His resolution being now fixed, his spirits rose. He let thoughts of Claudia flush his mind with their sweet radiance. He pictured her as he had last seen her—the light from the candles making her slim white neck below the rosy nightcap take on the bloom of a peach, and the leaping flames of the hearth chequering the shadow of the bed-curtain. He saw her dim eyes, heard her melting voice, felt the warm vigour of her body as she cowered beside him in the dark of the Flambury galleries. Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade—and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness. He did not hear the groans of Mr Johnson pounding dismally behind him, or the shuddering cry of owls from the woods. The world was a quiet place to him where a soft voice was speaking, the thick darkness was all aglow with happy pictures. The man's soul was enraptured by his dreams. He found himself suddenly laughing to think how new and strange was this mood of his. Hitherto he had kept women at arms' length, and set his heart on policy and war, till he had earned the repute of one to be trusted and courted, but one already at thirty middle-aged. Lord! but there had been a melting of icebergs! And like a stab came the thought of yet another molten iceberg—Sir John—of the sharp nose and the high coat collar! Alastair cried out like a man in pain.
They rode into Milford half an hour after midnight. There was no light in any house, and the inn was a black wall. But the door of the yard was open, and a hostler, ascending to his bed in the hayloft, accepted a shilling for his news. A man had ridden through Milford that night. He had not seen him, but he had heard the clatter as he was bedding the post horses that had come in late from Marlock. How long ago? Not more than an hour, maybe less, and the fellow checked his memory with a string of minute proofs.
Alastair swung his horse's head back to the road. "Courage, my friend," he cried. "We are gaining on him. We shall overtake him before morning."
Again Johnson caught his arm. "Bethink you, sir," he stammered. "You ride on an errand of murder."
"Nay," was the answer, "of love."
But the next miles were over roads like ploughlands, and the rain blew up from the south-west and set the teeth chattering of the cloakless Mr Johnson. The night was very dark and the road seemed to pass no villages, for not a light appeared in the wastes of wet ling and fern and plashing woods. The track could be discerned well enough, for it was the only possible route through the rugged land, and happily for the riders there were no crossways. No other traveller met them or was overtaken—which, thought Alastair, was natural, for with the Prince at Derby the flight of the timid would be to the south, and not north or west into the enemy's country.
Long before dawn he was far beyond the countryside of which he had any knowledge. He had been given Ernshawbank by the Spainneach as the second point to make for, and had assumed that there, if not before, he would fall in with Sir John. Yet when he came to a village about cockcrow, and learned from a sleepy carter that it was Ernshawbank, he did not find his quarry. But at the inn he had news of him. A man answering his description had knocked up the landlord two hours before, drunk a gill of brandy, eaten a crust, and bought for a guinea the said landlord's cocked grey beaver, new a month ago at Leek Fair. Two hours! The man was gaining on him! It appeared that he had ridden the path for lower Dovedale, as if he were making for Staffordshire and Trentside.
The two breakfasted at an ale house below Thorp Cloud, when a grey December morning was breaking over the leafless vale and the swollen waters of Dove. Their man had been seen, riding hard, with a face blue from cold and wet, and his fine clothes pitifully draggled with the rain. He had crossed the river, and was therefore bound for Staffordshire, and not Nottinghamshire, as Alastair had at first guessed. A minute's reflection convinced him of the reason. Sir John was specially concerned with cutting off the help coming to the Prince from the West, and therefore went to join those, like the Duke of Kingston, who were on that flank, rather than the army which lay between Derby and London. The reflection gave him acute uneasiness. Nottinghamshire was distant, so there was a chance to overtake the fugitive on the way. But, as it now was, any hour might see the man in sanctuary. The next village might hold a patrol of the Duke's. . . . He cut short the meal, which Mr Johnson had scarcely tasted, and the two were again on their weary beasts pounding up the steep lanes towards Ershalton and my lord Shrewsbury's great house.
The mist cleared, a wintry sun shone, and the sky was mottled with patches of watery blue. Mr Johnson's teeth began to chatter so violently that Alastair swung round and regarded him.
"You will without doubt catch an ague, sir," he said, and at the next presentable inn he insisted on his toasting his small-clothes before the kitchen fire, drinking a jorum of hot rum, and borrowing a coat of the landlord's till his own was dry. For suddenly the panic of hurry was gone out of Alastair, and he saw this business as something predestined and ultimate. Fate was moving the pieces, and her iron fingers did not fumble. If it was written that he and Sir John should meet, then stronger powers than he would set the stage. He was amazed at his own calm.