Chapter Twenty.
A Sudden Reverse.
And all this time Fred Forrester rode on at the rear of his little detachment, longing to get to Newton Abbot and be rid of his painful charge. The evening grew more pleasant and cool, the moths came out, and with them the bats, to dart and flit, and capture the myriad gnats which danced here and there beneath the trees. Then, as they passed beneath some umbrageous oak, which stretched its ponderous and gnarled arms across the road, a night-hawk swooped from where it had been resting upon its parrot toes, its beak toward the bole of the tree, and skimmed round and round for a time to capture a great moth or two in its widespread, bristly-edged gape, before swiftly darting back to its perch, where it commenced its loud, continuous purring noise, which died softly away as the party rode on.
Sweet moist scents rose from the dewy ground, and as they neared a marshy pool, a low, musical whining and croaking told that the frogs which made the stagnant place their home had a full belief that before long it would rain.
Tired though the party were, it was pleasant travelling now, and as some horse, feeling freshened by the cool moist air, snorted and tossed its head, there followed a loud tinkling of accoutrements and an uncalled-for increase of pace.
As they rode on deep down in a hollow between mighty hedges, a loud hail seemed to come from the road on the hillside, “Hoi, hoi!” which was followed by another on the opposite slope, but no one stirred. The call of the hoot-owl was too familiar to the Coombeland men to deceive.
It was so dark at times down there amid the trees that the horses’ heads were hardly visible, and when fire was struck by an impatient hoof from a loose stone, the flash given forth seemed by comparison to lighten up the lane.
Half an hour’s increasing darkness was followed by a glow in the east, and then, slowly rolling up, came the moon, to silver the patches of firs, to lighten the pensile birches, and make the glossy-leaved beeches glisten as if wet with rain or frosted with silver. The little river which ran at the bottom of the valley, meandering on its way, shone out with flashes of light, as the moon rose higher; and once, in the midst of Fred’s gloomiest thoughts, came, like a gleam of the moon on the water to lighten all around, the feeling that the world was, after all, a very beautiful place, and that it was man himself who made it miserable.