I can manage him."

As Mr. Rogers hurried back for the brandy, she lifted the man and
carried him, rejecting our help, to an armchair beside the window.
There for a moment, standing with her back to us, she peered into his
face and (as I think now) whispered a word to him.

"Open the window, boy--he wants air," she called to me, over her
shoulder.

While I fumbled to draw the curtains she reached an arm past me and
flung them back: and so with a turn of the wrist unlatched the
casement and thrust the pane wide. In doing so she leaned the weight
of her body on mine, pressing me back among the curtain-folds.

I heard a cry from the Rector. An oath from Mr. Rogers answered it.
But between the cry and the answer Mr. Whitmore had rushed past me
and vaulted into the night.

"Confound you, Lydia!" Mr. Rogers set down the tray with a crash,
and leapt over it towards the window, finding his whistle and blowing
a shrill call as he ran. "We'll have him yet! Tell Hodgson to take
the lane. Oh, confound your interference!"

Across the yard a clatter of hoofs sounded, cutting short his speech.

"The gate!" he shouted, clambering across the sill.

But he was too late. As he dropped upon the cobbles and pelted off
to close it, I saw and heard horse and rider go hurtling through the
open gate--an indistinguishable mass. A shout--a jet or two of
sparks--a bang on the thin timbers as on a drum--and the hoofs were
thudding away farther and farther into darkness.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE OWL'S CRY.

Silence--and then Mr. Rogers's voice uplifted and shouting for
Hodgson!

But Hodgson, it seemed, had found out a way of his own. For a fresh
sound of hoofs smote on our ears--this time in the lane--a tune
pounded out to the accompaniment of loose stones volleyed and
dropping between the beats.

"Drat the man's impidence," said Miss Belcher coolly; "he's taken my
mare!"

"What's that you say?" demanded Mr. Rogers's angry voice from the
yard.

"You won't find another horse, Jack, unless you brought him.
Whitmore keeps but one."

"Confound it all, Lydia!" He came sullenly back towards the window.

"You've said that before. The man's gone, unless Hodgson can
overtake him--which I doubt. He rides sixteen stone if an ounce, and
the mare's used to something under eleven. So give over, my boy, and
come in and tell me what it's all about."

"Look here," he growled, clambering back into the room, "there's
devilry