my drop o' cider, I think I shall go out for a ride."

"Oh father!" cried the girl.

The old man chuckled.

"Don't you tell me that the pony has gone out, too," he said. "There,
it's all right, Polly, only I don't know anything, and I won't be told."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

A SUDDEN REVERSE.

And all this time Fred Forrester rode on at the rear of his little
detachment, longing to get to Newton Abbot and be rid of his painful
charge. The evening grew more pleasant and cool, the moths came out,
and with them the bats, to dart and flit, and capture the myriad gnats
which danced here and there beneath the trees. Then, as they passed
beneath some umbrageous oak, which stretched its ponderous and gnarled
arms across the road, a night-hawk swooped from where it had been
resting upon its parrot toes, its beak toward the bole of the tree, and
skimmed round and round for a time to capture a great moth or two in its
widespread, bristly-edged gape, before swiftly darting back to its
perch, where it commenced its loud, continuous purring noise, which died
softly away as the party rode on.

Sweet moist scents rose from the dewy ground, and as they neared a
marshy pool, a low, musical whining and croaking told that the frogs
which made the stagnant place their home had a full belief that before
long it would rain.

Tired though the party were, it was pleasant travelling now, and as some
horse, feeling freshened by the cool moist air, snorted and tossed its
head, there followed a loud tinkling of accoutrements and an
uncalled-for increase of pace.

As they rode on deep down in a hollow between mighty hedges, a loud hail
seemed to come from the road on the hillside, "Hoi, hoi!" which was
followed by another on the opposite slope, but no one stirred. The call
of the hoot-owl was too familiar to the Coombeland men to deceive.

It was so dark at times down there amid the trees that the horses' heads
were hardly visible, and when fire was struck by an impatient hoof from
a loose stone, the flash given forth seemed by comparison to lighten up
the lane.

Half an hour's increasing darkness was followed by a glow in the east,
and then, slowly rolling up, came the moon, to silver the patches of
firs, to lighten the pensile birches, and make the glossy-leaved beeches
glisten as if wet with rain or frosted with silver. The little river
which ran at the bottom of the valley, meandering on its way, shone out
with flashes of light,