Another hour went by in absolute silence. Ffoulkes and Blakeney took turns at the horse’s head. Then at last they reached the cross-roads; even through the darkness the sign-post showed white against the surrounding gloom.
“This looks like it,” murmured Sir Andrew. He turned the horse’s head sharply towards the left, down a narrower road, and leaving the sign-post behind him. He walked slowly along for another quarter of an hour, then Blakeney called a halt.
“The spinney must be sharp on our right now,” he said.
He got down from the cart, and while Ffoulkes remained beside the horse, he plunged into the gloom. A moment later the cry of the seamew rang out three times into the air. It was answered almost immediately.
The spinney lay on the right of the road. Soon the soft sounds that to a trained ear invariably betray the presence of a number of horses reached Ffoulkes’ straining senses. He took his old nag out of the shafts, and the shabby harness from off her, then he turned her out on the piece of waste land that faced the spinney. Some one would find her in the morning, her and the cart with the shabby harness laid in it, and, having wondered if all these things had perchance dropped down from heaven, would quietly appropriate them, and mayhap thank much-maligned heaven for its gift.
Blakeney in the meanwhile had lifted the sleeping child out of the cart. Then he called to Sir Andrew and led the way across the road and into the spinney.
Five minutes later Hastings received the uncrowned King of France in his arms.
Unlike Ffoulkes, my Lord Tony wanted to hear all about the adventure of this afternoon. A thorough sportsman, he loved a good story of hairbreadth escapes, of dangers cleverly avoided, risks taken and conquered.
“Just in ten words, Blakeney,” he urged entreatingly; “how did you actually get the boy away?”
Sir Percy laughed—despite himself—at the young man’s eagerness.