But as I sat there on the bank, under a thick hedge, my bicycle lying at my side, I heard steps coming along the road in the gloom--swift, sure steps, as of a man who walks fast, and puts his feet firmly down as with determination to get somewhere as soon as he may.

And hearing that--and to this day I have often wondered what made me do it--I off with my cap, and laid it over the bicycle-lamp, and myself sat as still as any of the wee creatures that were doubtless lying behind me in the hedge.
The steps came from the direction in which I was bound.

There was a bit of a dip in the road just there: they came steadily, strongly, up it.

And presently--for this was the height of June, when the nights are never really dark--the figure of a man came over the ridge of the dip, and showed itself plain against a piece of grey sky that was framed by the fingers of the pines and firs on either side of the way.

A strongly-built figure it was, and, as I said before, the man put his feet, evidently well shod, firmly and swiftly down, and with this alternate sound came the steady and equally swift tapping of an iron-shod stick.