the tenacious wait-a-bit thorns of which the obstacle was made. But his movements must cause such a crackling and creaking of the interlaced branches as could not fail to alarm any one who chanced to be awake in the camp, no matter at what part of it. Leaping and climbing being equally out of the question, what course remained? Ferrier was not for nothing the grandson of a man who had roughed it in the backwoods of Canada. If acquired qualities are not inherited, the stock of which he came must have been sturdy and dogged in grain. At any rate, Charles was not the man to be baulked. Dropping on his knees again, he dug his fingers into the soil beneath the hedge. It was gravel, like the ground he had crossed in coming from the river. Very carefully he began to scrape out a hole, intending to persevere until it was large enough for him to squeeze his body through. He soon found that the task was not to be easy. The soil was so light and mobile that, as he scraped, it tended to slip at the sides and fill up the hole he was so laboriously excavating. Further, he felt the hedge, at the point where he was undermining it, subside, with a rustling and creaking which, faint as it was, might easily catch the ear of a wary guard. Fortunately the subsidence was soon checked. The base of the hedge was composed of stout branches which yielded but slightly, and in a few minutes the settling down ceased. Relieved on this score, Ferrier scraped away at the hole, thinking of John, who was no doubt wondering at the long delay. He worked until his fingers were sore. At last the hole was large enough for him to wriggle under the hedge. He groped with his hands for any thorns that might be sticking out downwards from the tangle above, and finding several, cut them off with his knife. Then, shoving his bundles of grass before him, he crawled into the hole and began to worm his way through. It was a tight fit, and the difficulty was all the greater because of the need for silence. More than once as his body, pressed close against the lower part of the hedge, put some strain upon it, there was a sharp creak when his passage freed the branch. At last he was through, scratched, hot, and breathless, and with a feeling that the various parts of his clothing were in very unnatural relation to one another. But he was through: that was the main thing; and pausing only to take breath, he ran in a stooping posture across the space between the outer and the inner defences.