Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

164                                    KIDNAPPED.
then he dipped behind a shoulder, and I saw him no
more.
All this time I had been running on my side, and
had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to
stand.
I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now,
when I halted and looked back, I saw all the open part
of the hill below me.
The lawyer and the sheriff's officer were standing
just above the road, crying and waving on me to come
back ; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand,
were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower
wood.
"Why should I come back?" I cried. "Come you
on!"
"Ten pounds if ye take that lad!" cried the lawyer.
"He's an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in
talk."
At that word (which I could hear quite plainly,
though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was
crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new
kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the
danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of
both life and character. The thing, besides, had come so
suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that I was all
amazed and helpless.
The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run,
and others to put up their pieces and cover me ; and still
I stood.