The Castle Inn

Excerpt: ...the riders emerged with grunts of relief on a sound causeway. To make sure that the pursued had nowhere evaded them, the tracks of the chaise-wheels were sought and found, and forward the four went again. Presently they plunged through a brook, and this passed, were on Laycock bridge before they knew it, and across the Avon, and mounting the slope on the other side by Laycock Abbey. There were houses abutting on the road here, black overhanging masses against a grey sky, and the riders looked, wavered, and drew rein. Before any spoke, however, an unseen shutter creaked open, and a voice from the darkness cried, 'Hallo!' Sir George found speech to answer. 'Yes, ' he said, 'what is it?' The lawyer was out of breath, and clinging to the mane in sheer weariness. 'Be you after a chaise driving to the devil?' 'Yes, yes, ' Sir George answered eagerly. 'Has it passed, my man?' 'Ay, sure, Corsham way, for Bath most like, I knew 'twould be followed. Is't a murder, gentlemen?' 'Yes, ' Sir George cried hurriedly, 'and worse! How far ahead are they?' 'About half an hour, no more, and whipping and spurring as if the old one was after them. My old woman's sick, and the apothecary from--' 'Is it straight on?' 'Ay, to be sure, straight on--and the apothecary from Corsham, as I was saying, he said, said he, as soon as he saw her--' But his listeners were away again; the old man's words were lost in the scramble and clatter of the horses' shoes as they sprang forward. In a moment the stillness and the dark shapes of the houses were exchanged for the open country, the rush of wind in the riders' faces, and the pounding of hoofs on the hard road. For a brief while the sky cleared and the moon shone out, and they rode as easily as in the day. At the pace at which they were moving Sir George calculated that they must come up with the fugitives in an hour or less; but the reckoning was no sooner made than the horses, jaded by the heavy ground through which they had