I laughed inwardly at this foolish threat.  The gate was a stout barrier, that would do more damage than it could receive from any attempt of theirs.

“Bring out the key, rascal,” roared the postilion again.

“An’ you please, measter,” says I, appearing in the doorway, “I be afeared the key bin lost.”

Then the man on the box scrambled down, and ran into the cottage.  With him I hunted in every nook and corner of the room, and there being no sign of the key we went out, and to the other side of the coach, and there I heard the coach door open, and the voice cried: 

“Hold the leader, Jabez; and you, Tom, go to the wheelers’ heads.  I’ll blow in the cursed lock with my pistol.”

Slipping back so that I might not be seen, I peeped through the window and saw Cyrus Vetch, pistol in hand, moving towards the gate.  Here I was in a wretched quandary.  I glanced anxiously up the road:  there was never a sign of Mr. Allardyce or any other pursuer.  To blow in the lock would be the work of a second:  then nothing I could do would prevent the coach from passing through and getting clean away.

I was ready to despair when a possible means of checkmate flashed into my mind.  Vetch was within a yard of the gate; his two men were at the horses’ heads, to hold them when the report of the pistol came; their eyes were fixed on their master.  As lightly as I could (my boots being heavy, as the long service required of them demanded) I darted through the doorway, my right hand clasping my knife, hid behind my back.  Running to the side of the horse nearest me I set to a-hacking with all my strength at the leathern trace.  Thank Heaven my knife was new and unblunted!  But I had not succeeded in cutting the leather through when the pistol cracked and the lock burst.  The startled horses immediately began to rear and plunge, so violently that the single man at the wheelers’ heads could not hold them.  Vetch ran to assist him; none of them had noticed that the violence of the horses’ straining had completed my unfinished work:  the trace snapped in two.

Pulling itself free the horse swung round, and plunged more violently than before, keeping the man Tom employed and serving also to screen me from view.  Now was my opportunity.  I wrenched open the shuttered door, and saw a man leaning with his body out of the other door, watching the movements of Vetch.  And between us, shrinking back on the seat, was Mistress Lucy.  She turned her head as I pulled the door open, and holding on to it to preserve my balance, for the coach was being swerved this way and that by the frantic horses, I whispered: 

“’Tis I, Mistress Lucy:  jump out!”

And quick as thought—­’tis a blessing when a woman’s wits are keen—­she made one spring for the roadway, by a hair’s breadth eluding the grasp of Dick Cludde, who had turned about at my whisper.  I caught the girl as she touched the ground, and, pulling her away from the wheel, just in time to save her foot from being crushed by it, I seized her hand, and dragged her—­willing captive!—­towards the doorway.  I pushed her into the cottage, with a roughness for which I afterwards asked her pardon, and hastened in after her.