Plodding wearily on, in the shuffling, dogged, continuous jog-trot that takes a tired hunter home, Cassock presently pricked his ears, and increased the pace of his own accord, while his rider's heart beat fast, for rising an acclivity not a bow-shot in front, fluttered the blue riding-habit that enclosed her pretty shape, nodded the feather in the saucy little hat, that could be worn so jauntily by none but Nelly Carew. Cowslip had failed to make up its lost ground in time for her to see the end of the run, and Nelly was riding soberly home, full of pleasant thoughts and fancies that grouped themselves round a figure on a grey horse, skimming the brown moorland, far ahead of all competitors, and when last seen, alone with the hounds!

"Good even, Mistress Nelly," said the Parson, ranging alongside, with an awkward bow. "Nothing amiss, I hope, with Cowslip, nor its rider. 'Tis not often the pair of you give in before the deer, but you must confess that for this once Abner Gale and the old black nag had the better of pretty Mistress Carew." His voice, hoarse and thick with conflicting feelings, startled her from her day-dream. Nelly's colour rose, and the consciousness that he observed it caused her to blush deeper in mingled vexation and shame.

"I made a fatal mistake at starting," said she, with a nervous little laugh and a full stop.

"A great many women do that!" grunted the Parson.

"And all my calculations were wrong," continued Nelly, without noticing the interruption. "If the deer had passed under Dunkerry Beacon, like the big black stag last year, and taken soil in the Barle, down by Landacre Bridge, for instance, or at Withy-pool, where would you all have been then? Your turn to-day, Master Gale, mine to-morrow. That's the rule of stag-hunting, and it seems the same for most things in life."

She spoke with a flurried manner and an affectation of gaiety he did not fail to detect. The Parson's restless eye and moody brow frightened her, and glancing round on the solitude of the moor, she wished herself back with grandfather, safe at home.

"I would it were the same thing in life," he answered sullenly. "A bold, straightforward man who meant fair, and feared nothing, might have a chance of holding his own, then, and wouldn't see his place taken by the first new-comer with thicker lace on his coat and more brass on his forehead. Your park-fed deer is well enough, Mistress Nelly, for them that don't know better, but who in their senses would compare it with a real wild Exmoor stag?"

"I don't understand you!" said the girl, looking in vain for a companion, and wondering what had become of all the defeated riders who must be plodding steadily home.

"Then I'll speak out!" replied the Parson, "and remember, what Abner Gale says that he sticks to, for good and for evil, mind. For good and for evil! I'm a plain man, Mistress Carew."

"Not so very plain, for your age, you know!" Nelly could not resist saying, though dreadfully frightened. But he continued without noticing the interruption—

"A plain man, and may-be I han't learned any of the monkey tricks your town-bred gentlemen bring here into the West, thinking to carry all before them, with a hoist of the eyebrows, a fool's grin, and a dancing-master's bow. But at least I'm honest, if I'm nothing more, not afraid to show my face by light of day, nor to speak my mind in any company, from my Lord Bellinger down to Dick Boss the sheriff's officer, who has got a job in hand that will take him all his time, judging by what I saw to-day."

"Dick Boss! Sheriff's officer!" repeated Nelly, pale and aghast, for already she knew too well John Garnet's danger. "What have I to do with these matters? Why do you say such things to me?"

Though the Parson's voice softened while he answered, in Nelly's ear it sounded harsher than before.

"Why, Mistress Nelly?" he repeated. "I marvel that you can ask me so simple a question. Why do I watch every look of your blue eyes, every word from your sweet lips? Why do I feel a different man in your presence, and hover about you like that moor-buzzard up there hovers over the bare brow of the mountain, wheeling, poising, watching, waiting patiently till he may stoop and carry off his prize?"

"Waiting to tear it in pieces, you mean!" replied Nelly, angrily. "You're talking nonsense, Master Gale. If buzzard you be, I at least am not going to become your prey."

The sun was sinking to the brown level of the moor at their backs. The long shadows thrown before them, as they rode softly side by side, might have belonged to a pair of plighted lovers, so woven together were they, and intermingled on the broad expanse of heather, deepening to a browner russet and a redder gold with every moment of departing day.

Yet in one bosom rankled wild, unsatisfied longings, jealousy, suspicion, rage of wounded pride; in the other, contempt, loathing, and a passionate hatred, the more embittered that it was dashed with fear.

