One by one the rest of them had fallen back; had steadied their faltering horses and listened, beaten. Susan could hardly see the fences as they came up, darker and darker against the sky. But her horse rushed at them gallantly, and she had Barnaby to follow. Hounds were invisible now, but near; their cry was fierce behind that clump of trees, impenetrable but for one glimmering gap of light.
"They're running him still!" called Barnaby, plunging in.
His voice was all she wanted. She could not ask more of Heaven than this one gallop; and all her life she would remember that she had ridden it out with him....
They had to ride warily through the trees, feeling their way, trusting in their horses. Here the path was deep and boggy, there water trickled, and the boughs hung low, swishing against them as they went by. Birds whirred restlessly in the creaking branches, and an owl flew shrieking in front of them. When they emerged from that eerie passage everything had grown weird and strange in the cheating dusk.
"That's the horn," said Barnaby. "He's calling them off. Doesn't it sound unearthly?—There they are. Listen.... Listen.... They're running him in the dark!"
Far away on the hillside a light twinkled suddenly, turning the twilight land into darkness as the first star makes it night in the sky.
Barnaby laughed. "That was a hunt!" he said. "Hark! he's stopped them. We'll have to find our way out of this. Why, we can't see each other's faces.... Let's keep on a bit up this hedge-side, and perhaps we'll get into a bridle-road."
He went first, striking into a kind of track.
"There should be a gate in the corner," he said. "Better let your horse get his head down and smell out the rabbit-holes. We're like the babes in the wood, aren't we? Mind that grip!—Where are you?"
The gate was there. They passed through it, and on the other side was a sign-post. Barnaby struck a match, standing up in his stirrups to peer at the moss-stained board.