“Go to the devil!” remarks Mr. Chalmers, blithely. “I’m for breakfast at the White Horse, and for leavin’ the hero of the hour to eat his where he sees fit. He’s safe enough.”
“I’ve a misgiving,” answers de Bohun, “and he risked his life for mine to-night. I’ll strike off here to the west and join you when I find him.”
“Good luck to you for a fool!” laughs Jack, putting spurs and going on to tell this news to the others.
The instant that Lady Peggy felt herself in the highwayman’s saddle, she knew from long acquaintance with every colt Bickers had bred, raised, or broke, since she was six, that her wrists had met their match. Before she had time to utter a word, turn her head, or think, she felt the warm flesh under her quiver with that recovering impulse which horsemen know so well; that streak of untamed and untamable nature which lies, however deep-hidden, in every four-foot that breathes, and which never fails to spurt to the front when it gets exactly the right chance.
Peggy’s light, nay, by this, weak hand, now gave the big black its chance, and with a snort, a toss of its head, and a vicious swell of its sides, it laid back its ears, took the bit between its teeth as if it had been a mess of oats, and reared a length on its forelegs: when, finding its rider still on, it started on a run which Her Ladyship had not the slightest power to check. All she could do was to keep her seat.
Like a flash, out of the forest on to the width of the heath, plume waving, sword flapping, laces rippling, curls flying; the mare’s mane slapping in her face; legs and arms and will all at work to stop the beast or bring it into some sort of subjection. To no purpose. The black head now low, as if picking up a scent from the turf it tore; now up, as though snuffing its goal from afar, the mare skirted the heath, gained the meadows; over hedges where the birds rose in flocks behind its heels; ditches, where the muddy waters splashed over Her Ladyship’s satin clothes: here a bolt into an orchard, leaving a ribbon a-hanging on a limb; over the wall like a rocket, and, at breakneck gait, through a hamlet, rousing the people out of their beds to peep at pane, and wonder. Slap-dash into a pasture, scattering ewes and lambs like wool before the wind, taking a five-bar into a common, thence to highway; scampering a footbridge to leave it shivered behind them, and all Peg’s thought just a brave prayer to be kept alive, so that she might not fail of foiling Sir Robin’s men Sunday night!
Where she was going, she knew not. Where she was, she had no smallest idea when, as the sun looked over the long low line of horizon before her, she with a shudder beheld a gibbet outlined against the morning sky. The black gave a lunge that knocked her feet out of the stirrups (quick in again), reared, whinnied like a devil, and, nose to ground, now made her rider understand that up to the present she had done nothing much in the way of speed, or of efforts at emptying the saddle.
Yet Her Ladyship stuck on, with flying colors, too, and no loss of either wig, hat, weapon or will, and with grateful heart she now found herself being spun across a magnificent park, where the deer fled before her, it is true, but at the upper end of which she saw looming the turrets and towers of a fine castle.
