Haxo and his forces were not in a condition to follow too closely after the three. The chance medley for which they had pined was come, and that without their seeking. The rascals had gone out to do one part of their master's will. The shipping of a lass over-seas was no doubt a pretty piece of work enough, and would be well paid for; but the slaying of Wat Gordon and Jack Scarlett, their ancient adversaries of the Hostel of the Coronation, was a job ten times more to the fit of their stomachs.

Thus it was with Haxo and his immediate followers.

But the fatigues of the evening and the good liquor of Lis-op-Zee had rendered most of the chief butcher's men somewhat loath to leave their various haunts and hiding-places. Moreover, their horses were stabled here and there throughout the village, so that Wat and his companions had a good start of a quarter of an hour ere Haxo, furious and foaming with anger at the delay, and burning with the desire for revenge, could finally start in pursuit with his entire company.

It was now a dewy morning, a morning without clouds, and the sparse, benty grass on the sand-hills was still spangled with diamond points innumerable. The sun rose over the woods through which they had passed, and its level, heatless rays beat upon the crescent over-curl of the sand-waves as on the foam of a breaker when it bends to the fall. "See you any stronghold where we may keep ourselves against these rascals, if they manage to attack us?" cried Wat, from the hollow up to Scarlett, who had the higher ground.

"Pshaw!" he returned, "what need to speak of escape? They will follow the track of the horses as easily as a road with finger-posts. Find us they will. Better that we should betake us to some knowe-top, where, at least, we can keep a defence. But I see not even a rickle of stones, where we might have some chance to stand it out till the nightfall."

By the advice of Scarlett they dismounted from their horses, and taking their weapons they left their weary beasts tethered to a blighted stump of a tree which the sands had surrounded and killed. Here the animals were to some extent concealed by the nature of the ground, unless the pursuers should approach very near or ascend the summits of the highest ridges in the neighborhood.

The young girl had all along betrayed no anxiety, nor showed so much as a trace of emotion or fatigue.

"It was in such a country as this I dwelt in my youth," she said, quietly, "and I understand the ways of the dunes."

So without question on their part she led them forward carefully and swiftly on foot, keeping ever to that part of the ridge where the benty grass had bound the sands most closely together. Now they ascended so as to take the loose sandy pass between two ridges. Again they descended into the cool bottoms where the sun had not yet penetrated, and where a bite of chill air still lingered in the shadows, while the dew lay thick on the coarse herbage and slaked the surface of the sand.

The sun had fully risen when, still led by the girl, they issued out upon the outermost sea edge, and heard the waves crisping and chattering on a curving beach of pebble. The ruins of an ancient watch-tower crowned a neighboring hillock. Doubtless it had been a redoubt or petty fortalice against the Spaniards, built in the old days of the Beggars. It was now almost ruinous, and at one point the wall threatened momentarily to give way. For the wind had undermined the shifting foundations, and part of the masonry seemed actually to overhang the narrow defile of sand and coarse grass through which the little party passed.

"Think ye that tower anywise defensible?" asked Marie, pointing up at it with her finger.

Without answering at once, Scarlett climbed up to the foot of the wall and, skirting it to the broken-down gateway, he entered.

"It will make about as notable a defence as half a dozen able-bodied pioneers might throw up in an hour with their spades. But we are too like the Beggars who built it to be very nice in our choosing," said Scarlett, smiling grimly down upon his two companions from the decaying rampart.

Walter scrambled up beside him, and the Little Marie, lithe as a cat, was over the crumbling wall as soon as any of them. They found the place wholly empty, save that in one corner there was a rudely vaulted herdsman's shelter, wherein, by moving a door of driftwood, they could see sundry shovels and other instruments of rustic toil set in the angle of the wall.

"I see not much chance of holding out here," said Wat. "They can storm the wall at half a dozen points."

"True," said Scarlett, "most true—yet for all that, here at least we cannot be shot at from a distance as we sit helpless on the sand, like rabbits that come hotching out of a wood at even-tide to feed on the green. We are not overlooked. We have a spring of water—which is not an over-common thing on these dunes and so near the sea. I tell you the Beggars knew what they were about when they planted their watch-tower down in such a spot."

In this manner Scarlett, the grumbler of the night, heartened his companions as soon as ever it came nigh the grips of fighting.

Then the men took out the shovels and the other tools, and set about putting the defences in some order, replacing the stones which had fallen down, and clearing out little embrasures, where one might lie tentily with a musket and take aim from shelter. While Wat and Scarlett were busy with these works of fortification, the Little Marie ran down into the dells again, looking wonderously feat and dainty in her boy's costume.

Scarlett, the old soldier, glanced more than once approvingly after her.

"'Tis just as well that the lady-love has not yet been found—or I should not envy you the explanation you would assuredly be called upon to make," said he, smiling over to Wat as he built and strengthened his defences.

