Gravity had set its seal on all three faces. Each was conscious of the same fear—the fear they could not put into words.
“But why do you take Orion?” asked Nick. “The little thoroughbred mare—Redwing—would do the journey quicker and he lighter of foot over any marshy ground on the Moor.”
“Orion can go where he chooses,” returned Tormarin. “And he’ll choose to-night. Redwing is a little bit of a thing, though she’s game as a pebble. But she couldn’t carry—two.”
The significance of Tormarin’s choice of his big roan hunter, three-parts thoroughbred and standing sixteen hands, came home to Nick. He nodded without comment.
Silently he and Lady Anne accompanied Blaise into the hall. From the gravelled drive outside came the impatient stamping of Orion’s iron-shod hoofs. Just at the last Lady Anne clung to her son’s arm.
“You’ll bring her back, Blaise?” she urged, a quiver in her voice.
“I’ll bring her back, madonna,” he answered quietly. “Don’t worry.”
A minute later he and the great roan horse were lost to sight in the mirk of the night. Only the beat of galloping hoofs was flung back to the two who were left to watch and wait, muffled and vague through the shrouding mist like the sound of a distant drum.