“Trust me, Sir Percy,” answers Grigson from a length behind his master. “God grant, Sir, that the roan drop not out of the race and leave us but one saddle betwixt you and me, Sir.”
“Poor beast,” says Percy, pricking her hard and striking her shoulder with the flat of his rapier. “She’ll die, and in a good cause if she gain me the goal.”
And all the while they’re speaking, flash and crack go the whips of Sir Robin’s postilions, and Sir Robin’s splendid beasts cover the ground with a swing and a will that keeps the coach rocking, but yet awakens not Lady Peggy, whose dark cropped head reposes on the crooked shoulder of Sir Robin, while her white eyelids remain sealed and no quiver of returning consciousness thrills about her drawn and bloodless lips.
“Gad!” exclaims Percy, as he beholds the vehicle swinging and spinning farther and farther from him, and as Grigson’s black now is up nose and nose with his own expiring mare. “Gad, girl,” bending his lips to the roan’s laid-back ear, “go on! help me to save her! to reach her; go on, I say, in God’s name!”
As if the faithful creature comprehended her master’s entreaty, with that not uncommon last flash of superhuman strength that inheres in man and beast alike, the roan raised her fine head in the air, pricked her ears, stretched out her neck, gathered herself up with a twitch of her nerves that thrilled to her rider’s heart, and off! as in her best days, when she could distance the fleetest mount in the county; off, with the whirl and whirr of those coach-wheels beckoning to her; off, with that pair of straining eyes, those parted lips, blessing her as she began to gain on Sir Robin,—began to? nay, ’twas all a matter of beginning and ending in a breath. Before the postilions, amid their own clatter and calling, had caught hint of the pursuit, the roan was up with the windows out of which the apprehensive little Baronet was peering; his scream of terror:
“Highwaymen! Faster! On! lads, on! A hundred pounds if we outrun ’em! On!” was their first advertisement of danger.
But while the two were drawing their hangers from their belts, Sir Percy, with a swerving dash, pulled the roan on her hind legs directly in front of the galloping leaders. ’Twas but an interposition of Providence (coupled with very excellent cool-headed horsemanship) that he was not then and there dispatched into the hereafter.
The leaders plunged, grinding the wheelers with their hind hoofs; the wheelers fell back of a heap, smashing in the fine front glass and cutting Sir Robin across the lip, but not so much as waking his burden from her deathlike sleep.
“Down with ye!” cries Sir Percy, a pistol in each hand, as Grigson rides up with another brace to reinforce his master, putting a hand as well to the quieting of the coach horses.
“Aye, aye, Sir! but spare our lives and we’ll do your bidding!” cry Sir Robin’s lackeys, leaping to the ground.