In a very few minutes they had put a distance of more than a hundred yards between them and the occupants of the carriage.
“This is more like it!” exclaimed Runyon exultantly. Tone and words alike implied all too strongly his satisfaction at being rid of Harboro—and Sylvia perversely resented the disloyalty of it, the implication of intrigue carried on behind a mask.
And then she forgot her scruples. The boy who had chosen her horse for her had known what he was doing, after all. The animal galloped with a dashing yet easy movement which was delightful. She became exhilarated by a number of things. The freedom of movement, the occasional touch of her knee against Runyon’s, the mysterious vagueness of the road, now that the moon had gone down.
Perhaps they both forgot themselves for a time, and then Sylvia checked her horse with a laugh in which there was a sound of dismay. “We ought to wait for them to catch up,” she said.
Runyon was all solicitude immediately. “We seem to have outdistanced them completely,” he said. They turned their horses about so that they faced the north. “I can’t even hear them,” he added. Then, with the irrepressible optimism which was his outstanding quality, he added laughingly: “They’ll be along in a few minutes. But wasn’t it a fine ride?”
She had not framed an answer to this question when her mind was diverted swiftly into another channel. She held her head high and her body became slightly rigid. She glanced apprehensively at Runyon and realized that he, too, was listening intently.
A faint roar which seemed to come from nowhere fell on their ears. The darkness swiftly deepened, so that the man and the woman were almost invisible to each other. That sinister roaring sound came closer, as if mighty waters were rolling toward them far away. The northern sky became black, as if a sable curtain had been let down.
And then upon Sylvia’s startled senses the first breath of the norther broke. The little winds, running ahead as an advance-guard of the tempest, flung themselves upon her and caught at her hair and her riding-habit. They chilled her.
“A norther!” she exclaimed, and Runyon called back through the whistle of the winds: “It’s coming!”
His voice had the quality of a battle-cry, joined to the shouts of the descending storm.