His terrors had cooled, but nevertheless he wished himself well out of the scrape.  The report of the gun still rang in his ears and in fancy he could hear again the buzz of that bullet by his ear.  More than once a shadow lying across the white road gave him a twinge of fear; and when a placid cow poked its nose over the hedge above him, and lowed confidentially, he leapt almost out of his skin.

The task before him, too, gave him no small anxiety.  The directions in the letter were plain enough, but not so the intention of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys.  Did she mean him to elope with her?  He did not care to face the question.  The Admiral, though an indulgent father, was not extravagant; and Sam had but seven-and-sixpence in his pocket.  This was an excellent sum for long whist at threepenny points, but would hardly defray the cost of an elopement.  Besides, he did not want to elope.

“No words of mine will repay you.”  Now he came to consider, these words wore an awkward look.  Good Heavens! he had a mind to drop the portmanteau and run home.  What had he done to be tempted so?  And why had these people ever come to Troy?

Ah!  Sam, that was the question we should have asked ourselves months ago.  Some time before, at a concert in the Town Hall, I remember that Mr. Moggridge sang the line—­

    “Too late the balm when the heart is broke!”

And a Trojan voice at the back assented—­

“A durn sight.”

Why had we been denied that perspicacity now?

So with a heavy burden, and heavier conscience (both of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys’ packing), he trudged forward, kicking up clouds of dust that sparkled in the moonlight.  Presently the ascent grew more gradual, the hedges lower, and over their tops he could feel the upland air breathing coolly from the sea.  And now the sign-post hove in sight, and the cross-roads stretching whitely into distance.

If we take the town of Troy as a base, lying north and south, this sign-post forms the apex of a triangle which has two high-roads for its remaining sides—­the one road entering Troy from the north by the hill which Sam had just ascended, the other running southwards and ending with a steep declivity at no great distance from “The Bower.”

It was by this southern road, of course, that Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys would come.  Sam looked along it, but all as yet was silent.  He pulled out his watch again, and, finding that he had still twenty minutes to spare, set down his load at the foot of the signpost, and began to walk to and fro.

So gloomy were his reflections that, to soothe his nerves, he pulled out a cigar, lit it, and then, for lack of anything better to do, rekindled his lantern, and resumed his walk.

The cigar was barely half smoked when he heard a noise in the distance.

Yes, there was no doubt.  It was the sound of horses.  Sam caught up the portmanteau, and stared down the highway.  For a full minute he listened to the advancing clatter, and presently, around an angle of the road, a chaise and pair broke into view, and came up at a gallop.