sign of the Jolly Cricketers, and Boon had
driven on for half an hour by order.

This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the
gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the
Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit
of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some
fifteen minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the
lady.

CHAPTER XX. AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS

The passing by of the pair of horsemen, who so little suspected the
treasure existing behind the small inn's narrow window did homage in
Aminta's mind to her protector's adroitness. Their eyes met without a
smile, though they perceived the grisly comic of the incident. Their
thoughts were on the chariot to follow.

Aminta had barely uttered a syllable since the start of the flight from
Ashead. She had rocked in a swing between sensation and imagination,
exultant, rich with the broad valley of the plain and the high green
waves of the downs at their giant's bound in the flow of curves and
sunny creases to the final fling-off of the dip on sky. Here was a
twisted hawthorn carved clean to the way of the wind; a sheltered
clump of chestnuts holding their blossoms up, as with a thousand
cresset-clasping hands; here were grasses that nodded swept from green
to grey; flowers yellow, white, and blue, significant of a marvellous
unknown through the gates of colour; and gorse-covers giving out the
bird, squares of young wheat, a single fallow threaded by a hare, and
cottage gardens, shadowy garths, wayside flint-heap, woods of the mounds
and the dells, fluttering leaves, clouds: all were swallowed, all were
the one unworried significance. Scenery flew, shifted, returned; again
the line of the downs raced and the hollows reposed simultaneously. They
were the same in change to an eye grown older; they promised, as at
the first, happiness for recklessness. The whole woman was urged to
delirious recklessness in happiness, and she drank the flying scenery as
an indication, a likeness, an encouragement.

When her wild music of the blood had fallen to stillness with the
stopped wheels, she was in the musky, small, low room of the diamond
window-panes, at her companion's disposal for what he might deem the
best: he was her fate. But the more she leaned on a man of self-control,
the more she admired; and an admiration that may not speak itself to