If Waif herself entertained any such misgivings, they were swallowed up in the single consideration of out-witting his pursuers, to save John Garnet from death.
So she plunged and laboured on, faint, breathless, weary, sustained only by the one earnest aim of her brave and loving heart, listening eagerly for the voices of those who were on her track, and exulting, with fierce and bitter triumph, to lead them farther and farther from their prey.
One more mile. If her strength would last but for one more mile, he must have reached his refuge then, and she would be content to lie down and die. Shrouded in a snow-drift on her wedding-day. (She laughed to herself at the conceit) and married, like a Gorgio bride, all in white!
Fin Cooper and Dick Boss, galloping down to the spot at which the grey horse fell, made sure of his rider at such a grievous disadvantage, and laughed, while they pointed out to each other the heavy footmarks printed off distinctly in the snow.
"He'll not travel far in them boots, wading through the drifts!" remarked Dick Boss, who was little given to conversation at the best of times.
"'Tis our hunted stag," answered Fin, showing his white teeth, with a pitiless laugh; "he's beginning to weary already, I can tell, by the slot!"
So they followed, with renewed ardour, upward, always upward into the hill, and pointing for the wildest part of the moor.
But the horses were beginning to tire, toiling more than fetlock deep in snow, and the blinding flakes that lashed the faces of their riders not only shrouded everything from their view, but filled up and obliterated the track on which they depended for guidance and success. "We are beat, man!" said Dick, drawing rein, sulkily, and wringing the heavy snow from his sleeves and holsters. "There's not a drop of blood left unfroze in my body, and I shall give out!" turning his bridle at the same time doggedly down hill, while the gipsy, trusting to his knowledge of the country, declared his own intention of making a wide sweep forward, hoping thus to catch a glimpse of the pedestrian, and ride him down, so soon as the storm modified sufficiently to distinguish an object at ten paces' distance.
Once parted, the two men had no chance of coming together again. The sheriff's officer, through sheer good luck did eventually find his way back to Porlock, but Fin Cooper wandered aimlessly on many a mile further into the wilderness. He, too, was at last obliged to confess himself defeated. Not only baffled in his search, but lost, like an overfed Gorgio, on the moor.
The snow, falling and fallen, so completely effaced or altered every familiar land-mark, that he rode blindly round and round, ashamed to admit he was unable to find his way out of this weary, interminable, undulating waste of white.