"Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled."
"And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linch-pin came out? Eh?"
"Anan, sir!" said the post-boy, staring; "why, and indeed so it was!"
"Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray God, pray God that—" The Captain dashed his spurs into the horse's sides, and the rest of his words were lost to me.
A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it, stood the inn,—a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone, looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side throwing over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary,—not a house, not a but near it! If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid, there was no neighborhood to alarm, no refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.
The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below: but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first floor. My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion,—
"Do you know the back way to the premises?"
"No, sir; I does n't often come by this way, and they be new folks that have taken the house,—and I hear it don't prosper over much."
"Knock at the door; we will stand a little aside while you do so. If any one ask what you want, merely say you would speak to the servant,— that you have found a purse. Here, hold up mine."
Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by the door, observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to me idle preliminaries.