ge; it
contained but one posting-house. We were long in knocking up the
hostlers: no carriage had arrived just before us; no carriage had passed
the place since noon.

What mystery was this?

"Back, back, boy!" said Roland, with a soldier's quick wit, and spurring
his jaded horse from the yard. "They will have taken a cross-road or
by-lane. We shall track them by the hoofs of the horses or the print of
the wheels."

Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting sides of our horses.
For answer, Roland opened his hand--full of gold. Away we went back
through the dull, sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit
thoroughfare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the track we
pursued still led us straight on. We had measured back nearly half
the way to the post-town at which we had last changed, when lo! there
emerged from a by-lane two postilions and their horses!

At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on before us and
hailed his fellows. A few words gave us the information we sought. A
wheel had come off the carriage just by the turn of the road, and the
young lady and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many
yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed the post-boys after
they had baited their horses, saying they were to come again in the
morning and bring a blacksmith to repair the wheel.

"How came the wheel off?" asked Roland, sternly.

"Why, sir, the linch-pin was all rotted away, I suppose, and came out."

"Did the servant get off the dickey after you set out, and before the
accident happened?"

"Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the
patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled."

"And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linch-pin came
out? Eh?"

"Anan, sir!" said the post-boy, staring; "why, and indeed so it was!"

"Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray God, pray God that--"
The Captain dashed his spurs into the horse's sides, and the rest of his
words were lost to me.

A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it,
stood the inn,--a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone,
looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side throwing
over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary,--not a house, not a but
near it! If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon
on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid, there was no
neighborhood