Gervaise moved from the porch, the others followed. They would not pass through the town; they took a steep street which led them first down to the river, and then, as steeply mounting, up to the castle wood. They went in silence, with a rapid step, and came without mishap under the shadow of the summer trees. Here was a wall which they climbed, dropping from its top into fern and brush. Joan knew the path that they took, a skirting path, walled with bracken, arched over by oak boughs. They heard wild things moving, but no human tongue questioned them. It was cool and dim, and because the moon was riding high and they must make all haste, they ran along this path which stretched a mile and more. Gervaise was light and spare as a jester; the wry-mouthed, surly, one-time soldier strong enough, though somewhat rusty in the joints; Aderhold was a thinker who lived much out of doors, a leech who walked to his patients, and where there was need walked fast; Joan, a woman of Arcady, with a step as light as a panther’s. These two had behind them prison inaction and weakening, prison fare, anxiety, despair, strain, and torment. They were not in health and strength as they had been. But instinct furnished a mighty spur; if they must run to live, they would run! They ran in the scented darkness, the bracken brushing their arms, the moon sending against them, between the oak boughs, a silver flight of hurtless arrows. The mile was overpast, the path widened into a moonlit vale, the vale swept downward to a fringing cliff, by day not formidable, but difficult in this gliding, watery light. The four, with some risk of broken limbs, swung themselves down by jutting root and stone, dropped at last a sheer twelve feet, and found themselves clear of the wood and the castle heights, clear of the town, out upon the grassy edge of the London road. It stretched before them, gleaming, bare, silent as to the feet which even now might be coming after them, silent as to whether or no they would outstrip those feet, silent as to the ends that it would serve. They lay for a minute upon the bank, breathing hard, regathering force. An owl hooted, _Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!_ They rose from the wayside growth and took the road. It ran so hard and gleaming—it might be a friend, it might be an enemy! Over them soared the night, far off they saw sleeping houses. The air was astir, the shadows of the trees dancing on the road. They measured a mile, two miles. The road climbed somewhat; before them, in the flooding moonlight, they saw a gibbet with its arm and down-hanging chains. “I know this place,” said Aderhold. The wry-mouthed man wagged his head. “Creak, creak! Once I saw fifty such in a lane, and the air was black with birds! This one’s stood clean for a year.” It was like a letter against the sky. Joan stared at it. Her lips parted. “I would cut it down and set fire to it, and warm some beggar and her child.”