T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

THREE FEATHERS.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “A PRINCESS OF THULE.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

INTO CAPTIVITY.

Toward eleven o’clock that night Mrs. Rosewarne became somewhat anxious about her girls, and asked her husband to go and meet them, or to fetch them away if they were still at Mr. Trewhella’s house.

“Can’t they look after themselves?” said George Rosewarne.  “I’ll be bound Mabyn can, any way.  Let her alone to come back when she pleases.”

Then his wife began to fret, and as this made him uncomfortable, he said he would walk up the road and meet them.  He had no intention of doing so, of course, but it was a good excuse for getting away from a fidgety wife.  He went outside into the clear starlight, and lounged down to the small bridge beside the mill, contentedly smoking his pipe.

There he encountered a farmer who was riding home a cob he had bought that day at Launceston, and the farmer and he began to have a chat about horses suggested by that circumstance.  Oddly enough, their random talk came round to young Trelyon.

“Your thoroughbreds won’t do for this county,” George Rosewarne was saying, “to go flying a stone wall and breaking your neck.  No, sir.  I’ll tell you what sort of hunter I should like to have for these parts.  I’d have him half-bred, short in the leg, short in the pastern, short in the back, a good sloping shoulder, broad in the chest and the forehead, long in the belly, and just the least bit over fifteen hands—­eh, Mr. Thoms?  I don’t think beauty’s of much consequence when your neck’s in question.  Let him be as angular and ragged in the hips as you like, so long’s his ribs are well up to the hip-bone.  Have you seen that black horse that young Trelyon rides?”

“’Tis a noble beast, sir—­a noble beast,” the farmer said; and he would probably have gone on to state what ideal animal had been constructed by his lavish imagination had not a man come running up at this moment, breathless and almost speechless.

“Rosewarne,” stammered Mr. Roscorla, “a—­a word with you!  I want to say—­”

The farmer, seeing he was in the way, called out a careless good-night and rode on.

“Well, what’s the matter?” said George Rosewarne a little snappishly:  he did not like being worried by excitable people.

“Your daughters!” gasped Mr. Roscorla.  “They’ve both run away—­both of them—­this minute—­with Trelyon!  You’ll have to ride after them.  They’re straight away along the high-road.”

“Both of them?  The infernal young fools!” said Rosewarne.  “Why the devil didn’t you stop them yourself?”

“How could I?” Roscorla said, amazed that the father took the flight of his daughters with apparent equanimity.  “You must make haste, Mr. Rosewarne, or you’ll never catch them.”