r. Fishwick, therefore, wrung his
hands and lamented, and the servant swore, Sir George's heart bled
indeed, but it was silently and inwardly; and meanwhile he thought,
calculated the odds, and the distance to Bath and the distance to
Bristol, noted the time; and finally, and with sudden energy, called on
the men to be moving. 'We must get to Bath,' he said. 'We will be
upsides with the villains yet. But we must get to Bath. What horses
have we?'

Mr. Fishwick, who up to this point had played his part like a man,
wailed that his horse was dead lame and could not stir a step. The
lawyer was sore, stiff, and beyond belief weary; and this last mishap,
this terrible buffet from the hand of Fortune, left him cowed and
spiritless.

'Horses or no horses, we must get to Bath,' Sir George answered
feverishly.

On this the servant made an attempt to drag Sir George's mount from the
ditch, but the poor beast would not budge, and in the darkness it was
impossible to discover whether it was wounded or not. Mr. Fishwick's was
dead lame; the man's had wandered away. It proved that there was nothing
for it but to walk. Dejectedly, the three took the road and trudged
wearily through the darkness. They would reach Bathford village, the man
believed, in a mile and a half.

That settled, not a word was said, for who could give any comfort? Now
and then, as they plodded up the hill beyond Kingsdown, the servant
uttered a low curse and Sir George groaned, while Mr. Fishwick sighed in
sheer exhaustion. It was a strange and dreary position for men whose
ordinary lives ran through the lighted places of the world. The wind
swept sadly over the dark fields. The mud clung to the squelching,
dragging boots; now Mr. Fishwick was within an ace of the ditch on one
side, now on the other, and now he brought up heavily against one of his
companions. At length the servant gave him an arm, and thus linked
together they reached the crest of the hill, and after taking a moment
to breathe, began the descent.

They were within two or three hundred paces of Bathford and the bridge
over the Avon when the servant cried out that some one was awake in the
village, for he saw a light. A little nearer and all saw the light,
which grew larger as they approached but was sometimes obscured.
Finally, when they were within a hundred yards of it, they discovered
that it proceeded not from a window but from a lanthorn set down in the
village street, and surrounded b