The Brown Mask Part 36

It was probably at this moment that Gilbert Crosby caught sight of the cavalcade, and thought the prisoner was being vilely ill-used. Well might he think so, for Martin attempted to force his way through the troopers and get to the window.

"She's used to me," he literally screamed. "See what an ugly fellow is beside the window now! Truth, I never saw so many ugly men together. Let me pa.s.s!"

"Peace, Martin, I am all right!" Barbara called from the window, fearful that these men might do him an injury.

"Take that idiot further back!" roared the voice of the man in command of the troop. "He does naught but frighten the lady."

Martin received a cuff on the head, and was hustled to the rear, a man riding on either side of him.

"Who was the gentleman who struck me?" whined Martin, rubbing his head.

"Sayers. His is a good hand for dusting off flies," laughed one of the men beside him, willing to get some sport out of this madman.

"Flies! To judge by my head he must have fancied he saw a bullock before him. Lucky I dodged somewhat, or I'd have no head for flies to settle on. And who is the gentleman with the voice of thunder?"

"That's Watson."

"It's a good voice, but there's no music in it. You have never heard him sing, eh?"

"Aye, but I have. He can roar a fine stave about wine and women."

"I'll go and ask him to favour us," said Martin, jerking his horse forward.

"Stay where you are," and the man's hand shot out to the horse's bridle.

"Very well, very well, if you like my company so much. It's a strange thing that they should put wine and women into the same song."

"Strange, you fool! Strong enough and beautiful enough, are they not both intoxicating?"

"I know not," Martin answered. "I have no experience of strong women."

"Strong wine and beautiful women," I said.

"Did you. I am rather dull of hearing."

"You're a dull-witted fellow altogether to my thinking."

"It is most true, sir. I am so dull that I cannot see the wit in your conversation."

"I can cuff almost as vigorously as Sayers," said the man a little angrily, when his companion on the other side of Martin laughed.

"I will believe it without demonstration," said Martin, cringing in his saddle. "You frighten me, and now I have lost my stirrups. I am no rider to get on without them. I shall fall. Of your kindness, gentlemen, find me my stirrups."

"Plague on you for a fool," said one.

"A blessing on you if you get my feet into the stirrups."

"Stop, then, a moment."

Martin pulled up, and the cavalcade went on. The two men, one on either side, brought their horses close to Martin's, and bent down to find the stirrups. Martin suddenly gave both horses the spur in the flanks with a backward fling of his heels, and at the same time struck each man a heavy blow on his lowered head. The horses sprang aside, one rider falling in the roadway, the other stumbling with his animal into the ditch by the roadside. The next instant Martin had whipped round his own horse, and was galloping back along the road.

It had been the work of a few seconds, and a few seconds more elapsed before the cavalcade came to a standstill.

Then a voice roared orders, half a dozen shots sang about the fugitive, and there were galloping horses quickly in pursuit.

Expecting the shots, Martin had flung himself low on the horse's neck.

The animal, frightened by the swinging stirrups and driven by the spur, plunged madly along the road. So long as the road was straight, Martin let the horse go, but at the first bend, when there was no chance of his pursuers seeing him, he checked the animal a little, slipped from his back, and with a blow sent him careering riderless along the road.

"He'll make a fine chase for them, and should find his way back to Witley," said Martin as he crouched down in a ditch which divided the road from a wood. Cracking branches might have betrayed him had he entered the wood just then. Half a dozen hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed him, galloping in pursuit, and when the sounds had died away, and he was convinced that no others followed, he crawled from the ditch and went straight before him into the wood. At a clearing he stopped and looked at the stars, then continued his way along a narrow track that went towards the south-west, in which direction lay Dorchester. He had no mind to enter the town as a prisoner, but he meant to reach it all the same, and as soon as possible.

For an hour he pushed forward, and then came suddenly to the edge of a clearing of some size. He stopped. He saw nothing, he was not sure that he heard anything, but the air seemed to vibrate with some presence besides his own.

Perhaps he had heard the low sound which the opening door of the hut made.

"You're a dead man if you move," said a voice out of the darkness.

Fairley started and made a step forward, but stopped in time.

"I should know that voice. I am Martin Fairley."

"Fairley!"

Crosby hurried forward to meet him.

"Have you been a prisoner in Dorchester?" Martin asked.

"A prisoner! No."

"The devil take that wench!"

"What wench?" Crosby asked.

"Give me something to drink and a mouthful of food. The story may be told in a few words, and then we must get to Dorchester."

"Martin! Why? Surely she--"

"Yes; she will be there within an hour or so. That is why we go to Dorchester to-night."

CHAPTER XX

SCARLET HANGINGS

Barbara's prison was an old house in a narrow street of Dorchester, the ground floor of which had been turned into temporary barracks for soldiers and militiamen. The prisoner pa.s.sed to rooms on the upper floor through a rough, gaping crowd, and in some faces pity shone through brutality for a moment. Something worse than death might await so fair a traitor.