Sir George dropped from his saddle, and stooping, sought for proof of the toper’s story.  He had no difficulty in finding it.  There were the deep narrow ruts which the wheels of a chaise, long stationary, had made in the turf at the side of the road; and south of them was a plat of poached ground where the horses had stood and shifted their feet uneasily.  He walked forward, and by the moonlight traced the dusty indents of the wheels until they exchanged the sward for the hard road.  There they were lost in other tracks, but the inference was plain.  The chaise had gone south to Devizes.

For the first time Sir George felt the full horror of uncertainty.  He climbed into his saddle and sat looking across the waste with eyes of misery, asking himself whither and for what?  Whither had they taken her, and why?  The Bristol road once left, his theory was at fault; he had no clue, and felt, where time was life and more than life, the slough of horrible conjecture rise to his very lips.

Only one thing, one certain thing remained—­the road; the pale ribbon running southward under the stars.  He must cling to that.  The chaise had gone that way, and though the double might be no more than a trick to throw pursuers off the trail, though the first dark lane, the first roadside tavern, the first farmhouse among the woods might have swallowed the unhappy girl and the wretches who held her in their power, what other clue had he?  What other chance but to track the chaise that way, though every check, every minute of uncertainty, of thought, of hesitation—­and a hundred such there must be in a tithe of the miles—­racked him with fears and dreadful surmises?

There was no other.  The wind sweeping across the hill on the western extremity of which he stood, looking over the lower ground about the Avon, brought the distant howl of a dog to his ears, and chilled his blood heated with riding.  An owl beating the coverts for mice sailed overhead; a hare rustled through the fence.  The stars above were awake; in the intense silence of the upland he could almost hear the great spheres throb as they swept through space!  But the human world slept, and while it slept what work of darkness might not be doing?  That scream, shrill and ear-piercing, that suddenly rent the night—­thank God, it was only a rabbit’s death-cry, but it left the sweat on his brow!  After that he could, he would, wait for nothing and no man.  Lanthorn or no lanthorn, he must be moving.  He raised his whip, then let it fall again as his ear caught far away the first faint hoof-beats of a horse travelling the road at headlong speed.

The sound was very distant at first, but it grew rapidly, and presently filled the night.  It came from the direction of Chippenham.  Mr. Fishwick, who had not dared to interrupt his companion’s calculations, heard the sound with relief; and looking for the first gleam of the lanthorn, wondered how the servant, riding at that pace, kept it alight, and whether the man had news that he galloped so furiously.  But Sir George sat arrested in his saddle, listening, listening intently; until the rider was within a hundred yards or less.  Then, as his ear told him that the horse was slackening, he seized Mr. Fishwick’s rein, and backing their horses nearer the hedge, once more drew a pistol from his holster.