He looked about him in the dolefullest way.
“If I knew!” he sighed. “We must e’en seek the shelter of an inn till this storm is by, and then return home. Better any bankruptcy than that of honour, Joan.”
They remounted and jogged on in the rain, which by now was falling heavily. The tired little horse, feeling the weight of his own soaked head, began to hang it and cough. Presently they dismounted at a wayside byre, and, eating the simple luncheon which their providence had provided, dwelt on a little in hopes of the weather clearing. But it grew steadily worse.
“I have lost my bearings,” said the clergyman in a sudden amazement. “We must push on.”
About four o’clock, being seven miles or so short of Winchester, they came down upon a little stream which bubbled across the road. The groaning horse splashed into it and stood still. Dr. Winthrop, wakened by the pause from a brown reverie, whipped his right leg over the beast’s withers, landed, slipped on a stone, and sat down in two feet of water. Uttering a startled ejaculation, he scrambled up, a sop to the very waist of his homespun breeches. Their points—old disused laces, fragrant from Joan’s bodice—clung weeping to his calves. He waded out, cherishing above water-mark the sodden skirts of his coat, his best, of ‘Colchester bayze.’ The horse, sensibly lightened, followed.
“O, O!” cried Joan. “Wasn’t you sopped enough already, but you must fill your pockets with water?”
“Joan!” he cried disconcerted. “I am drowned!”
Luckily, in that pass, looking up the slope of the hill, they espied near the top a toll-booth, and, beyond, the first houses of a village. Making a little glad haste, they were soon at the bar.
The woman who came to take their money looked hard at the tired girl. She was of a sober cast, and her close-fitting coif showed her of the non-conforming order.
“For Winchester, master?” said she.