So far they had maintained a fair pace. But the party had not proceeded
a quarter of a mile along the lane before the trot became a walk. Clouds
had come over the face of the moon; the night had grown dark. The riders
were no longer on the open downs, but in a narrow by-road, running
across wastes and through thick coppices, the ground sloping sharply to
the Avon. In one place the track was so closely shadowed by trees as to
be as dark as a pit. In another it ran, unfenced, across a heath studded
with water-pools, whence the startled moor-fowl squattered up unseen.
Everywhere they stumbled: once a horse fell. Over such ground,
founderous and scored knee-deep with ruts, it was plain that no wheeled
carriage could move at speed; and the pursuers had this to cheer them.
But the darkness of the night, the dreary glimpses of wood and water,
which met the eye when the moon for a moment emerged, the solitude of
this forest tract, the muffled tread of the horses' feet, the very
moaning of the wind among the trees, suggested ideas and misgivings
which Sir George strove in vain to suppress. Why had the scoundrels gone
this way? Were they really bound for Bristol? Or for some den of
villainy, some thieves' house in the old forest?
At times these fears stung him out of all patience, and he cried to the
man with the light to go faster, faster! Again, the whole seemed
unreal, and the shadowy woods and gleaming water-pools, the stumbling
horses, the fear, the danger, grew to be the creatures of a disordered
fancy. It was an immense joy to him when, at the end of an hour, the
lawyer cried, 'The road! the road!' and one by one the riders emerged
with grunts of relief on a sound causeway. To make sure that the pursued
had nowhere evaded them, the tracks of the chaise-wheels were sought and
found, and forward the four went again. Presently they plunged through a
brook, and this passed, were on Laycock bridge before they knew it, and
across the Avon, and mounting the slope on the other side by
Laycock Abbey.
There were houses abutting on the road here, black overhanging masses
against a grey sky, and the riders looked, wavered, and drew rein.
Before any spoke, however, an unseen shutter creaked open, and a voice
from the darkness cried, 'Hallo!' Sir George found speech to answer. 'Yes,' he said, 'what is it?' The
lawyer was out of breath, and clinging to the mane in sheer weariness.
'Be you after a chaise driving to the devil?' 'Yes, yes,' Sir George answered eagerly. 'Has it passed, my man?' 'Ay, sure, Corsham way, for Bath most like, I knew 'twould be followed.
Is't a murder, gentlemen?' 'Yes,' Sir George cried hurriedly, 'and worse! How far ahead are they?' 'About half an hour, no more, and whipping and spurring as if the old
one was after them. My old woman's sick, and the apothecary from--' 'Is it straight on?' 'Ay, to be sure, straight on--and the apothecary from Corsham, as I was
saying, he said, said he, as soon as he saw her--' But his listeners were away again; the old man's words were lost in the
scramble and clatter of the horses' shoes as they sprang forward. In a
moment the stillness and the dark shapes of the houses were exchanged
for the open country, the rush of wind in the riders' faces, and the
pounding of hoofs on the hard road. For a brief while the sky cleared
and the moon shone out, and they rode as easily as in the day. At the
pace at which they were moving Sir George calculated that they must come
up with the fugitives in an hour or less; but the reckoning was no
sooner made than the horses, jaded by the heavy ground through which
they had struggled, began to flag and droop their heads; the pace grew
less and less; and though Sir George whipped and spurred, Corsham Corner
was reached, and Pickwick Village on the Bath road, and still they saw
no chaise ahead.