Garth was going in the advance, and for a time keeping silence—as if busied with some abstruse calculation.
“There be a tidyish bit o’ night left yet,” he at length remarked, glancing up to the sky, “I shed think I’ve time enough for that business.”
The remark was made to himself, rather than to his companion, and as if to satisfy his mind, about some doubt he had been indulging in.
“Time enough for what?” asked Holtspur, who had overheard the muttered observation.
“Oh! nothin’ muchish, Master Henry—only a little bit o’ business I’ve got to attend to over in the wood there. ’Twon’t take ten minutes; and, as time’s preecious, I can tell ye about it when I gets back. Ah! theear’s the gap I war lookin’ for. If ye’ll just keep on at yer leisure, I’ll overtake you afore you can get to t’other side o’ the wood. If I doan’t, pleeze wait a bit. I’ll be up in three kicks o’ an old cow.”
Saying this, the ex-footpad glided through the gap; and, striking off among the trees, soon disappeared behind their close standing trunks.
Holtspur, slackening his pace, moved on along the road—not without wondering what could be the motive that had carried his eccentric conductor so suddenly away from him.
Soon, however, his thoughts reverted to her from whom he had so late separated; and, as he walked under the silent shadows of the trees, his spirit gave way to indulgence in a retrospect of that sweet scene, with which his memory was still warmly glowing.
From the rain that had fallen, the flowers, copiously bedewed, were giving out their incense on the soft air of the autumn night. The moon had suddenly made her appearance, amid banks of fleecy clouds, that were fantastically flitting across the face of the azure heaven.
Under her cheering light Holtspur sauntered leisurely along, reviewing over and over again the immediate and pleasant past; which, notwithstanding the clouds that lowered over his future, had the effect of tingeing it with a roseate effulgence.