“Oh no,” said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.

“Oh no,” Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between the two men.

“I must stop,” Trelyon said.  “It’s such precious hard lines on him.  I shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home.”

So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a few minutes.  The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.

“That isn’t Roscorla’s pony,” said Trelyon listening.  “That’s more like your father’s cob.”

“My father!” said Wenna in a low voice.

“My darling, you needn’t be afraid, whoever it is,” Trelyon said.

“Certainly not,” added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable than she chose to appear.  “Who can prevent us going on?  They don’t lock you up in convents now-a-days.  If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let me talk to him.”

Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest.  White Charley, with his long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognized in the gloom the tall figure of their father.  Even Mabyn was a trifle nervous.

But George Rosewarne—­perhaps because he was a little pacified by their having stopped—­did not rage and fume as a father is expected to do whose daughter has run away from him.  As soon as he had pulled up his horse he called out in a petulant tone, “Well! what the devil is all this about?”

“I’ll tell you, sir,” said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite firmly:  “I wished to marry your daughter Wenna—­”

“And why couldn’t you do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a fool of everybody all round?” Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry and vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.

“Oh, dada,” Mabyn cried, “you don’t know how it happened; but they couldn’t have got married there.  There’s that horrid old wretch, Mr. Roscorla—­and Wenna was quite a slave to him and afraid of him—­and the only way was to carry her away from him; and so—­”

“Hold your tongue, Mabyn,” her father said.  “You’d drive a windmill with your talk.”

“But what she says is true enough,” Trelyon said.  “Roscorla has a claim on her:  this was my only chance, and I took it.  Now look here, Mr. Rosewarne:  you’ve a right to be angry and all that—­perhaps you are—­but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla?”

“What good will it do me?” said George Rosewarne pettishly.  “I don’t care which of you she marries.”

“Then you’ll let us go on, dada?” Mabyn cried.  “Will you come with us?  Oh, do come with us!  We’re only going to Plymouth.”

Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal.  He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter.  “I like that!” he cried.  “Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house!  It’s my impression, my young mistress, that you’re at the bottom of all this nonsense.  Come, come! enough of it, Trelyon:  be a sensible fellow, and turn your horses round.  Why, the notion of going to Plymouth at this time o’ night!”