With this understanding Ransome galloped off. On his way he passed by the house where he suspected coining. The shutters were closed, but his experienced eye detected a bright light behind one of them, and a peculiar smoke from the chimney.
Adding this to his other evidence, he now felt sure the inmates were coiners, and he felt annoyed. “Fine I look,” said he, “walking tamely past criminals at work, and going to a mayor's nest six miles off.”
However he touched the horse with his heel, and cantered forward on his errand.
John Ransome rode up to the Ousely Reservoir, and down again in less than an hour and a half; and every incident of those two rides is imprinted on his memory for life.
He first crossed the water at Poma bridge. The village of that name lay on his right, toward Hillsborough, and all the lights were out except in the two public houses. One of these, “The Reindeer,” was near the bridge, and from it a ruddy glare shot across the road, and some boon companions were singing, in very good harmony, a trite Scotch chorus:
“We are no that fou, we are no that fou,
But just a drappie in our ee;
The cock may craw, the day may daw,
But still we'll taste the barley bree.”
Ransome could hear the very words; he listened, he laughed, and then rode up the valley till he got opposite a crinoline-wire factory called the “Kildare Wheel.” Here he observed a single candle burning; a watcher, no doubt.
The next place he saw was also on the other side the stream; Dolman's farm-house, the prettiest residence in the valley. It was built of stone, and beautifully situated on a promontory between two streams. It had a lawn in front, which went down to the very edge of the water, and was much admired for its close turf and flowers. The farm buildings lay behind the house.
There was no light whatever in Dolman's; but they were early people. The house and lawn slept peacefully in the night: the windows were now shining, now dark, for small fleecy clouds kept drifting at short intervals across the crescent moon.
Ransome pushed on across the open ground, and for a mile or two saw few signs of life, except here and there a flickering light in some water-wheel, for now one picturesque dam and wheel succeeded another as rapidly as Nature permitted; and indeed the size of these dams, now shining in the fitful moonlight, seemed remarkable, compared with the mere thread of water which fed them, and connected them together for miles like pearls on a silver string.