"Every chance, my lord," replied Colonel Manners: "in the first place, the tracks of the wheels, and the feet going in one particular direction, was too evident to leave a doubt in regard to which path they had taken at first. That path, I find, leads down to a hamlet where they must have been seen, and where the servant will most probably obtain the means of tracing them farther. But my next step, my lord, is, I think, likely to produce the still more desirable result of placing in the hands of justice the particular individual whom we have the greatest reason to suspect. While we were examining the sandpit, where these gipsies had been assembled, we discovered some one apparently watching the common from the wood; and whether at first he mistook us for some of his own tribe or not, I cannot tell; but he advanced some way towards us. As soon as I saw he was again retreating to the wood, I galloped after him; and though I unfortunately had not time to overtake him, yet I had an opportunity of satisfying myself very nearly to a certainty that this was that very Pharold whom I had once before seen on another occasion. I took measures as soon as possible for having the wood surrounded by a mounted patrol of as many men as it was possible to obtain, and I directed that any one who was apprehended in coming out of it should be instantly carried before Mr. Arden, to whom I had written a concise account of all the circumstances." The peer mused; for, as in every dark and complicated scheme of villany, the slightest alteration in the events which he had anticipated was likely to produce the most disastrous results to the schemer. "If Pharold be carried at once before Mr. Arden," thought the peer, "the accusation which he has it in his power to bring against me may be made before I am aware of it, and that, too, to the very man who has the best means of comparing minutely, in the first stages of the proceeding, the present charge with the past circumstances. That the gipsy will ultimately tell his own tale, there can be no doubt; yet to make the first impression is the great object--to be the accuser rather than the accused--to attack rather than defend." With such views, the probability of the gipsy being carried before Mr. Arden ere he had been prepared was anything but agreeable to the peer; and for a moment the anguish occasioned by his son's death was forgotten, in apprehensions for the failure of his own deep-laid schemes.