With sharper stride he pressed on, unmindful whither his course lay if only he widened the distance between him and the city. He had walked to the post office twice a day for a week, and from habit now he took the wagon track that zigzagged toward the iron villa. The green bower forming the roof of that matchless dwelling rose to view as he turned into the road by the railway track. A few yards onward the penetrating whistle of a quail startled him, and a flash of his affrighted fancy revealed police rising from ambush on every side and closing in. For the first time since leaving the town he turned about, and beheld what he had not dared look behind for dread of seeing--men coming after him. There were six or seven of them, all in a group, and gliding along so strangely. _Gran Dio!_ his wife’s warning had come too late. Why had she waited until the hounds were fairly sniffing at his heels? What giants his pursuers were! He could see their heads and shoulders above the quivering foliage. Now the ears of two horses showed, and the rumble of wheels reached him. Ah! thus it was these men could glide after him without moving their bodies. Courage! Maybe they were not man-hunters at all. He would see if they kept on in his track, or turned the opposite way at the corner. Yes; they had struck into the road by the railway and were galloping after him. Idiot that he was to stand so long! But he would elude them. He knew the trails and secret hollows in the bush that would cover his flight and shelter him until they should give up the search. What a fool he had been to run! Now they must know he was the murderer! On he sped past the iron villa, not even glancing to see if Bridget and the children were there. He reached the point on the edge of the thicket where he intended to plunge into its shielding labyrinth, but a look behind told him that this was needless, for the two-horse truck had come to a halt at the villa, and the men were moving about the pipes, some kneeling and looking in. The wind bore to him their shouts of laughter and inarticulate talk. Screened by the dwarf oaks he crept nearer, until the confusion of human voices became the dialect of Sicily. That the men were all Italians did not drive away his fear of them. His racial faith in the sanctity of the _vendetta_ was not blind enough to make the Genovese trust himself to the Siciliani, although the knowledge that they were no emissaries of the Questura of Police was somewhat of relief.