John Fry shook his bridle-arm, and smote upon Smiler merrily, as he jogged into the homeward track from the guiding of the body.  But I was sorry for Red Jem, and wanted to know more about him, and whether he might not have avoided this miserable end, and what his wife and children thought of it, if, indeed, he had any.

But John would talk no more about it; and perhaps he was moved with a lonesome feeling, as the creaking sound came after us.

“Hould thee tongue, lad,’ he said sharply; ’us be naigh the Doone-track now, two maile from Dunkery Beacon hill, the haighest place of Hexmoor.  So happen they be abroad to-naight, us must crawl on our belly-places, boy.”

I knew at once what he meant—­those bloody Doones of Bagworthy, the awe of all Devon and Somerset, outlaws, traitors, murderers.  My little legs began to tremble to and fro upon Peggy’s sides, as I heard the dead robber in chains behind us, and thought of the live ones still in front.

“But, John,” I whispered warily, sidling close to his saddle-bow; “dear John, you don’t think they will see us in such a fog as this?”

“Never God made vog as could stop their eyesen,” he whispered in answer, fearfully; “here us be by the hollow ground.  Zober, lad, goo zober now, if thee wish to see thy moother.”

For I was inclined, in the manner of boys, to make a run of the danger, and cross the Doone-track at full speed; to rush for it, and be done with it.  But even then I wondered why he talked of my mother so, and said not a word of father.

We were come to a long deep “goyal,” as they call it on Exmoor, a word whose fountain and origin I have nothing to do with.  Only I know that when little boys laughed at me at Tiverton, for talking about a “goyal,” a big boy clouted them on the head, and said that it was in Homer, and meant the hollow of the hand.  And another time a Welshman told me that it must be something like the thing they call a “pant” in those parts.  Still I know what it means well enough—­to wit, a long trough among wild hills, falling towards the plain country, rounded at the bottom, perhaps, and stiff, more than steep, at the sides of it.  Whether it be straight or crooked, makes no difference to it.

We rode very carefully down our side, and through the soft grass at the bottom, and all the while we listened as if the air was a speaking-trumpet.  Then gladly we breasted our nags to the rise, and were coming to the comb of it, when I heard something, and caught John’s arm, and he bent his hand to the shape of his ear.  It was the sound of horses’ feet knocking up through splashy ground, as if the bottom sucked them.  Then a grunting of weary men, and the lifting noise of stirrups, and sometimes the clank of iron mixed with the wheezy croning of leather and the blowing of hairy nostrils.

“God’s sake, Jack, slip round her belly, and let her go where she wull.”

As John Fry whispered, so I did, for he was off Smiler by this time; but our two pads were too fagged to go far, and began to nose about and crop, sniffing more than they need have done.  I crept to John’s side very softly, with the bridle on my arm.