“Come along, men,” said their leader.
“They must be pretty well in Carlisle by now,” shouted Wilfred, as they started off. “You will hardly do it.”
“To hell fire with them; but we’ll get them yet”; and the horses thundered down the road.
CHAPTER XXV
AMAZING DISCOVERIES
WILFRED stood and rubbed his hands. “I would give a week’s pay to see them in Carlisle,” he chuckled.
Meanwhile Ian and Aline gently made their way along the road to Longtown without mishap. They saw a small body of troopers once; but the troopers took no notice of them. In the desultory border warfare people went about their business practically unconcerned. Life had to go on and, if they waited till there was no fighting, to all intents and purposes they might, in those districts, wait for ever.
“What are we going to do when we reach Scotland?” Aline asked, when at the last it appeared that immediate danger was passing. “Old Moll does not seem to have been right this time,” she added.
“We cannot say yet, birdeen, there are many perils and difficulties ahead, perhaps greater than we have yet passed. I wish I could shake off the feeling of that woman. It is not that I believe any of her prophecies. Of course they are all nonsense, but she is the very incarnation of the spirit of evil, a continual oppressive reminder of its presence in the world. There is no doubt, too, that she has a snakelike inexplicable influence over people and puts evil suggestion into their minds, just as some other people have exactly the opposite power. To talk with Moll rouses one’s worst nature; to talk with some rouses one’s best.” He looked at Aline and thought how wonderful her power was. What was this power, mysteriously possessed by some natures, that almost by their very presence they could change men’s lives;—Aline and Moll might themselves be the warring spirits of good and evil.
“My only object for the moment,” he said aloud, “was to rescue you from your desperate danger. I thought that then we might have time to think out something. There are difficulties indeed; the country is in a very unsettled condition, partly the troubles with England, partly the religious troubles and the difficulty with the regent, Mary of Guise, and France. But our first trouble is,—that I have no money and people with no money always find it hard to live,” and he smiled a rueful smile.