ter inquisitive of the handkerchief
pressed occasionally at his nose--trotted on tired steeds along dusty
wheel-tracks. Mrs. Pagnell was the solitary of the chariot, having a
horrid couple of loaded pistols to intimidate her for her protection,
and the provoking back view of a regularly jogging mannikin under a big
white hat with blue riband, who played the part of Time in dragging her
along, with worse than no countenance for her anxieties.

News of the fugitives was obtained at the rampant Red Lion in Dudsworth,
nine miles on along the London road, to the extent that the Earl of
Ormont's phaeton, containing a lady and a gentleman, had stopped there a
minute to send back word to Steignton of their comfortable progress,
and expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset.
Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice. They left
their line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose,
with practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and
rewarded them at the end of half an hour with sight of the Steignton
phaeton.

But it was returning. A nearer view showed it empty of the couple.

Morsfield bade the coachman pull up, and he was readily obeyed. Answers
came briskly.

Although provincial acting is not of the high class which conceals
the art, this man's look beside him and behind him at vacant seats had
incontestable evidence in support of his declaration, that the lady
and gentleman had gone on by themselves: the phaeton was a box of flown
birds.

'Where did you say they got out, you dog?' said Cumnock.

The coachman stood up to spy a point below. 'Down there at the bottom of
the road, to the right, where there's a stile across the meadows,
making a short cut by way of a bridge over the river to Busley and
North Tothill, on the high-road to Hocklebourne. The lady and gentleman
thought they 'd walk for a bit of exercise the remains of the journey.'

'Can't prove the rascal's a liar,' Cumnock said to Morsfield, who
rallied him savagely on his lucky escape from another knock-down blow,
and tossed silver on the seat, and said--

'We 'll see if there is a stile.'

'You'll see the stile, sir,' rejoined the man, and winked at their
backs.

Both cavaliers, being famished besides baffled, were in sour tempers,
expecting to see just the dead wooden stile, and see it as a grin at
them. Cumnock called on Jove to witness that they had been donkeys
enough to forget to as