There were perils before, as well as behind him. His liberty, as his life, was still in danger. He knew all this; but in the revel of that fond retrospect—with the soft voice of Marion Wade yet ringing in his ears—her kisses still clinging to his lips—how could he be otherwise than oblivious of danger?
Alas! for his safely he was so—recklessly oblivious of it—forgetful of all but the interview just ended, and which seemed rather a delicious dream than an experience of sober real life.
Thus sweetly absorbed, he had advanced along the road to the distance of some two or three hundred yards, from the place where Garth had left him. He was still continuing to advance, when a sound, heard far off in the wood, interrupted his reflections—at the same time causing him to stop and listen.
It was a human voice; and resembled the moaning of a man in pain; but at intervals it was raised to a higher pitch, as though uttered in angry ejaculation!
At that hour of the night, and in such a lonely neighbourhood—for Holtspur knew it was a thinly-peopled district—these sounds seemed all the stranger; and, as they appeared to proceed from the exact direction in which Garth had gone, Holtspur could not do otherwise than connect them with his companion.
Gregory must be making the noises, in some way or other? But how? What should he be groaning about? Or for what were those exclamations of anger?
Holtspur had barely time to shape these interrogatories, before the sound became changed—not so much in tone as in intensity. It was still uttered in moanings and angry ejaculations; but the former, instead of appearing distant and long-drawn as before, were now heard more distinctly; while the latter, becoming sharper and of more angry intonation, were not pronounced as before in monologue, but in two distinct voices—as if at least two individuals were taking part in the indignant duetto!
What it was that was thus waking up the nocturnal echoes of Wapsey’s Wood was a puzzle to Henry Holtspur; nor did it assist him in the elucidation, to hear one of the voices—that which gave out the melancholy moanings—at intervals interrupted by the other in peals of loud laughter! On the contrary it only rendered the fearful fracas more difficult of explanation.
Holtspur now recognised the laughing voice to be that of Gregory Garth; though why the ex-footpad was giving utterance to such jovial cachinnations, he could not even conjecture.
Lonely as was the road, on which he had been so unceremoniously forsaken, he was not the only one traversing it at that hour. His pursuers were also upon it—not behind but before him—like himself listening with mystified understandings to those strange sounds. Absorbed in seeking a solution of them, Holtspur failed to perceive the half-dozen figures that, disengaging themselves from the tree-trunks, behind which they had been concealed, were closing stealthily and silently around him.