“And to see a man buy a reprieve from Death!” he continued.  “Never do that—­never?  Did you ever think of it, Sim, that what happens is always the best?”

“It scarce looks like it, Ralph; that it don’t.”

“Then it’s because you don’t look long enough.  In the end, it is always the best that happens.  Truth and the right are the last on the field; it always has been so, and always will be; it only needs that you should wait to the close of the battle to see that.”

There would have been a sublime solemnity in these rude words of a rude man of action if Sim had divined that they were in fact the meditations of one who believed himself to be already under the shadow of his death.

* * * * *

The horses broke again into a canter, and it was long before the reins of the riders brought them to another pause.  The day was bitterly cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim’s teeth chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff.  It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours.  The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead.  Gradually the heavy atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind blew smartly from the east.

“A snowstorm is coming, Sim.  Look yonder; how thick it hangs over the Gray Crag sheer ahead!  We must push on, or we’ll be overtaken.”

“How long will it be coming?” asked Sim.

“Five hours full, perhaps longer,” said Ralph; “we may reach Penrith before that time.”

“Penrith!”

Sim’s tone was one of equal surprise and fear.

Ralph gave him a quick glance; then reaching over the neck of his horse to stroke its long mane, he said, with the manner of one who makes too palpable an effort to change the subject of conversation:  “Isn’t this mare something like old Betsy?  I couldn’t but mark how like she was to our old mare that is lost when the ostler brought her into the yard this morning.”

Sim made no reply.

“Poor Betsy!” said Ralph, and dropped his head on to his breast.

Another long canter.  When the riders drew up again it was to take a steadier view of some objects in the distance which had simultaneously awakened their curiosity.

“There seem to be many of them,” said Ralph; and, shielding his ear from the wind, he added, “do you catch their voices?”

“Are they quarrelling?—­is it a riot?” Sim asked.

“Quick, and let us see.”

In a few moments they had reached a little wayside village.