Animated by his cheering cry, the dogs dashed onward furiously, reached the brink of the rill, and were again at fault. "Ha! he is at his old tricks again;" shouted the leader, who was no other than Hugonet, surnamed the Black, the brother of the murdered bailiff. "But it shall not avail him. We will beat the brook on both banks, up and down, to its source and to its mouth, if it needs, but we will have him. You, Wetherall, follow it northerly to the hills with six spears and three couple of the hounds. I will ride down toward the sea; I fancy that will prove to be the line he has taken. If they hit off the scent, or you catch a view of him, blow me five mots upon your bugle, thus, _sa-sa-wa-la-roa_! and, lo! in good time, here comes Sir Foulke." And thundering up on his huge Norman war-horse, cursing furiously when he perceived that the hounds were at fault, came that formidable baron; for his enormous weight had kept him far in the rear of his lighter-armed, and less ponderous vassals. His presence stimulated them to fresh exertions, but all exertions were in vain. Evening fell on the wide purple moorlands, and they had found no track of him they sought. Wetherall, after making a long sweep around the cove and the waterfall, and tracing back the rill to its source, in a mossy cairn among the hills, at some five miles' distance, descended it again and rejoined the party, with the positive assurance that the serf had not gone in that direction, for that the hounds had beaten both banks the whole way to the spring-head, and that he had not come out on either side, or their keen scent would have detected him. Meantime, the other party had pursued the windings of the stream downward, with the rest of the pack, for more than ten miles, at full gallop, until they were convinced that had he gone in that direction, they must long ere this have overtaken him. They were already returning, when they were met by Wetherall, the bearer of no more favorable tidings. Sorely perplexed how their victim should have thus vanished from them, in the midst of a bare open moor, as if he had been swallowed up by the earth, _aut tenues evasit in auras_, and half suspecting witchcraft, or magic agency, they lighted fires, and encamped on the spot where they had lost his track, intending to resume the research on the morrow, and, at last, if the latest effort should fail of recovering the scent, to scatter over the moors, in small parties or troops, and beat them toward the Lancaster sands, by which they were well-assured, he meditated his escape. In the interval, the band of outlaws quickening their pace as they heard the cry of the bloodhounds freshening behind them, arrived at the basin, into which fell the scattered rain of the mimic cataract, taking especial care to set no foot on the moss or sand, by the brink, which should betray them to the instinct of the ravening hounds.