On they had gone in silence for the most part, avoiding villages, but as the morning advanced and they came into more inhabited places, they were not able entirely to avoid meeting labourers going out to work, who stared at Hans’s black face with curiosity. The sun was already high when they reached a cross-road whence the massive towers of Carisbrooke were seen above the hedges, and another turn led to Parkhurst. They paused a moment, and Anne was beginning to entreat her escort to leave her to proceed alone, when the sound of horses’ feet galloping was heard behind them. Peregrine looked back.
“Ah!” he said. “Ride on as fast as you can towards the castle. You will be all right. I will keep them back. Go, I say.”
And as some figures were seen at the end of the road, he pricked the pony with the point of his sword so effectually that it bolted forward, quite beyond Anne’s power of checking it, and in a second or two its speed was quickened by shouts and shots behind. Anne felt, but scarcely understood at the moment, a sharp pang and thrill in her left arm, as the steed whirled her round the corner of the lane and full into the midst of a party of gentlemen on horseback coming down from the castle.
“Help! help!” she cried. “Down there.”
Attacks by highwaymen were not uncommon experiences, though scarcely at eight o’clock in the morning, or so near a garrison, but the horsemen, having already heard the shots, galloped forward. Perhaps Anne could hardly have turned her pony, but it chose to follow the lead of its fellows, and in a few seconds they were in the midst of a scene of utter confusion. Peregrine was grappling with Burford trying to drag him from his horse. Both fell together, and as the auxiliaries came in sight there was another shot and two more men rode off headlong.
“Follow them!” said a commanding voice. “What have we here?”
The two struggling figures both lay still for a moment or two, but as some of the riders drew them apart Peregrine sat up, though blood was streaming down his breast and arm. “Sir,” he said, “I am Peregrine Oakshott, on whose account young Archfield lies under sentence of death. If a magistrate will take my affidavit while I can make it, he will be safe.”
Then Anne heard a voice exclaiming: “Oakshott! Nay—why, this is Mistress Woodford! How came she here?” and she knew Sir Edmund Nutley. Still it was Peregrine who answered—
“I captured her, in the hope of marrying her, but that cannot be—I have brought her back in all safety and honour.”
“Sir! Sir, indeed he has been very good to me. Pray let him be looked to.”