And this is, perhaps, the best place to say that I did not lose my Virgil after all. Here it is on the table as I write, still the dearest of all my books. On each side of the healing an irregular curve of teeth-marks cuts into the yellowing parchment. Dear, brave Cherry-Cheeks sent it home by the hands of a vagrom pedlar, laboriously and exactly writing on the package the inscription she found on the fly leaf:
OLIVER WHEATMAN, Esquire,
of the Hanyards,
Staffordshire,
Aetatis anno 13
I routed out ostlers, and by dint of a judicious blend of cursings and bribings had the horses ready under the archway in time. Margaret was there waiting, with our pretty maid fluttering around her. The Colonel was within, settling with the word-warrior host. I helped Margaret into the saddle and led her horse into the street, turning its head northward. In a moment, her father clattered after her on Sultan. I went back to smile farewell to Cherry-Cheeks and deal out my bribes, but was after them before they had trotted a stone's throw.
They were cantering towards the bridge by which the high street of the town crosses a tiny streamlet and again becomes the high road to the north-west. It was only a pistol-shot from the portico of the "Rising Sun" to the hither side of the bridge, where a group of townsmen were collected round a man with a lantern. We had ridden forth into a strangely quiet town, but before I was half-way to the bridge, and not yet settled down to my saddle, loud shrieks rang out behind me. Looking back, I saw a woman leaning forth, candle in hand, from the Duke's bedroom window. She waved her light and yelled as one distraught. There was no mistaking what had happened. Sal, the sour-faced hussy who wanted me hanged, had learned the fate of the spy. Folks rushed from all quarters to see what was the matter. The sooner we were well out of it the better, and I pricked on to overtake the Colonel and Margaret.
I was near on them at the bridge, where the gossips had lined up to watch them pass. Timothy was there, thankful for once, I thought, of his long coat, while the man who held the lantern was the man to whom I owed a drubbing. I wondered what he was doing there with a lantern, for it was a brilliant moonlight night, and, since he made to run townwards as soon as he saw who was passing, I felt in my bones that he meant mischief and was probably in league with the spy. I turned my horse at him before he was clear of the bridge and tumbled him back headlong on Timothy, who yelled the most astonishing yell I ever heard, snatched the lantern out of Beery Breath's unresisting fingers, and with it smashed into him with such a fury that he beat him to his knees.
I laughed, for the man had got his drubbing after all, through me if not by me. As for the other townies, they enjoyed it like a play.
"Gom!" said one. "He's trod on Tim's gammy toe."
"Damn if he don't turn on 'is missus when 'er does that," said another.
The Colonel and Margaret were looking back when I drew level.
"Anything the matter?" he asked.