But it was not in his ordinary free and careless fashion, for his thoughts haunted him, and every now and then he kept turning round as if fancying that he was followed. Now his eyes were directed back at the old ivy-covered house, where he expected to see the maid watching him from one of the windows. Soon after, when the Manor was hidden by the clustering oaks that were scattered park-like among the fields, he was looking over his left shoulder to see if that was the fat village constable in the distance bending down so as to creep along unobserved, and not one of his father's mouse-coloured cows. Hurrying on, and right into the forest, his next fancy was that he heard a distant shout, one that was answered, though it might have been an echo, and his heart beat a little faster as he set both sounds down to soldiers searching among the trees and hallooing to one another so as to keep in touch. "Oh, I say," he muttered to himself, as he proceeded, keeping to the densest portions of the forest, and doubling the labour in threading his way, "who could have thought that it would make one feel so queer? I haven't done anything--at least, nothing much--to mind, and here am I feeling as if I had been guilty of nobody knows what. No wonder that poor chap felt so bad and pulled out the pistol. What did he say his name was? Boyne? Let's see--Battle of the Boyne--where was that? Oh, I know--King James, and he was a Stuart. Nonsense! That couldn't have had anything to do with his name. Let's see; I had better wait till it gets dusk, and then--oh, I'll risk it. I'll smuggle him up to the house and upstairs. But what about Joe Hanson? Mustn't run against him. He's always pottering about outside the house towards evening, just as if he thought I wanted to go down the garden and help myself to apples and pears. Like his impudence, with his `my garden' and `my fruit,' and all the rest of it; and father said that I was to take what I liked, and that he should be proud to leave it to my discretion. It will come to a row one of these days, for I shall hit out at Master Joe, and then he will go and complain. Bother Joe Hanson! I want to think about that poor chap lying out there amongst the bracken. What a miserable, haggard scarecrow he did look, just like some poor beggarly tramp. But one could feel that he was a gentleman as soon as he began to speak. There; best way will be to take him boldly up to the front door and right up the stairs, and chance it. One never tries to play the sneak and get anywhere unseen without running bang up against somebody."