The ponies were pulling hard, and had got their mouths so thoroughly set against my aunt's iron hand, that she might as well have been driving with a pair of halters for any power she had over them, when a rush of colts in an adjoining paddock on one side of the lane, and a covey of partridges "whirring up" out of a turnip-field on the other, started them both at the same moment. My aunt gave a slight scream, clutched at her reins with a jerk; down went the ponies' heads, and we were off, as hard as ever they could lay legs to the ground, along a deep-rutted narrow lane, with innumerable twistings and turnings in front of us, for a certainty, and the off-chance of a wagon and bell team blocking up the whole passage before we could emerge upon the high road.
"Lay hold, Kate!" vociferated my aunt, pulling for her very life, with the veins on her bare wrists swelling up like whipcord. "Gracious goodness! can't you stop 'em? There's a gravel-pit not half a mile farther on! I'll jump out! I'll jump out!"
My aunt began kicking her feet clear of the sundry wraps and shawls, and the leather apron that kept our knees warm, though I must do her the justice to say that she still tugged hard at the reins. I saw such an expedient would be certain death, and I wound one arm round her waist, and held her forcibly down in her seat, while with the other I endeavoured to assist her in the hopeless task of stopping the runaway ponies. Everything was against us: the ground was slightly on the decline; the thaw had not yet reached the sheltered road we were travelling, and the wheels rung against its frozen surface as they spun round with a velocity that seemed to add to the excitement of our flying steeds. Ever and anon we bounded and bumped over some rut or inequality that was deeper than usual. Twice we were within an inch of the ditch; once, for an awful hundred yards, we were balancing on two wheels; and still we went faster and faster than ever. The trees and hedges wheeled by us; the gravel road streamed away behind us. I began to get giddy and to lose my strength. I could hardly hope to hold my aunt in much longer, and now she began to struggle frightfully, for we were nearing the gravel-pit turn! Ahead of us was a comfortable fat farmer, jogging drowsily to market in his gig. I can see his broad, well-to-do back now. What would I have given to be seated, I had almost said enthroned, by his side? What a smash if we had touched him! I pulled frantically at the off-rein, and we just cleared his wheel. He said something; I could not make out what. I was nearly exhausted, and shut my eyes, resigning myself to my fate, but still clinging to my aunt. I think that if ever that austere woman was near fainting it was on this occasion. I just caught a glimpse of her white, stony face and fixed eyes; her terror even gave me a certain confidence. A figure in front of us commenced gesticulating and shouting and waving its hat. The ponies slackened their pace, and my courage began to revive.
"Sit still," I exclaimed to my aunt as I indulged them with a good strong "give-and-take" pull.
The gravel-pit corner was close at hand, but the figure had seized the refractory little steeds by their heads, and though I shook all over, and felt really frightened now the danger was past, I knew that we were safe, and that we owed our safety to a tall, ragged cripple with a crutch and a bandage over one eye.
My aunt jumped out in a twinkling, and the instant she touched terra firma put her hand to her side, and began to sob and gasp and pant, as ladies will previous to an attack of what the doctors call "hysteria." She leant upon the cripple's shoulder, and I observed a strange, roguish sparkle in his unbandaged eye. Moreover, I remarked that his hands were white and clean, and his figure, if he hadn't been such a cripple, would have been tall and active.
"What shall I do?" gasped my aunt. "I won't get in; nothing shall induce me to get in again. Kate, give this good man half a crown. What a providential escape! He ought to have a sovereign. Perhaps ten shillings will be enough. How am I to get back? I'll walk all the way rather than get in."
"But, aunt," I suggested, "at any rate I must get to the station. Aunt Deborah is sure to think something has happened, and she ought not to be frightened till she gets stronger. How far is it to the station? I think I should not mind driving the ponies on."
In the meantime the fat farmer whom we had passed so rapidly had arrived at the scene of action, his anxiety not having induced him in the slightest degree to increase the jog-trot pace at which all his ideas seemed to travel. He knew Lady Horsingham quite well, and now sat in his gig with his hat off, wiping his fat face, and expatiating on the narrow escape her ladyship had made, but without offering the slightest suggestion or assistance whatever.
At this juncture the cripple showed himself a man of energy.