“Who? Where? Did you see him?”
“Ay, and heerd him and all. I was ferreting rabbits by the side of the turnpike-road yonder, and a carriage came tearing along, and Sir Charles put out his head and cried to me,' Drake, they are kidnapping me. Shoot!' But they pulled him back out of sight.”
“Oh, my poor husband! And did you let them? Oh!”
“Couldn't catch 'em, my lady: so I did as I was bid; got to my gun as quick as ever I could, and gave the coachman both barrels hot.”
“What, kill him?”
“Lord, no; 'twas sixty yards off; but made him holler and squeak a good un. Put thirty or forty shots into his back, I know.”
“Give me your hand, Mr. Drake. I'll never forget that shot.” Then she began to cry.
“Doant ye, my lady, doant ye,” said the honest fellow, and was within an ace of blubbering for sympathy. “We ain't a lot o' babies, to see our squire kidnaped. If you would lend Abel Moss there and me a couple o' nags, we'll catch them yet, my lady.”
“That we will,” cried Abel. “You take me where you fired that shot, and we'll follow the fresh wheel-tracks. They can't beat us while they keep to a road.”
The two men were soon mounted, and in pursuit, amid the cheers of the now excited villagers. But still the perpetrators of the outrage had more than an hour's start; and an hour was twelve miles.