"Now have we need of speed!" said Sir Guy, as they galloped together toward London, whose walls were now visible in the distance. "Soon will the whole country join the hue-and-cry. The watch will meet us at the gate."
"'Twere better, were it not," Phœbe suggested, "that we turn to the left and make a circuit into the Aldersgate?"
"Good wit, my lady!" cried Guy, whose excitement had taken on the form of an exalted gayety. "Who rides with thee rides safe, my love—e'en as Theseus of old did ride, scathless 'neath the spell of protecting Pallas!"
"Stuff!" said Phœbe, spurring again, with a smile.
Guy led the way at once across country to the eastward, the soft English turf so deadening their hoof-beats that those behind them had no clue to their change of route.
When the pursuing party reached the Bishopsgate, they met the watch and learned that no one had passed since the hue-and-cry was heard.
"Here divide we, then," cried stout Sir Isaac Burton. "Let eight follow them around the wall, while I with other six ride on, that, if haply they have entered London by the Aldersgate, we may meet them within the city."
The suggestion was adopted, and, all unconscious of their peril, the lovers were rapidly hemmed in between two bands of pursuers. Sir Guy and Phœbe reached the Aldersgate unmolested and were allowed to pass in without protest, as the hue-and-cry had not yet reached so far. They ambled quietly past the watch, arousing no suspicion, but no sooner had they turned the first corner than once more they urged their tired horses to greater exertion.
"Choose we the side streets," said Guy. "Who knows what watch hath been set on Gracechurch Street. 'Tis for London Bridge we are bound, is't not?"
"Yes," said Phœbe. "I pray no prying watch detain us ere we pass that way!"