“Lancaster—the name is not unknown to me,” remarked Mr. Grant, but in an indrawn tone, characteristic of a man accustomed to communing with himself.
During this episode, the other travelers had been noisily and confusedly engaged in pulling themselves together and discussing the magnitude of their disaster. Some laborers, whom the accident had attracted from a neighboring field, were pressed into service to help in setting matters to rights. One was sent after the escaped horses; others lent their hands and shoulders to the task of getting the coach out of the ditch and replacing the luggage upon it. Mr. Bendibow, seated upon his portmanteau, his fashionable attire much outraged by the clayey soil into which he had fallen, maintained a demeanor of sullen indignation; being apparently of the opinion that the whole catastrophe was the result of a conspiracy between the rest of the passengers against his own person. The coachman, in a semi-apoplectic condition from the combined effects of dismay, suppressed profanity, and a bloody jaw, was striving with hasty and shaking fingers to mend the broken harness; the ladies were grouped together in the roadway in a shrill-complaining and hysteric cluster, protesting by turns that nothing should induce them ever to enter the vehicle again, and that unless it started at once their prospects of reaching London before dark would be at an end. Lancaster glanced at his companion with an arch smile.
“My human sympathies can’t keep abreast of so much distress,” said he. “I shall take myself off. Hammersmith cannot be more than three or four miles distant, and my legs will be all the better for a little stretching. If you put up at the ‘Plough and Harrow’ to-night, we may meet again in an hour or two; meantime I will bid you good-day; and, once more, many thanks for your surgery.”
He held out his hand, into which Mr. Grant put his own. “A brisk walk will perhaps be the best thing for you,” he remarked. “Guard against a sudden check of perspiration when you arrive; and bathe the shoulder with a lotion ... by-the-by, would you object to a fellow-pedestrian? I was held to be a fair walker in my younger days, and I have not altogether lost the habit of it.”
“It will give me much pleasure,” returned the other, cordially.
“Then I am with you,” rejoined the elder man.
They gave directions that their luggage should be put down at the “Plough and Harrow,” and set off together along the road without more ado.
CHAPTER III.
THEY had not made more than a quarter of a mile, when the tramp of hoofs and trundle of wheels caused them to turn round with an exclamation of surprise that the coach should so speedily have recovered itself. A first glance showed them, however, that the vehicle advancing toward them was a private carriage. Two of the horses carried postilions; the carriage was painted red and black; and as it drew near a coat of arms was seen emblazoned on the door-panel. The turn-out evidently belonged to a person of quality, and there was something in its aspect which suggested a foreign nationality. The two gentlemen stood on one side to let it pass. As it did so, Mr. Grant said, “The lady looked at you as if she knew you.”
“Me! a lady?” returned Lancaster, who had been so occupied in watching the fine action of one of the leaders, as to have had no eyes for the occupants of the carriage.