“Bed be hanged!” said Clement, wondering what he should do. This seemed to be a dead stop, and very black he looked. At last, “I’ll go to the yard,” he said.
“There’s nobody up. You’d best——” and again the boots advised a bed.
“Nobody up? Oh, hang it!” said Clement, and stood and thought, very much at a standstill. What could he do? There was a clock in the passage. He looked at it. It was close on six, and he had nearly sixty miles to travel. Save for the delay at the Stone Bridge, he had done well. He had kept his postboy up to the mark: he had spared neither money nor prayers, nor, it must be added, curses. He had done a very considerable feat, the difficulties of night porting considered. But he had still fifty-eight miles before him, and if he could not get on now he had done nothing. He had only wasted his money. “Any up coach due?”
“Not before eight o’clock,” said the boots cynically. “Beaches the Saracen’s Head, Snowhill, at three-thirty. You are one of these moneyed gents, I suppose? Things is queer in town, I hear—crashes and what not, something terrible, I am told. Blue ruin and worse. The master here”—becoming suddenly confidential—“he’s in it. It’s U-p with him! They seized his horses yesterday. That’s why—” he winked mysteriously towards the silent stables. “Wouldn’t trust him, and couldn’t send a bailiff with every team. That’s why!”
“Who seized them?” Clement asked listlessly. But he awoke a second later to the meaning of his words.
“Hollins, Church Farm yonder. Bill for hay and straw. D’you know him?”
“No, but—here! D’you see this?” Clement plucked out a crown piece, his eyes alight. “Is there a postboy here? That’s the point! Asleep or awake! Quick, man!”
“A postboy? Well, there’s old Sam—he can ride. But what’s the use of a postboy when there’s no horses?”
“Wake him! Bring him here!” Clement retorted, on fire with an idea, and waving the crown piece. “D’you hear? Bring him here and this is yours. But sharp’s the word. Go, go and get him, man, it will be worth his while. Haul him out! Tell him he must come! It’s money, tell him!”
The boots caught the infection and went, and for three or four minutes Clement stamped up and down in a fever of anxiety. By and by the postboy came, half dressed, sulky, and rubbing his eyes. Clement seized him by the shoulders, shook him, pounded him, pounded his idea into him, bribed him. Five minutes later they were hurrying towards the church, passing here and there a yawning laborer plodding through the darkness to his work. The farmer at Hollins’s was dressing, and opened his window to swear at them and at the noise the dogs were making. But, “Three pounds! Three pounds for horses to Brickhill!” Clement cried. The proper charge was twenty-six shillings at the eighteen-penny night scale, and the man listened. “You can come with me and keep possession!” Clement urged, seeing that he hesitated. “You run no risk! I’ll be answerable.”