There was now no doubt in his mind; they were after him. Perhaps before the coming of the end Roy Hooker’s mind had cleared sufficiently for him to tell who struck the fatal blow. Perhaps Roy’s father, running from the house, had been hurrying to set the officers at work. In advance, he perceived a dark, straggling line of bushes and low trees. Amid them he turned sharply to the left, hoping somehow to double on his tracks and baffle the pursuers. Through a thicket of shrubbery he plunged, with the tiny branches viciously whipping his face and tearing at his clothes, as if even they sought to grasp and hold him. Suddenly he stopped short, his mouth wide open, that he might listen the better. The two men had reached the growth, and he could hear them floundering amid it. “This way!” one of them cried. “He went this way!” “Keep still!” urged the other. “We ought to be able to hear him. Keep still a minute.” The crashing sounds ceased, and the listening boy knew the men were listening also. Through a great effort of self-command, he kept himself from resuming the flight, waiting until the noise of their own movements should prevent them from hearing what sounds he might make. They soon grew impatient and began beating about in the underbrush in an aimless search. As soon as this happened Shultz moved away, proceeding with a certain amount of caution. Keeping just within the border of the timber and thickets, he went forward as fast as he dared, putting out his hands to part the bushes and slipping through them as silently as possible. At times twigs snapped beneath his feet, but, as he had hoped, the men were themselves making sufficient noise to drown such minor sounds, and gradually he left them far behind. In the blackness he ran full against a wire fence, and the barbs of the lower strands slashed his trousers and cut his legs. He tore himself free, felt for the smooth upper strand, bent it downward and straddled over. Following the line of the fence, he turned full upon the course he had been pursuing when he plunged into the timber. Leaving that shelter behind him, bending low, he ran on until he returned to the highway some distance above the home of Mrs. Chester. In the middle of the road he paused uncertainly. The moon was rising. Its light, although somewhat muffled by the clouds, was sufficient to enable him to perceive the outlines of objects at a considerable distance; it would also reveal him far better to pursuers, and make his escape more difficult were he again seen by them. “Good-by, Ned,” he whispered. “You’re asleep, and you don’t know anything about it. Probably you’ll never realize just what I’ve had to go through this night.” Fearing to follow the highway, he again struck across the fields, before him the deep stretch of timberland to the north of Turkey Hill. By making his way through those woods and passing round the hill, he could reach the Barville road some miles from Oakdale.