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"You will do better still when you do lay hands on him," said I,
wresting my eyes from the yellow dead face of the foreign scoundrel.
The moon shone full upon his high forehead, his shrivelled lips,
dank in their death agony, and on the bauble with the sacred device
that he wore always in his tie. I recovered my property from the
shrunken fingers, and so turned away with a harder heart than I ever
had before or since for any creature of Almighty God.
Harris had expired in our absence.
"Never spoke, sir," said the constable in whose arms we had left
him.
"More's the pity. Well, cut out at the back and help land the
young gent, or we'll have him giving us the slip too. He may
double back, but I'm watching out for that. Which way should you
say he'd head, Mr. Cole?"
"Inland," said I, lying on the spur of the moment, I knew not why.
"Try at the cottage where I've been staying."
"We have a man posted there already. That woman is one of the
gang, and we've got her safe. But I'll take your advice, and have
that side scoured whilst I hang about the place."
And he walked through the house, and out the back way, at the
officer's heels; meanwhile the man with the wounded arm was swaying
where he sat from loss of blood, and I had to help him into the
open air before at last I was free to return to poor Eva in her
place of loathsome safety.
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