Then their deep clamor ceased at once, where he had turned on his back track, and he knew they were at fault, and perceived that the men, by their vociferations and bugle-notes, were casting them to and fro in all directions, to recover his scent. Still he swam rapidly onward, and had interposed nearly another mile between himself and his pursuers, when he heard, by their shouts coming down either bank, that they had divined the stratagem to which he had had recourse, and were trailing him down the margins, secure of striking his track again, wherever he should leave the river. He was again becoming very anxious, when a singular accident gave him another chance of safety. A wood-pigeon, flapping its wings violently as it took flight, attracted his attention to the tree from which it took wing. It was a huge oak, overhanging the stream, into which one of its branches actually dipped, sound and entire below, but with a large hollow at about twenty feet from the ground, which, as he easily divined, extended downward to the level of the soil. No sooner seen, than he had seized the pendulous branch, swung himself up by it, through a prodigious exertion, and, springing with mad haste from bough to bough, reached the opening in the decayed trunk. It was a grim, dark abyss, and, should he enter it, he saw not how he should ever make his exit. But a nearer shout, and the sounds of galloping horsemen, decided him. He entered it foot-foremost, hung by his hands for a moment to the orifice, in hesitation, and then, relaxing his hold, dropped sheer down through the rotten wood, and spiders'-webs, and unhealthy funguses, to the bottom of the tunnel-shaped hollow. Aroused from their diurnal dreams by the crash of his descent, two great brown-owls rushed out of the summit of the tree, and swooped down over the heads of the men-at-arms, who just at the instant passed under the branches, jingling in their panoply, and effectually prevented any suspicion from attaching to the hiding-place. For the moment he was safe; and there he stood, in almost total darkness, shivering with wet and cold, amid noisome smells and damp exhalations, listening to the shouts of his enemies, as they rode to and fro, until they were lost in the distance. CHAPTER XVII. THE PURSUIT. "Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said he, Under the leaves of lyne. Nay, by my faith, quoth bold Robin, Till thou have told mo thine." ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE.