At a distance of six miles the boys
could see a dark mass rapidly retreating, and numerous single
specks could be seen hovering round them. Two miles from the house
a single horseman was galloping wildly. The girls had already made
him out to be Lopez.
The boys and Terence stood speechless with dismay. The Irishman was
the first to find his tongue,
"Och, the thundering villains!" he exclaimed; "the heathen thieves!
And to think that not one of us was there to give them a bating."
"What will papa say?" Hubert ejaculated.
Charley said nothing, but looked frowningly, with tightly closed
lips, after the distant mass, while his hands closed upon his
carbine. "How was it, Maud?" he asked at length.
"I was downstairs," Maud said, "when Ethel, who had just gone up,
called down, 'Come up, Maud, quickly; I think that something's the
matter.' I ran up the steps, and I saw our animals a long way off,
nearly four miles, and I saw a black mass of something going along
fast toward them from the left. They were rather nearer to us than
the cattle were, and were in one of the slopes of the ground, so
that they would not have been seen by any one with the cattle;
then, as they got quite near the animals, I saw a sudden stir. The
beasts began to gallop away, and three black specks--who, I
suppose, were the men--separated themselves from them and went off
sideways.
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