A moment later he had swarmed over the wall and dropped to the other side just as a shot rang out behind.  The bullet struck the wall, chipped fragments of stone flew all over him.  But he was not hurt, and he ran as he had, never known he could run, keeping to the side of the road, where he was in a heavy shadow.

As soon as he could, he burst through a hedge on the side of the road opposite the wall, and ran on, sheltered by the hedge until, to his delight, he plunged headfirst into a stream of water.  The fall knocked him out for a moment, but the cold water revived him and he did not mind the scraped knee and the hurt knuckles he owed to the sharp stones in the bed of the little brook.  He changed his course at once, following the brook, since in that no telltale footprints would be left.

Behind him he heard the sound of pursuit for a little while, but he judged that the brook would save him.  He could not be pursued very far.  Even in this sleepy countryside he would find it easy to get help, and the Germans, as he was now sure they were, would have to give up the chase.  All that had been essential had been for him to get a few hundred feet from the park, after that he was safe.

But, if he was safe, he was hopelessly lost.  At least he would have been, had he been an ordinary boy, without the scout training.  He was in unknown country and he had been chased away from all the landmarks he had.  It was of the utmost importance that he should reach as soon as possible, and, especially, without passing too near Bray Park, the spot where the motorcycles and the papers and codes had been cached.  And, when he finally came to a full stop, satisfied that he no longer had anything to fear from pursuit, he was completely in the dark as to where he was.

However, his training asserted itself.  Although Harry had been in charge, Dick had not failed to notice everything about the place where they made their cache that would help to identify it.  That was instinct with him by this time, after two years as a scout; it was second nature.  And, though it had been light, he had pictured pretty accurately what the place would look like at night.  He remembered for instance, that certain stars would be sure to fill the sky in a particular relation to the cache.  And now he looked up and worked out his own position.  To do that he had to reconstruct, with the utmost care, his movements since he had left the cache to the moment when he and Harry had entered Bray Park.

But the chase had confused him, naturally.  He had doubled on his track more than once, trying to throw his pursuers off.  But by remembering accurately the position of Bray Park in its relation to the cache, and by concentrating as earnestly as he could to remember as much as possible of the course of his flight, he arrived presently at a decision of how he must proceed to retrieve the motorcycles and the papers.