‘A carrier’s cart?’ said he, with a perceptible uncertainty of voice.  ‘No, sir.’

‘Ah!’ said the portly gentleman, and stood aside to let the sergeant pass.  The lady appeared to bend forward and study the cart with every mark of sharpened curiosity, the slimmer gentleman still keeping in the rear.

‘I wonder what the devil they would be at,’ thought Sergeant Brand; and, looking fearfully back, he saw the trio standing together in the midst of the way, like folk consulting.  The bravest of military heroes are not always equal to themselves as to their reputation; and fear, on some singular provocation, will find a lodgment in the most unfamiliar bosom.  The word ‘detective’ might have been heard to gurgle in the sergeant’s throat; and vigorously applying the whip, he fled up the riverside road to Great Haverham, at the gallop of the carrier’s horse.  The lights of the houseboat flashed upon the flying waggon as it passed; the beat of hoofs and the rattle of the vehicle gradually coalesced and died away; and presently, to the trio on the riverside, silence had redescended.

‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ cried the slimmer of the two gentlemen, ‘but that’s the cart.’

‘And I know I saw a piano,’ said the girl.

’O, it’s the cart, certainly; and the extraordinary thing is, it’s not the man,’ added the first.

‘It must be the man, Gid, it must be,’ said the portly one.

‘Well, then, why is he running away?’ asked Gideon.

‘His horse bolted, I suppose,’ said the Squirradical.

‘Nonsense!  I heard the whip going like a flail,’ said Gideon.  ’It simply defies the human reason.’

‘I’ll tell you,’ broke in the girl, ’he came round that corner.  Suppose we went and—­what do you call it in books?—­followed his trail?  There may be a house there, or somebody who saw him, or something.’

‘Well, suppose we did, for the fun of the thing,’ said Gideon.

The fun of the thing (it would appear) consisted in the extremely close juxtaposition of himself and Miss Hazeltine.  To Uncle Ned, who was excluded from these simple pleasures, the excursion appeared hopeless from the first; and when a fresh perspective of darkness opened up, dimly contained between park palings on the one side and a hedge and ditch upon the other, the whole without the smallest signal of human habitation, the Squirradical drew up.

‘This is a wild-goose chase,’ said he.

With the cessation of the footfalls, another sound smote upon their ears.

‘O, what’s that?’ cried Julia.

‘I can’t think,’ said Gideon.

The Squirradical had his stick presented like a sword.  ‘Gid,’ he began, ‘Gid, I—­’

‘O Mr Forsyth!’ cried the girl.  ’O don’t go forward, you don’t know what it might be—­it might be something perfectly horrid.’

‘It may be the devil itself,’ said Gideon, disengaging himself, ’but I am going to see it.’