"You carry it with a high hand, Mistress Carew," said the Parson, losing the command he had tried to keep over a temper only too apt to rise beyond control. "You might have learned before now 'tis a waste of time to ride the great horse with me. I have the power, aye! and more than half the mind, to bring you down from your saddle there, in that tuft of heather, on your knees. You may smile—you look parlous handsome when you smile—but I'm not one to speak out of my turn, I tell ye. I know everything, and I've got his life in my hand!"

Of all her fair and noble qualities, a woman's hypocrisy is sometimes the fairest and the noblest. Unlike the rougher sex, it is when she is most unselfish that she seems most artful to deceive. Had her power been equal to her will, Nelly Carew's natural inclination, and indeed her earnest desire, had been to strike this man down, and trample him under Cowslip's hoofs, not perhaps to death, but to bodily injury and degradation, yet she commanded herself with an effort beyond all praise, and smiled sweetly in his face, while she observed—

"Something has put you out to-day, Master Gale. I suppose that is why you want to quarrel with your best friends. You never spoke to me so sharp before. Is it Cassock's fault, or mine, or whose, that your good nag could not keep up with that grey horse on the open moor? The creature seemed to have the wings of a bird. If that's all, sure 'tis no disgrace to be beaten when a man does his best."

Though her tone seemed easy and unconstrained, she felt cruelly anxious, and resolved at any cost to learn how far Abner Gale's enmity was to be feared on her lover's behalf.

"The grey horse is a good one, I'll not deny," said the Parson. "Too good for his master and his master's trade, though the beast has saved the man from hanging many a time and oft. I'm surprised at your grandfather, Mistress Nelly. I'm more surprised at yourself, that you can consort with such a jail-bird. He is a disgrace to us all, coming here to Porlock as though he could find no better place to hide in from the hue and cry."

"Do you mean Master Garnet?" exclaimed Nelly, with flashing eyes, while she stifled a sob of wrath and fear that rose from her heart.

"I mean Galloping Jack, the highwayman," answered Gale, "a villain who should have swung, by rights, at Tyburn, last autumn, whom I devoutly hope to see hanged before the fifth of November next!"

"You showed me his dying speech and confession yourself," answered the girl, with tight-set lips that kept down some overmastering emotion by sheer force of will. "Come, Master Gale, you know as well as I do that John Garnet is no common thief with a black vizard and a speedy horse, no mere moonlight robber to stop a coach for plunder on the king's highway. He has done something worse than that. Out with it; you used to have no secrets from your friends. Tell me what it is!"

Parson Gale was in the habit of declaring that a man who told a lie should possess a good memory. He wished he had stuck more consistently to this maxim, and had not, by his forgetfulness, thus laid his own statement open to denial. The wisest course, he thought, would be to take the bull by the horns.

"I only hoped to shame you out of your fancy, Mistress Nelly," said he, with a transparent affectation of friendliness and sincerity. "I know this man has assumed the title of a famous highwayman for disguise. He is no more Galloping Jack than I am. He is Master John Garnet, plain John Garnet, as I have heard them call him, in ridicule, I fancy, of his waiting-maid's face and mop of curling hair. Wanted for robbing his Majesty's Government. Wanted for high treason. Wanted for murder done in Covent Garden, brought home to him by evidence no court of justice can gainsay, and as sure to swing, on one, and all of these counts, as I hope I am to get home to supper this blessed night!"

She had grown paler and paler with every accusation in the catalogue of her lover's crimes. She looked as if she must have fallen fainting from the saddle, yet never for an instant did she lose her presence of mind, nor forego her resolution to save John Garnet how she could!

"I can't bring myself to believe it is as bad as you say," she answered carelessly. "But I thought there was something unusual about the gentleman, I'll not deny. 'Tis grandfather who will miss him if he comes to harm. Grandfather took to him, you know, as he never took to a stranger before. You must have seen that yourself."

"And you, Mistress Nelly," said the Parson, bringing his weary horse nearer the white pony's side, "did not you take to this stranger too, and for the sake of a new face flout the old friends who had loved you all your life?"

"La! Master Gale," was the feminine reply, "you talk of loves and likings as though we could put them on and off like our hose and farthingales. Sure you never thought me one to forget an old friend for the sake of a new face, comely though it be?"

"And you do not really care for this bedizened Jack-a-napes?" he exclaimed, while his voice shook with an emotion that betrayed how deeply the admission touched his feelings.

"I love him!" answered Nelly, watching her listener as the steersman watches an angry sky. "Yes, I love him—for grandfather's sake!"

