One morning she came running into the hut, breathless, to say that a
lieutenant and three troopers were riding towards the hut. Jack had
just time to saddle and mount his horse before the police caught sight
of him, and started after him at full speed.
They hunted him into a narrow glen; a single cattletrack, not a foot
broad, led on between a swollen rocky creek, utterly impassable by
horse or man, and a lofty precipice of loose broken slate, on which one
would have thought a goat could not have found a footing. The young
police lieutenant had done his work well, and sent a trooper round to
head him, so that Jack found himself between the devil and the deep
sea. A tall armed trooper stood in front of him, behind was the
lieutenant, on the right of the creek, and on the left the precipice.
They called out to him to surrender; but, giving one look before and
behind, and seeing escape was hopeless, he hesitated not a moment, but
put his horse at the cliff, and clambered up, rolling down tons of
loose slate in his course. The lieutenant shut his eyes, expecting to
see horse and man roll down into the creek, and only opened them in
time to see Jack stand for a moment on the summit against the sky, and
then disappear.
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