"Lend me a whip!"
He offered me an oak cudgel.
"Phœbe has passed her climacteric, and her perceptions are dull," he said; and then with a sudden change of manner he laid his hand on my shoulder. "'Twere best not to go," he declared earnestly. "Those who bring luck to others seldom find great store of it themselves."
But in the sweet clearness of the morning such thoughts seemed to me no more than night vapours, and I sprang down the steps with a laugh. The mare shivered as I mounted, and swung her head around as though she would ask me what in the devil's name I was doing on her back. But I thwacked her flanks with the cudgel, and she ambled heavily through the square. I turned to look behind me. Elmscott was still standing on the steps.
"Morrice," he called out, "be kind to her! She is an heirloom."
CHAPTER III.
[TELLS HOW I REACH BRISTOL, AND IN WHAT STRANGE GUISE I GO TO MEET MY FRIEND.]
At length, then, I was fairly started on my way to Bristol. For my direction over this first stage of my journey I had made inquiries of Elmscott, and I rode westwards towards the village of Knightsbridge, thanking Providence most heartily for that the city still slept. For what with my disordered dress, my oak cudgel, and the weedy screw which I bestrode--I scruple to dignify her with the name of mare, for I have owned mares since which I loved, and would not willingly affront them--I could not hope to pass unnoticed were any one abroad, and, indeed, should esteem myself well-used to be counted no worse than a mountebank. Thus I crossed Hounslow Heath and reached Brentford without misadventure. There I joyfully parted with my Rosinante, and hiring a horse, rode post. The way, however, was ill-suited for speedy travelling, and my hope of seeing Julian that night dwindled with my shadow as the sun rose higher and higher behind my shoulders. Ruts deep and broad as new furrows trenched the road, and here and there some slough would make a wide miry gap, wherein my horse sank over the fetlocks. Some blame, moreover, must attach to me, for I chose a false turn at the hamlet of Colnbrook, and journeyed ten miles clean from my path to Datchet; so that in the end night found me blundering on the edge of Wickham Heath, some sixty-one miles from London. I had changed horses at Newbury, and I determined to press on at least so far as Hungerford. But I had not counted with myself. I was indeed overwrought with want of sleep, and the last few stages I had ridden with dulled senses in a lethargy of fatigue. At what point exactly I wandered from the road I could not tell. But the darkness had closed in before I began to notice a welcome ease and restfulness in the motion of the gallop. I was wondering idly at the change, when of a sudden my horse pops his foot into a hole. The reins were hanging loose on his neck; I myself was rocking in the saddle, so that I shot clean over his shoulder, turned a somersault in mid-air, and came down flat on my back in the centre of the Heath. For a while I lay there without an effort or desire to move. I felt as if Mother Earth had taken pity on my weariness, and had thus unceremoniously put me to bed. The trample of hoofs, however, somewhat too close to my legs, roused me to wakefulness, and I started up and prepared to remount. To my dismay I found that my horse was badly lamed; he could barely set his foreleg to the ground. The accident was the climax of my misfortunes. I looked eagerly about me. The night was moonless, but very clear and soft with the light of the stars. I could see the common stretching away on every side empty and desolate; here a cluster of trees, there a patch of bushes, but never a house, never the kindly twinkle of a lamp, never a sign of a living thing. What it behoved me to do, I could not come at, think as hard as I might. But whatever that might have been, what I did, alas! was far different. For I plumped myself down on the grass and cried like a child. It seemed to me that God's hand was indeed turned against my friend and his deliverance.
But somehow into the midst of my lament there slipped a remembrance of Jack Larke. On the instant his face took shape and life before me, shining out as it were from a frame of darkness. I saw an honest scorn kindle in his eyes, and his lips shot "woman" at me. The visionary picture of him braced me like the cut of a whip. At all events, I thought, I would make a pretence of manhood, and I ceased from my blubbering, and laying hold of the horse by the bridle, led him forward over the Heath.
I kept a sharp watch about me as I walked, but it must have been a full two hours afterwards when I caught a glimpse of a light far away on my left hand, glimmering in a little thicket upon a swell of the turf. At first I was minded to reckon it a star, for the Heath at that point was ridged up against the sky. But it shone with a beam too warm and homely to match the silver radiance of the planets. I turned joyfully in its direction, and quickening my pace, came at length to the back of a house. The light shone from a window on the ground floor facing me. I looked into it over a little paling, and saw that it was furnished as a kitchen. Plates and pewter-pots gleamed orderly upon the shelves, and a row of noble hams hung from the rafters.