l went well: but the roads hereabouts were very soft
and boggy; it was next to impossible sometimes to know whether we were
right or not; and after a while one of my men waited for me--he that
carried the lantern to guide the rest of us. The first I saw of him was
his horse's ears, very black, like a pair of horns, against the lighted
mist. "Sir," he said, "I do not know the road. I can see not five yards,
light or no light."

I called out to James.

"James," said I, "do you know where we are?"

"No, sir," said he, "at least not very well."

"Cousin," I said--(for Dolly had reined up her horse close behind, not
knowing, I suppose, that I was so near). "Cousin, I am sorry to trouble
you; but unless you can lead us--"

"Give me the lantern," she said sharply to my man.

She took it from him, and pushed forwards. I wheeled my horse after her
and followed. The rest fell in behind somewhere. I did not say one word,
good or bad; for a certain thought had come to me of what might happen.
She thought, I suppose, that Anne was behind her.

So impatient was my Cousin Dolly, that, certain of her road, as she
supposed, she urged her horse presently into a kind of amble. I urged
mine to the same; and so, for perhaps ten minutes, we rode in silence. I
could hear the horses behind--or rather the sucking noise of their
feet,--fall behind a little, and then a little more. The men were
talking, too; and so was Anne, to them--for she liked men's company, and
did not get very much of it in Dolly's service--and this I suppose was
the reason why they did not notice how the distance grew between us.
After about ten minutes I heard a man shout; but the fog deadened his
voice, so that it sounded a great way off; and Dolly, I suppose, thought
he was not of our party at all; for she never turned her head; and
besides, she was intent on hating me, and that, I think, absorbed her
more than she knew. I said nothing; I rode on in silence, seeing her
like an outline only in the dark, now and again--and, more commonly
nothing but a kind of lighted mist, now and then obscured. It appeared
to me that we were very far away to the right; but then I never
professed to know the way; and it was no business of mine. Truly the
very courses of nature fought against my cousin and her passionate ways.
Presently I turned at a sound; and there was James' mare at my heels. I
knew her even in the dark, by the white blaze on her forehead. I had
been listening f