She had forgotten the toll, and, for one moment, her stout heart failed. But for one moment only; for the gate stood open. She could faintly distinguish the white bars thrust back. A lantern was moving slowly towards them; probably some vehicle had just gone by, and the toll-keeper was about to close them. With a frantic effort, she leaned forward and brought the whip down with all her strength on Rob Roy’s straining back. Their rush carried them between the posts, just before the lantern-bearer, from whom the wind’s noise had concealed their approach, had time to slam the gate, shouting, behind them.
In a couple of minutes her pursuer drove up, to find the swearing toll-keeper threatening him and all his kind from behind the closed bars. In half an hour Rob Roy stood in a rough shed, while the owner of it was hurrying through the wet streets to the Crown with a message to Jimmy. Inside its locked door, leaning her aching back against the wall, sat the Queen of the Cadgers, fierce, worn, vigilant; with a long knife across her knee.
And Gilbert, his eyes on the wind-tormented sky, lay fuming in the shelter of the disabled coach in the heart of Monrummon Moor.
[[1]]Dirty.
[CHAPTER XXX
MORPHIE KIRK]
WHEN the morning of the seventh of April broke over Speid and his companions, they lashed the damaged pole together with a coil of rope and harnessed the wheelers. Progress was possible, though at a very slow pace, and they started again, the guard and outside passengers walking; from the coach’s interior, which cradled the slumbers of the Glasgow merchant, there came no sound.
It was past eight when they crossed the South Lour where the river curls round Blackport before plunging into the Basin of Kaims on its seaward course; it was almost nine when Gilbert saw Jimmy Stirk’s anxious face at the door of the Crown.
‘Eh, Laird! but a’m feared ye’re ower late!’ was the boy’s exclamation, as they clasped hands.