'I ought to thank you for your touching confidence,' said I, approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke.'But I admit the road is solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens.Little fear of anything of the kind with you! I like you for it, like your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition.But why not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the door and bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?' And I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart.
He had been timorous before; but at this, he seemed to lose the power of speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm of fear.
'Why not?' I continued.'The idea is good.I should be safe in there if I were the monster Williams himself.The great thing is to have me under lock and key.For it does lock; it is locked now,' said I, trying the door.'A PROPOS, what have you for a cargo? It must be precious.'
He found not a word to answer.
Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman.
'Any one at home?' I said, and stooped to listen.
There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an uncontrollable paroxy**; another followed immediately on the heels of it; and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon the horses with so much energy that they found their heels again, and the whole equipage fled down the road at a gallop.
At the first sound of the sneeze, I had started back like a man shot.The next moment, a great light broke on my mind, and I understood.Here was the secret of Fenn's trade: this was how he forwarded the escape of prisoners, hawking them by night about the country in his covered cart.There had been Frenchmen close to me;
he who had just sneezed was my countryman, my comrade, perhaps already my friend! I took to my heels in pursuit.'Hold hard!' I shouted.'Stop! It's all right! Stop!' But the driver only turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts, bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these lay themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying hoofs; and the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a halo of rain and spattering mud.But a minute since, and it had been trundling along like a lame cow; and now it was off as though drawn by Apollo's coursers.There is no telling what a man can do, until you frighten him!
It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to maintain my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near)
was become a chief point with me.A hundred yards farther on the cart whipped out of the high-road into a lane embowered with leafless trees, and became lost to view.When I saw it next, the driver had increased his advantage considerably, but all danger was at an end, and the horses had again declined into a hobbling walk.
Persuaded that they could not escape me, I took my time, and recovered my breath as I followed them.
Presently the lane twisted at right angles, and showed me a gate and the beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I continued to advance, a red brick house about seventy years old, in a fine style of architecture, and presenting a front of many windows to a lawn and garden.Behind, I could see outhouses and the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-house had in some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer, careless alike of appearances and substantial comfort.The marks of neglect were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the borders, in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were incongruously patched with paper or stuffed with rags.A thicket of trees, mostly evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it from the eyes of prying neighbours.As I came in view of it, on that melancholy winter's morning, in the deluge of the falling rain, and with the wind that now rose in occasional gusts and hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already drawn up at the front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest discourse with Mr.Burchell Fenn.He was standing with his hands behind his back - a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like a bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey cap, blue coat and top boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer.
The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received me at last in a sort of goggling silence.I had my hat in my hand.
'I have the pleasure of addressing Mr.Burchell Fenn?' said I.
'The same, sir,' replied Mr.Fenn, taking off his jockey cap in answer to my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy movements of one who continues to think of something else.'And who may you be?' he asked.
'I shall tell you afterwards,' said I.'Suffice it, in the meantime, that I come on business.'
He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his little eyes never straying from my face.
'Suffer me to point out to you, sir,' I resumed, 'that this is a devil of a wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a glass of something hot, are clearly indicated.'
Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash.The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me.On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the expression of a fascinated bird.So we stood silent, when the prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at the sound, prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up his horses and was shambling off round the corner of the house, and Mr.Fenn, recovering his wits with a gulp, had turned to the door behind him.
'Come in, come in, sir,' he said.'I beg your pardon, sir; the lock goes a trifle hard.'
