When they got out of the boat, he tried to cheer up his fair cousin, but did not succeed.
They walked back quietly to the Hall, where a painful surprise awaited them.
XIII. PURSUIT OF THE GIPSIES.
Sir Leycester Barfleur, as we have shown, had ridden with his attendants to the further side of the morass, where he hoped to intercept the gipsies in their flight, but he could discover nothing of them.
Posting himself with Booth, the coachman, on a little mound near the marsh, he sent off the two grooms to the huts previously mentioned, to ascertain whether the fugitives had taken refuge there; but his emissaries brought him no satisfactory intelligence, and it was the opinion of the turf-cutters who inhabited the huts that the gipsies had gone off altogether.
Sir Leycester, however, felt convinced that the rascals were somewhere about, and ordered his men to make a careful search, directing the turf-cutters to assist them.
Again they were all at fault.
Sir Leycester next tried the wood that skirted the heath, and sent the men on by different routes, fixing a place of meeting in the heart of the thicket..