* * * * *

Robbie speed on!  Lose not an hour now, for an hour lost may be a life’s loss.

* * * * *

Ralph was turning back into the room, and bolting the outer door, when the landlord entered hurriedly from the passage.  He was excited.

“Is it not—­captain, tell me—­is it not Wy’bern—­your father’s home—­Wy’bern, on Bracken Mere?”

“It was my father’s home—­why?”

“Then the bloodhounds are on your trail!”

The perspiration was standing in beads on Brown’s forehead.

“They talk of nothing to each other but of a game that’s coming on at Wy’bern, and what they’ll do for some one that they never name.  If they’d but let wit who he is I’d—­I’d know them.”

“Landlord, landlord!” cried a man whose uncertain footsteps could be heard in the passage,—­“landlord, bring your two guests to us—­bring them for a glass.”

The fellow was making his way to the room into which Ralph and Sim had been hustled.  The landlord slid out of it through the smallest aperture between the door and its frame that could discharge a man of his sturdy physique.  When the door closed behind him he could be heard to protest against any intention of disturbing his visitors.  The two gentlemen had made a long journey, travelling two nights and two days at a stretch; so they’d gone off to bed and were snoring hard by this time; the landlord could stake his solemn honor upon it.

The tipsy Royalist seemed content with the apology for non-appearance, and returned to his companions bellowing,—­

    “Let Tories guard the King;
     Let Whigs in halters swing.”

Ralph walked uneasily across the room.  Could it be that these men were already on their way to Wythburn to carry out the processes of the law with respect to himself and his family?

In another minute the landlord returned.

“It’s as certain as the Lord’s above us,” he whispered.  “They wanted to get to you to have you drink the King’s health with them, and when I swore you were asleep they ax’t if you had no horses with you.  I said you had one horse.  ‘One horse among two,’ they said, with a great goasteren laugh; ‘why, then, they’re Jock and his mither.’  ’One horse,’ I said, ‘or maybe two.’  ’We must have ’em,’ they said; ’we take possession on ’em in the King’s service.  We’ve got to cross the fells to Wy’bern in the morning.’”

“What are they, Brown?”

“Musketeers, three of ’em, and ya sour fellow that limps of a leg; they call him Constable David.”

“Let them have the horses.  It will save trouble to you.”

Then turning to Sim, Ralph added, “We must be stirring betimes to-morrow, old friend; the daybreak must see us on the road.  The snow will be thick in the morning, and perhaps the horses would have hindered us.  Everything is for the best.”