The men were Saxons, outlaws, fugitives from the Norman tyranny, and several of them, like himself, serfs escaped from the cruelty of their masters. One of them had joined the party so recently, that, like Eadwulf, he yet wore the brazen collar about his neck, the badge of servitude and easy means of detection, of which he had not yet found the means to rid himself. A few words sufficed to describe his piteous flight, and to win the sympathy and a promise of protection from the outlaws; but when the bloodhounds were named, and their probably close proximity, they declared with one voice that there was not a moment to be lost, and that they could shelter him without a possibility of danger. Without farther words, one by one they entered the brook, scattering into it as if they were about to pass down it to the southward, but the moment their feet were in the water, turning upward and ascending the gorge, which grew wilder and steeper as they proceeded, until, at a mile's distance, they came to a great circular cove of rocks, walled in by crags of three hundred feet in height, with the little stream plunging down it, at the upward extremity, small in volume, but sprinkling the staircase of rocks, down which it foamed, with incessant sheets of spray. Scarcely had they turned the projecting shoulder of rock which guarded the entrance of this stern circle, before the distant bay of the bloodhounds came heavily down the air; and, at the same instant, the armed party galloped over the brow of the bare moor which Eadwulf had passed so recently, cheering the fierce dogs to fresh exertions, and expecting, so hotly did their sagacious guides press upon the recent trail, to see the fugitive fairly before them. Much to their wonder, however, though the country lay before their eyes perfectly open, in a long stretch of five or six miles, without a bush, a brake, or apparently a hollow which could conceal a man if he were in motion, he was not to be discovered within the limits of the horizon. "By St. Paul!" exclaimed the foremost rider; shading his eyes with his hand, to screen them from the rays of the level sun, "he can not have gained so much on us as to have got already beyond the range of eyeshot. He must have laid up in the heather. At all events, we are sure of him. Forward! forward! Halloo! hark, forward!"