some great gentleman's estate. A yard or two from the wall ran
parallel to it a linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a
kind of cloister along the side of the road. It was under this
branching colonnade that the two fugitives fled, almost concealed
from their pursuers by the twilight, the mist and the leaping
zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating the ground
furiously, made but a faint noise; for they had kicked away their
boots in the wood; their long, antiquated weapons made no jingle
or clatter, for they had strapped them across their backs like
guitars. They had all the advantages that invisibility and
silence can add to speed.

A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the
empty road the first of their pursuers came pounding and
panting--a fat but powerful policeman who had distanced all the
rest. He came on at a splendid pace for so portly a figure; but,
like all heavy bodies in motion, he gave the impression that it
would be easier for him to increase his pace than to slacken it
suddenly. Nothing short of a brick wall could have abruptly
brought him up. Turnbull turned his head slightly and found
breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.

Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled,
for some quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two
or three of the trees grew twistedly together, making a special
obscurity. Past this place the pursuing policeman went thundering
without thought or hesitation. But he was pursuing his shadow or
the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a crack of the tree
and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat more
laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander