Higgler and Pinchbecker, conscious of the blood of Adam on their hands, felt their knees knock suddenly together. The man must be the very devil himself.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GAUNTLET RUN.
With his bride up behind him on his horse, the rover spurred swiftly away from the parson’s, still within the hour, in which he had promised to return to his wedding. Unafraid of whatsoever the world, before or behind, might contain, while her lover-husband lived at her side, Garde felt a sense of exhilaration, at leaving Boston, such as she had never known in all her life.
With her grandfather dead and Goody no longer at the little cottage on the skirts of town, she had no ties remaining, save those at the houses of Soam and Phipps. And what were these, when weighed in the balance against Adam Rust—her Adam,—her mighty lord?
Trembling and clinging as she was, he had carried her off. Gladly she had gone to the parson’s. Her heart now rejoiced, as he told her that Massachusetts was behind them forever. For its people, with their harsh, mirthless lives of austerity and fanaticism, she had only love enough to give them her pity. But her life was life indeed, when, ever and anon, Adam halted the horse, lest she fear a fall, and twisted about to give her a kiss and a chuckle of love and to tell of the way he had cheated the mob and the court of their witches.
“Make no doubt of it, you are a witch—one of the sweetest, cleverest, bravest, most adorable little witches that ever lived,” he said, “and I love you and love you for it, my darling wife!”
They had left the town early in the morning. By break of day they were not so far from Boston as Adam could have wished. The horse had been wearied by carrying double, when he conveyed Goody Dune to a place of safety,—so that the old woman could subsequently join himself and Garde in New Amsterdam,—and therefore he had halted the animal humanely, from time to time, as the load under which the good beast was now working was not a trifle.
Having avoided the main road, for the greater part of the remaining hours of darkness, Adam deemed it safe at last to return to the highway, as he thought it unlikely they had been pursued under any circumstances. Thus the sun came up as they were quietly jogging along toward a copse of trees through which the road went winding with many an invitation of beauty to beckon them on.
Crossing a noisy little brook, the rover permitted the horse to stop for a drink. Not to be wasting the precious time, Adam turned himself half way around in the saddle, as he had done so frequently before, and gave his bride a fair morning salute.