For the first time Sir George felt the full horror of uncertainty. He
climbed into his saddle and sat looking across the waste with eyes of
misery, asking himself whither and for what? Whither had they taken her,
and why? The Bristol road once left, his theory was at fault; he had no
clue, and felt, where time was life and more than life, the slough of
horrible conjecture rise to his very lips.
Only one thing, one certain thing remained--the road; the pale ribbon
running southward under the stars. He must cling to that. The chaise had
gone that way, and though the double might be no more than a trick to
throw pursuers off the trail, though the first dark lane, the first
roadside tavern, the first farmhouse among the woods might have
swallowed the unhappy girl and the wretches who held her in their power,
what other clue had he? What other chance but to track the chaise that
way, though every check, every minute of uncertainty, of thought, of
hesitation--and a hundred such there must be in a tithe of the
miles--racked him with fears and dreadful surmises?
There was no other. The wind sweeping across the hill on the western
extremity of which he stood, looking over the lower ground about the
Avon, brought the distant howl of a dog to his ears, and chilled his
blood heated with riding. An owl beating the coverts for mice sailed
overhead; a hare rustled through the fence. The stars above were awake;
in the intense silence of the upland he could almost hear the great
spheres throb as they swept through space! But the human world slept,
and while it slept what work of darkness might not be doing? That
scream, shrill and ear-piercing, that suddenly rent the night--thank
God, it was only a rabbit's death-cry, but it left the sweat on his
brow! After that he could, he would, wait for nothing and no man.
Lanthorn or no lanthorn, he must be moving. He raised his whip, then let
it fall again as his ear caught far away the first faint hoof-beats of a
horse travelling the road at headlong speed.
The sound was very distant at first, but it grew rapidly, and presently
filled the night. It came from the direction of Chippenham. Mr.
Fishwick, who had not dared to interrupt his companion's calculations,
heard the sound with relief; and looking for the first gleam of the
lanthorn, wondered how the servant, riding at that pace, kept it alight,
and whether the man had news that he galloped so furiously. But Sir
George sat arrested in his saddle, listening, listening intently; until
the rider was within a hundred yards or less. Then, as his ear told him
that the horse was slackening, he seized Mr. Fishwick's rein, and
backing their horses nearer the hedge, once more drew a pistol from
his holster.