Marryott had travelled some two hundred miles from Fleetwood house in three and a half days, accomplishing an average of nearly sixty miles a day, despite all delays and the slow going of the coach. Now that the storm had come up, to make the roads well-nigh impassable, it would take a rider at least three and a half days to return from Hal's present place to Fleetwood house. Thus, even if the pursuivant should overtake the fugitives at any moment, seven days were already gained for Sir Valentine. Another day and a half would, under the storm-caused conditions of travel, procure him the full ten days.
Now, before the beginning of the storm, Roger Barnet, had he gone at the speed for which the men of his office were then proverbial ("like flying pursuivant" is Spenser's simile for swift-moving angels), would have overtaken a traveller hampered as Hal was. But it happened—so prone is circumstance to run to coincidence, as every man perceives daily in his own life—that Roger Barnet, too, had his special hindrances. That part of the chase which had culminated in his almost catching Hal at the hostelry near the Newark cross-road, had been delayed at the outset by the delivery of the queen's letters. And in the subsequent pursuit, when Hal's several impediments had given the pursuivant the best opportunities, Master Barnet had suffered most annoying checks.
Of these, there were those that Hal had conjectured; but, in addition, there was a bodily accident to no less a person than Master Barnet himself. In that very village of Clown, where Hal had been detained by the constable, an exhausted horse had fallen at the moment when the pursuivant was dismounting from it, and had so bruised the pursuivant's leg that he had been perforce laid up at the ale-house for some hours, unable to stand, or to sit his saddle. For his own reasons, of which a hint has been given earlier in this narrative, he had not allowed his men to continue the chase without him; but he had resumed it at the first moment when he could endure the pain of riding.
Of this interference of fortune in his behalf, Master Marryott knew nothing, as he and his riders toiled forward through the blown clouds of snow. He took it on faith that the pursuivant, obliged by duty and enabled by skill, was following through similar clouds somewhere behind. He would not, at this stage, give a moment's room to any thought opposed to this.
The travellers covered thirty miles or more, through unremitting snowfall and increasing wind; passing Rylston, Cumiston, Kettlewell, Carlton, Middleham, and Harmby,—names, some of which have lost their old importance, some of which have given place to others, some of which have quite vanished from the map,—stopping twice for food, drink, and to rest the horses. In the inhabited places, the riders were too much obscured by snow, the people outdoors were too few, for Mistress Hazlehurst to place any hope in an appeal for rescue. Nevertheless, to hearten his men up, and to leave the deeper trace for Barnet to follow. Marryott went through these places at a gallop, with great noise of voices and horns. Strange must have been the spectacle to gaping villagers drawn to casements by the advancing clamor, when this mad band of riders—one of them a woman—dashed into sight, as if borne by the wind like the snow clouds, rushed by with blast and shout, and disappeared into the white whirl as they had come!
All through the afternoon Mistress Hazlehurst was silent, close-wrapped in cloak and hood. She accepted with barely uttered thanks the ale and food that Master Marryott caused Kit Bottle to bring her from the rude inns near which they stopped. Hal showed his solicitude, at first, in brief and courteous inquiries regarding her comfort; then, as these were answered either not at all, or in the coldest monosyllables, in glances over his shoulder. Was her inertia, he asked himself, a sign that she had given up the battle?—or a sign that she was nourishing some new plan, sufficiently subtle to fit the new circumstances?
During the afternoon, Kit Bottle rode often among the men from Rumney's band, talking with them, and seeing how the wounded bore themselves.
As the riders passed in sight of Middleham castle, whose wind-beaten walls, with their picturesque background of Nature's setting, were now scarce visible behind the driven nebules of snow, Kit brought his horse close to Hal's, and said, in a low voice:
"Some of those fellows have ugly little cuts. They would fare better under roof, and on their backs, than on horse, in this weather."