"You cannot do that, mein herr," said the peasant, looking towards the inn, from which came the sounds of men gambling and drinking.
"What sort of a man is this horse-owner?" asked Dick, not as if with any hope, but as if duty required the last possible effort.
"A gaunt rascal," said Gerard, "who began to answer me in French, and then veered into a kind of Scotch-English, with an Irish phrase or two."
A strange, wondering look came over Dick's face. "Let me try," he said, in a barely audible voice, and made hastily for the house.
He flung open the door, rushed up the rickety stairs, and stopped before a chamber at their head. From within came the sound of a fiddle scraping out the tune of "Over the hills and far away."
Dick burst into the room, crying out, "Tom MacAlister, dear old Tom, I am the man that wants to buy your horse!"
"'Tis no sic a vast warld, they that do a mickle travelling will discover," said MacAlister, as he and the three fugitives cantered westward towards Mayence, having left the Frankfort territory, and, consequently, the Frankfort city guard, far behind them.
The two St. Valiers rode one of Tom's horses, which were both stronger and fresher than the animal on which Gerard had come out of Frankfort. The latter beast now carried MacAlister, who had nothing to fear from being overtaken, and whose second horse was ridden by Wetheral. The piper's son had not expressed any great surprise at seeing Dick, a fact explained by him in the words already quoted.
"I mak' nae doot your ain presence in these parts was brought aboot in the most likely way," he continued; "and, sure, there's devil a bit extraordinary in my being here."