"Yes, I noticed you managed them very well, sir," said Stafford. "What a lovely night." They had reached a gate opening on to the road, and they stood and looked at the view in silence for a moment, listening to a nightingale, whose clear notes joined with the voices and laughter of the guests.
Suddenly another sound came upon the night air; a clatter of horses' hoofs and the rattle of wheels.
"Someone driving down the road," said Sir Stephen.
"And coming at a deuce of a pace!" said Stafford. He opened the gate and looked up the road; then he uttered an ejaculation.
"By George! they've bolted!" he said, in his quiet way.
"What?" asked Sir Stephen, as he, too, came out. The carriage was tearing down the hill towards them in the moonlight, and Stafford saw that the horses were rushing along with lowered heads and that the driver had lost all control of them.
As they came towards the two men, Stafford set off running towards them. Sir Stephen called him; Stafford took no heed, and as the horses came up to him he sprang at the head of the nearer one. There was a scramble, a scuffing of hoofs, and a loud, shrill shriek from the interior of the carriage; then the horses were forced on to their haunches, and Stafford scrambled to his feet from the road into which he had been hustled.
The driver jumped down and ran to the horses' heads, the carriage door was flung open and the gentleman of the inn leapt out. Leapt out almost on to Sir Stephen, who ran up breathless with apprehension on Stafford's account. The two men stood and looked at each other in the moonlight, at first with a confused and bewildered gaze, then Sir Stephen started back with a cry, a strange cry, which brought Stafford to his side.
At the same moment, the girl he had seen in the sitting-room at the inn, slipped out of the carriage.
"Are we safe?" she asked faintly. "How did we stop? Who—"