She listened again, inclining her head to catch any sound that might come from the other side of the stream. "No," she replied, "I don't."
He touched her shoulder. "Not that way!" he exclaimed. "Not that way! Behind us!"
Suddenly Lady Betty spoke. "I do!" she said. "But they are a long way off. It's Watkyns coming back. He must have found horses, for I hear more than one!"
"It's not Watkyns!" Lane answered and he took two steps from the carriage, then came back. "Get out!" he cried hoarsely. "Do you hear? Get out! Or don't say I didn't warn you. Do you hear?" he repeated, when no one stirred; for Sophia, her worst suspicions confirmed, was speechless with surprise, and the others cowered in their places, thinking him gone mad. "Get out, get out, and hide if you can. They are coming!" he continued wildly. "I tell you they are coming. And it is off my shoulders. In ten minutes they'll be here, and if you're not hidden, it'll be the worse for you. I've told you!"
"Who are coming!" Sophia said, her lips forming the words with difficulty.
"Hawkesworth!" he answered. "Hawkesworth! He and two more, as big devils as himself. If you don't want to be robbed and worse, hide, hide! Do you hear me?" he continued, pulling frantically at Sophia's habit. "I've told you! I've done all I can! It's not on my head!"
For an instant she sat, turned to stone; deaf to the cries, to the prayers, to the lamentations of the others. Hawkesworth? The mere name of him, with whom she had once fancied herself in love, whom now she feared and loathed, as she feared and loathed no other man, stopped the current of her blood. "Hawkesworth," she whispered, "Hawkesworth? Here? Following us? Do you mean it?"
"Haven't I told you?" Lane answered with angry energy. "He was at Grinstead, at the White Lion, last night. I saw him, and--and the woman. You'd made me mad, you know, and--and they tempted me! They tempted me!" he whined. "And they're coming. Can't you hear them now? They are coming!"
Yes, she could hear them now. In the far distance up the valley the steady fall of horses' hoofs broke the night silence. Steadily, steadily, the hoof-beats drew nearer and nearer. Now they were hushed; the riders were crossing a spongy bit, where a spring soaked the road--Sophia could remember the very place. Now the sound rose louder, nearer, more fateful. Trot-trot, trot-trot, trot-trot! Yes, they were coming. They were coming! In five minutes, in ten minutes at most they would be here!
It was a crisis to try the bravest. Round them the moonlight flooded the low wide mouth of the valley. As far as the eye reached, all was bare and shelterless. A few scattered thorn trees, standing singly and apart, mocked the eye with a promise of safety, which a second glance showed to be futile. The only salient object was the carriage stranded beside the ford, a huge dark blot, betraying their presence to eyes a furlong away. Yet if they left its shelter, whither were they to turn, where to hide themselves? Sophia, her heart beating as if it would suffocate her, tried to think, tried to remember; while Lady Betty clung to her convulsively, asking what they were to do, and Pettitt, utterly overcome, sobbed at the bottom of the carriage, as if she were safer there.