Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/539

 "By heavens, it is Malletort!" exclaimed Sir George, looking up from his charge, at sound of the flying hoofs, to observe something in the fugitive's seat and figure that identified him with the Abbé, and gazing after him so intently, that he did not mark the expression of satisfaction on Florian's pain-stricken face when he learned the other had escaped. "I never thought he could ride so well," muttered the baronet, while he watched the good bay mare speeding steadily over the open, and saw the Frenchman put her straight at a high stone wall, beyond which he knew, by his own experience, there was a considerable drop into a ravine. The mare jumped it like a deer, and after a time rose the opposite slope at a swifter pace than ever. Sir George could only make her out very indistinctly now, yet something in the headlong manner of her career caused him to fancy she was going without a rider.

He had more important matters to occupy him. It had begun to snow heavily, and Florian was growing weaker every minute. With a dying man for their freight; with the absence of other passengers; above all, with the prospect of increased difficulty in progression at every yard they advanced, for the sky had darkened, and the flakes fell thicker, guard and driver were easily persuaded to turn their horses' heads, and make the best of their way back to Hamilton Hill.

It was but a few miles distant, and Sir George, hoping against hope, tried to persuade himself that if he could only get Florian under his own roof alive, he might be saved.

They were good nurses, that tried campaigner and his two rough, hardy seamen. Tenderly, like women, they stanched the welling life-blood, supported the nerveless, drooping figure, and wiped the froth from the dry, white lips that could no longer speak, but yet made shift to smile. Tenderly, too, they whispered soothing words, in soft, hushed voices, looking blankly in each other's faces for the hope their hearts denied; and thus slowly, sadly, solemnly, the dark procession laboured back, taking the road they had lately travelled, passed the well-known hostelry, and so wearily climbed the long ascent to the grim, looming towers of Hamilton Hill.