Instinctively Wat squared himself, as though his mattock had been a sword and he saluting his general.

"Ye ken me little, John Scarlett," he replied, "if you know not that I would not touch the lass for harm with so much as the tip of my little finger."

"Doubtless, doubtless," said Scarlett, dryly, "yet it would astonish me mightily if even that would satisfy your Mistress Kate of the Lashes—aye, or in troth if such extreme continence greatly pleasures the lass herself!"

To this Wat disdained any answer, but went on piling the sand and setting the square stones in order.

Presently the Little Marie came running very fast along the bottom of the dells, which hereabouts wimpled mazily in and out with nooks and cunning passages everywhere, so that they constituted the excellentest places in the world for playing hide-and-seek. Taking both her hands, which she stretched up to him, Wat pulled the girl lightly over the new defences, and when she was a little recovered from her race, she told them that the enemy could be seen scouting by twos and threes along the edge of the forest, and even venturing a little way towards them into the sandy waste of the dunes. But they had not as yet found the horses, nor begun to explore the sandy hollows where an ambush might lie hidden behind every ridge.

"It is Haxo the Bull who leads them," she said, "for the others are none so keen on the work. But he goes among them vaunting and prating of the brave rewards which his master will give, and how the State also will pay largely for the capture of the traitor and prison-breaker."

"How near by did you see him?" asked Wat.

"He was within twenty paces of me as I lay behind a bush of broom," she said, "and had it not been for the men who were with him, and the fear that they might have marked me down as I ran, I had given him as good as I gave his master."

And with the utmost calmness the Little Marie unslung the dags or horse-pistols from her side, and took out the long keen dagger with which she had wounded Barra as he mounted at his own door to ride after his prisoner.

So, perched on this shadeless shelter they waited hour after hour, while the sun beat pitilessly down on them. The heat grew sullenly oppressive. A dizzy, glimmering haze quivered over the sand-hills, and made it difficult to see clearly more than a few hundred yards in any direction.

Wat and Scarlett desired the girl to rest a while under the shadow of the rude hut in the corner.

"But then I could not watch for the coming of your enemies, my captain," she said, as if that settled the matter.

And when Wat repeated his request, Marie looked so unhappy that they had perforce to allow her to stand on guard equally with themselves.

And indeed, as it proved, it was the Little Marie whose sharp eyes first saw their opponents tracking stealthily along the sandy bottoms between them and the forest. The pursuers seemed to be ten or twelve in number, and they came scouting cautiously here and there through the hollows, running briskly to the tops of the higher dunes, and looking eagerly all about them for the footprints of men or horses in the looser sand.

Before Scarlett or Wat could stop her—indeed, before either of them so much as suspected her intention, the Little Marie had climbed over the wall on the side farthest from the enemy but nearest to the sea. In a moment she had run deftly down among the ruts and hiding-places of the dells. With wonderful skill she threaded her way towards the approaching miscreants, without letting them catch a single glimpse of her. Indeed, even from their watch-tower on the top of the dune, it was as much as Wat and Scarlett could do to keep her in sight through the wavering glimmer of the heated air.

Presently, as they lay behind their defences, each in his own rude shelter, Wat and Scarlett could see her crouch low in a little cuplike depression upon the height of a dune overlooking the track by which the enemy must come. The girl lay motionless, with her body flat to the ground, like a cat which makes ready for the pounce; and they could see the sun of the afternoon wink on the steel barrels of her pistols as on dewy holly leaves.

Soon the vanguard of Haxo's little army came scouting and scenting along. The men kept signalling and crying, keeping touch with one another and making believe to search the wilderness of sand and bent with marvellous exactitude and care.

The foremost of them had just passed the hillock on the top of which Marie lay when "Crack! crack!" a couple of pistol-shots rang out loudly on the slumberous air. One man pitched heavily forward on his face, while another and younger man spun round like a rabbit, bent himself double, clawed convulsively at the sand, and then slowly collapsed across the path.

The scattered trackers here and there about the mounds and hollows stood rooted to the ground with vague alarm at the sight. Some of them, indeed, put their heads down and ran up the hill of sand from which the shots had come. But when they reached the summit all they saw was the reek of burned powder lazily dispersing in the hot haze of the afternoon, while upon the dune's extremest edge were the marks of a pair of elbows in the sand, where Marie had reclined as she took aim.

But of their dangerous assailant they found no further trace. For immediately upon firing Marie had snatched her pistols and descended into the winding lane of sand at the back of the dune. Then, being perfectly acquainted with her line of communication, and mindful ever to keep upon the shady side, she glided from shelter to shelter with the silence and skill of one bred to such guerilla warfare.

Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, and still more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened once might very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers, they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing a high dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance by this pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could be certain that no enemy lurked.