CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
FIGHTING LONG ODDS.
But the men did not come on, and the two lads, now breathing hard from their exertions, had time to think as well as recover their breath, for the men, after carefully approaching singly from different directions, so as to surround the combatants, now halted as if by one consent a good fifty yards away, each looking upward from time to time at the burly cloaked figure high above them, and now standing upon a big block of stone, making signals by waving his arms and pointing.
In answer to one of these signals, the men all took off the long cloaks they wore; and in a moment the thought flashed through Mark Eden's brain that these men must have been seen seated round their fire, somewhere above, and hence had arisen the rumours of witches on the mountain slope, the cloaks being their long gowns.
And now, as the men stood fast, in spite of several signs from above, Ralph suddenly said: "Perhaps they've only come to see us fight, and are waiting for us to begin again." "Not they," cried Mark excitedly.

"I know: they mean to take us prisoners, and keep us till we're ransomed." "Perhaps.

That is why we have heard of so many robberies," said Ralph, whose hot anger against his enemy was fast cooling down.
"Yes, that's it.

The dogs!" cried Mark.

"I know there's a big cave up there that you go in through a narrow crack.