"I warrant it should be no far seeking to find that some one," growled Anthony, rising to his feet.
"Ay," said Hal, "'tis just the shallow, childish stop-nobody thing a woman would do, and think she hath played a fine trick! Come, Anthony,"—Hal spoke the Puritan's name not superciliously now, for he was beginning to like a fellow who could toil forward so uncomplainingly through fatigue and danger, yet make such full use of comforts when they fell to him,—"I see Captain Bottle riding hither, at a walk. That means 'tis four o'clock, though Master Barnet hath not yet shown his face. We must be taking horse again."
And he dropped out of the window to the porch roof, let himself down a corner-post, and stood in the inn yard. Anne's horses were still there. As soon as Anthony was beside him, Hal stepped into the entrance-passage. At the stair-foot stood Mistress Hazlehurst, her back to the door, giving some swift and excited commands to her page, Francis, who was ready to ride.
She turned to see who had entered the inn. On perceiving it was Hal, and that his face wore an involuntary quizzical smile, she caught her breath, and became the very picture of defeat and self-discovered foolishness.
"Have you seen aught of a key I lost?" said Hal, ere he thought. "I need it to unlock my door and get out of my room, as I am in some haste!"
She turned deep crimson at the jest; her eyes shot a glance of fire, her lips closed tight; and, without a word, she glided past him, and out to her horses. He saw in her look a new sense of the insufficiency of easy and obvious means, and a resolution to rise to the needs of her purpose.
"Her eyes are opened," mused Hal, following her and Francis to the yard. "Her next step is like to be more considerable!"
Meeting Kit and the horses just within the inn yard gate, Hal and Anthony mounted. Anne and her Page_were prompt to follow their example. With courtesy, Hal held back his horses for her to precede him out to the road. A minute afterward the five riders, so strangely brought into a single group, were pushing northward in the cold, waning afternoon.
She had slept some, and was the better for the food she had taken. Yet this riding was manifestly a wearier business than it could have been at the time of her setting out. It was a chilly business, too, for March had begun to turn out very January-like, and was steadily becoming more so. The look of dogged endurance that mingled on her face with the new resolution there, continually touched Hal's tender and pitying side. His countenance as continually showed his feelings, and she perceived them with deep and ill-concealed resentment.