"It's nothing, my Lady," he said. "I'd sooner have lost both legs than that this should have come." And he bowed and limped out; but within an hour and a half he came galloping back with Colonel George, who had met him on the road, and was hurrying over to say that though he had ridden to the death of the hunted stag he had seen nothing of the children then nor at any other time.
"Is the fog as thick on the moor as they say?" asked Lady Eleanor, speaking bravely, though she was white to the lips.
"So thick that without a compass I could not have found my way across it," said Colonel George. "It is right that you should know the truth. But the farmers on the edge of the moor know what has happened and are riding as far as they dare with whistles and horns—Brimacott saw to that—and I propose to join them myself at once."
"I shall go with you," said Lady Eleanor, quietly.
Colonel George hesitated for a moment and then answered as quietly: "Be it so; then you must ride my horse, which is cleverer on the moor than any of yours. I will take my groom's, and you must let him have a horse to take back some directions from me to Fitzdenys. Brimacott, with your permission, shall watch the road by which you drove out this morning, in case the ponies should find their way there."
Lady Eleanor soon came down in her habit, impatient to start, but found Colonel George writing, with a tray of food and drink set down by him. "You cannot start until you have eaten something," was all that he said. "We may have a long ride and a long watch before us;" and Lady Eleanor gulped down a few morsels, for she felt, while hardly knowing why, that Colonel George had taken command and that she must obey orders. In a few minutes he finished writing and sent the letter back to Fitzdenys Court. Then he slung a field-glass over his shoulders; and Lady Eleanor's heart sank low as she walked with him to the door, for she perceived that he expected the search to be prolonged beyond the night. "Courage," he said, as if reading her thoughts; and they went out and rode away together into the dark.
CHAPTER VIII
And what had become of Dick and Elsie? The account given by the Corporal had, of course, been perfectly true. It was Dick who had been the first to see the hunted stag about a quarter of a mile away, travelling along at that steady lurching gallop which seems so slow and is so astonishingly swift; and it had needed all the Corporal's firmness to keep the boy from galloping after him on the spot. And then after a time the hounds had come on upon the line of the deer, their great white bodies conspicuous as they strode on in long drawn file across the waste of pale green grass, and the sound of their deep voices booming faintly over the vast solitude. Surely and steadily they pressed on, seeming like the deer to move but slowly, but in reality running their hardest with a swinging relentless stride. There was something almost dreamlike in this strange procession as it moved on between green earth and blue heaven, with none to see it, as it appeared, but the white-winged curlew which whistled mournfully overhead. But presently a little group of horsemen appeared on the far side of the hounds, just six of them in all. The old huntsman was leading them, in his long skirted coat and double-peaked cap, as Dick had often seen him, with his little legs thrust forward, his old body bent over his saddle-bow, and his eyes glued to his hounds. Just a few yards from him rode Colonel George, erect and easy, but also evidently with no eyes for anything but the hounds; and close after him came three more, while the sixth was a full hundred yards behind.
And all the time the Corporal and the children kept moving down, as if drawn by some fascination, insensibly closer to them. Old Billy was worrying at his bit and dancing about, and the ponies squeaking and dancing round him; until for the sake of peace the Corporal allowed the old horse to move in the direction which he desired, when an impatient trot soon turned after a few huge strides to an impatient canter, and Billy put his head down and was off. And off the ponies went also, for they had taken the bit in their teeth and meant to catch the hindmost of the horsemen if they could; and neither Dick nor Elsie turned their heads, or they would have seen Billy plunge deep into a patch of bog, and come down heavily, throwing the Corporal far over his head. So on they went, flying down the long slope before them, dashed across a little stream at its foot in hot pursuit of the last of the horsemen, and on again along a little track on the other side. The ascent was a little steep beyond the stream, but the ponies struggled gamely up, and then another long slope stretched downward before them, beyond which rose a great bank of heather. The hounds had already reached the heather and were breasting the ascent, but their voices could be heard now and then, and the last of the horsemen was not many hundred yards ahead. So away the ponies went again, the children nothing loth, for they doubted not but that the Corporal was near them. By the time that they reached the foot of the slope the ponies were beginning to roll a little, but they splashed through the next little stream as lively as ever, and began to gallop up through the heather on the other side. The horseman whom the children were following was still just in sight, hugging his horse up the ascent; but first his horse's tail disappeared over the hill, then only his shoulders were visible, then only his hat, and presently he vanished from sight altogether. And Dick hustled his pony up the hill to catch him, and Elsie hustled hers after him; but the feeble gallop soon became a slow trot, and the trot became feebler and feebler in spite of all the hustling. Before long both ponies were sobbing heavily, and it was only with great difficulty that the children kept them going fast enough to regain sight of their leader. Presently the ponies came to a dead stop, and Dick looked about him for the Corporal; but the Corporal was nowhere to be seen.