Then the voices came nearer, and there was a mingled sound as of men shouting to one another, and gathering in from different places.

'Twas from the cliff-top that the voices came, and thither Elzevir and I looked up, and there too Maskew kept his eyes fixed.

And in a moment there were a score of men stood on the cliff's edge high above our heads.

The sky behind them was pink flushed with the keenest light of the young day, and they stood out against it sharp cut and black as the silhouette of my mother that used to hang up by the parlour chimney.

They were soldiers, and I knew the tall mitre-caps of the 13th, and saw the shafts of light from the sunrise come flashing round their bodies, and glance off the barrels of their matchlocks.
I knew it all now; it was the Posse who had lain in ambush.