"My lady! my lady!" screamed Betty once more at the top of her voice.
Then, all of a sudden, Patience understood. Fairyland had indeed vanished. The awful reality came upon her with appalling cruelty.
"My letters!" she gasped, and started running towards the coach.
But already Jack Bathurst had bounded across the clearing, closely followed by John Stich. Patience's cry of mad, terror-stricken appeal had gone straight to his brain, and dissipated in the fraction of a second the reckless excitement of the past hour.
The wild creature of one moment's wayward mood was in that same fraction of time re-transformed into the cool and daring dweller of the Moor, on whose head the law had set a price, and who in revenge had made every law his slave.
His keen, quick eye had already sighted the smith.
"After me, John!" he commanded, "and run for your life."
When the two men had fought their way through the clumps of gorse and bracken which screened the clearing from the road, they were just in time to see a man quickly mounting a dark brown horse, which stood some twenty yards in front of the coach.
The carriage door nearest to them was open, and poor Mistress Betty lay on the ground close beside it, still screaming at the top of her voice.
With one bound Beau Brocade had reached Jack o' Lantern, who, accustomed to his unfettered life on the Heath, had quietly roamed about at will, patiently waiting for his master's call. The young man was unarmed, since he had placed his pistols awhile ago at Patience's feet, but Jack o' Lantern was swift-footed as the deer, and would overtake any strange horseman easily.