Finally the window pulled open and he unhooked the shutters to push them out. As he pulled himself up so that he filled the frame it struck him, with a kind of gripping horror that for a second almost paralysed him, that there might be more than one shooter out there. That any moment a man lying in wait to cover the north side of the house would gently squeeze a trigger and snuff him out with a single simple shot. He almost felt it. But it did not come, and he jumped down into the cold and was almost buried in the snow that had drifted against the wall.

For several seconds he floundered in it before staggering clear of its burning cold and sprinting towards the fence that bounded the house. He felt the friction of icy air on his skin and was aware of fragments of snow flying from his coat as he ran, like sparks in the night. Most of all he felt the crushing vulnerability of being out in the open.

The dizziness he had shaken off a few moments earlier was returning. He was over the fence now and running across the field as fast as the foot-and-a-half of snow would allow. All the time he was waiting for the bullet in his back. Surely he would fall into the sights of his assailant at any time. He glanced back. He had covered several hundred metres and there was no sign of movement behind him. Ahead, maybe a kilometre or more distant, lay the dark belt of trees he had seen earlier in the day. At least they would provide some kind of cover. And beyond the trees, he knew, there was a village. He had seen the spire.

But already his strength was waning. The dizziness was intensifying. Perhaps from the gas he had inhaled. Was the snow getting deeper, or was it just that he found it harder to drag his feet through it? He was no longer cold, but burning hot, his face wet and glistening with sweat. And still he pushed on as hard as he could. He might have been running for ever. His lungs and throat on fire, tears streaming from his eyes.

A drystone wall, three or four feet high, divided the fields ahead of him. Beyond that lay another three hundred metres before he would reach the comparative safety of the trees. The thought was fatal. He slowed to a stagger. About a metre in front of him, fractionally to his right, the red spot appeared as if by magic and began searching the ground. It was strangely elongated. A small plume of snow lifted up from the rest. The sound of the gun followed a fraction of a second after. The red spot zigzagged ahead of him and the second bullet struck the stone of the wall, throwing off splinters in the moonlight. Again the now familiar crack of the rifle.