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was still in sight ahead among the bushes, and by great good fortune he succeeded in keeping it in sight. Once, indeed, when he thought that he had lost it for good and all, it suddenly reappeared ahead of him; and he was able to take up the chase again. But he did not catch her. Indeed he did not lessen the distance between them to an extent appreciable by the naked eye. For a delicate princess she was running with uncommon speed and endurance. Considering his dress and boots and the roughness of the going, he, too, was running with uncommon speed and endurance. It was true that his face was a very bright red and that his so lately stiff, tall, white collar lay limply gray round his neck. But he was not near enough to his quarry to be morti-
fied by seeing that she was but faintly flushed by her efforts and hardly perspiring at all. All the while he was buoyed up by the assurance that he would catch her in the course of the next hundred yards.

Then his quarry left the wood, by an exceedingly small gap, and ran down a field path toward the village of Little Deeping. By the time the count was through the gap she had a lead of a hundred