The three reports of a pistol, which rang out briskly from behind him, proved that his early training had given him a valuable fund of useful miscellaneous knowledge.
“Don’t you be scared,” he said, reassuringly, to the horse; “he’s firing in the air.”
The pistol-shots were answered by the impatient clangor of a patrol-wagon’s gong, and glancing over his shoulder Gallegher saw its red and green lanterns tossing from side to side and looking in the darkness like the side-lights of a yacht plunging forward in a storm.
“I hadn’t bargained to race you against no patrol-wagons,” said Gallegher to his animal; “but if they want a race, we’ll give them a tough tussle for it, won’t we?”
Philadelphia, lying four miles to the south, sent up a faint yellow glow to the sky. It seemed very far away, and Gallegher’s braggadocio grew cold within him at the loneliness of his adventure and the thought of the long ride before him.
It was still bitterly cold.
The rain and sleet beat through his clothes, and struck his skin with a sharp, chilling touch that set him trembling.
Even the thought of the over-weighted patrol-wagon probably sticking in the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and left him weaker and nervous.
But his horse was chilled with the long standing, and now leaped eagerly forward, only too willing to warm the half-frozen blood in its veins.
“You’re a good beast,” said Gallegher, plaintively. “You’ve got more nerve than me. Don’t you go back on me now. Mr. Dwyer says we’ve got to beat the town.” Gallegher had no idea what time it was as he rode through the night, but he knew he would be able to find out from a big clock over a manufactory at a point nearly three-quarters of the distance from Keppler’s to the goal.