I proceeded on my way without letting the fellows see that I took any special notice of them.  They caused me no conscious irritation of feeling at that moment—­on the contrary, they rather revived my sinking hopes.  In the surprise of discovering the evidence of the marriage, I had forgotten the inference I had drawn on first perceiving the men in the neighbourhood of the vestry.  Their reappearance reminded me that Sir Percival had anticipated my visit to Old Welmingham church as the next result of my interview with Mrs. Catherick—­otherwise he would never have placed his spies there to wait for me.  Smoothly and fairly as appearances looked in the vestry, there was something wrong beneath them—­there was something in the register-book, for aught I knew, that I had not discovered yet.

X

Once out of sight of the church, I pressed forward briskly on my way to Knowlesbury.

The road was, for the most part, straight and level.  Whenever I looked back over it I saw the two spies steadily following me.  For the greater part of the way they kept at a safe distance behind.  But once or twice they quickened their pace, as if with the purpose of overtaking me, then stopped, consulted together, and fell back again to their former position.  They had some special object evidently in view, and they seemed to be hesitating or differing about the best means of accomplishing it.  I could not guess exactly what their design might be, but I felt serious doubts of reaching Knowlesbury without some mischance happening to me on the way.  These doubts were realised.

I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at some distance ahead, and had just concluded (calculating by time) that I must be getting near to the town, when I suddenly heard the steps of the men close behind me.

Before I could look round, one of them (the man by whom I had been followed in London) passed rapidly on my left side and hustled me with his shoulder.  I had been more irritated by the manner in which he and his companion had dogged my steps all the way from Old Welmingham than I was myself aware of, and I unfortunately pushed the fellow away smartly with my open hand.  He instantly shouted for help.  His companion, the tall man in the gamekeeper’s clothes, sprang to my right side, and the next moment the two scoundrels held me pinioned between them in the middle of the road.

The conviction that a trap had been laid for me, and the vexation of knowing that I had fallen into it, fortunately restrained me from making my position still worse by an unavailing struggle with two men, one of whom would, in all probability, have been more than a match for me single-handed.  I repressed the first natural movement by which I had attempted to shake them off, and looked about to see if there was any person near to whom I could appeal.