Even in the anxiety and agitation of the moment, even through all the scorn and loathing she felt for the attentions of her unwelcome admirer, it could not but gratify her vanity to mark the changes that passed over his rough, weather-worn face with every word she uttered, every inflection of her voice. She had only suspected the Parson loved her when she first discovered her own love for John Garnet. She was sure of it now, and could almost have found it in her heart to pity him, for the utter hopelessness of his suit; but this was no time to indulge in such weakness. Abner Gale's affection was a powerful engine, and she must use it to save John Garnet's life.

Looking very beautiful, and trusting to her beauty as man trusts to his intellect, the brute to its strength and speed, she glanced her blue eyes shyly in his face, and added, after a becoming little pause of hesitation, "Why—Why should all this interest you, Master Gale?"

"Because I love you!" he exclaimed. "Love you, Nelly Carew, more than anything and everything in earth or heaven! I'm old and rough, I know—not fit to black the shoes on your pretty feet. I've been a brawler and a sot, and—and—worse than that, drinking and roystering at feasts and revels, while all the time my heart was sore for the sweetest lass in Devon, to think I wasn't good enough, nor comely enough, so much as to kiss the tips of her fingers, nor to sip with her on the same cup. But I'd be a different man if you was only to hold up your hand. It would be no trouble to leave liquor and wrestling-bouts, fairs, and fiddlings, roaring lads and saucy wenches, at your bidding. Nay, more than that, Mistress Nelly, I could go back from the great oath I swore, if you did but hold up your finger, and forgive my bitterest enemy for your sake!"

"Why should you have enemies, you that are so frank and hearty?" asked Nelly, fairly alarmed at the strength of the feelings she had aroused, while determined to profit by them at any cost.

The Parson reined in his horse, and unconsciously she followed his example.

"The man John Garnet," said he, in a deep, hoarse voice, "took my brother's life—stabbed him in the dark, Mistress Nelly, without friends or witnesses, and that man I have sworn never to leave till with my own eyes I see him laid in a murderer's grave. To-day an accursed chance delivered him out of my hand, when my knife was almost at his throat. The next time he shall not escape so well. Dick Boss and I, with a few stout lads to help, mean having him safe in Taunton Gaol before the week is out. And this is the gallant, pretty Mistress Nelly, I was fool enough to think had made such way in your good graces as to supplant your old friend Abner Gale!"

How she hated him, sitting there, square and resolute, on his horse! The unwelcome suitor, the implacable enemy, the avenger thirsting for the blood of one whom she only loved more madly, more devotedly, because of his danger and his need! Her blue eyes burned with unaccustomed fire, her cheek glowed with a deep, angry crimson, and Parson Gale, marking her emotion, believed it was called forth by affection for himself!

He looked at her in speechless admiration for the space of a full minute, then he burst out with a sob:

"Have pity on me, Mistress Nelly, have pity on me! I love you so! I love you so!"

She had reviewed the whole position, taken in every detail of the situation during this eventful pause, and made her crowning manoeuvre with the skill of that subtlest of all tacticians—a woman at her wit's end!

"It's very easy to talk!" she observed, demurely, "but I was always one that liked to see a man prove his words. If you—you really cared for me, you would do what I ask, wouldn't you, Master Gale? and never want to know the reason why!"

"Ask it!" exclaimed the Parson, "and if I say no, beautiful Mistress Nelly, then say no to me, when I plead for something dearer and more precious than the light of day and the very air I breathe!"

She knew too well the compact implied by so enthusiastic an assent, but hesitated not for a single instant.

"You will spare Master Garnet," she said, in a steady, monotonous voice, "and give him time to get clear out of the country, for my—my grandfather's sake."

"On one condition!"

"On any condition," she murmured, and the brown moors, the evening sky, seemed to spin round so fast that she turned faint and giddy in the whirl.

There was no question of deception, no loop-hole for mental reservation and eventual escape. In the balance hung her lover's safety against her own utter destruction. Could there be a doubt into which scale would be flung the deciding weight of a woman's self-sacrificing devotion, a woman's uncalculating love?

"You will be my wife, Mistress Nelly Carew, if I pledge myself to let this man go free?" said the Parson, in slow, distinct syllables, while a grin of triumph, none the less hateful for the affection it expressed, rendered his face more hideous than ever in her eyes.

"I will be your wife, Master Abner Gale, if you pledge yourself to let this man go free!" she repeated, in clear, incisive tones that seemed the echo of his own.

"And you promise never to speak to him nor see him again?"

"And I promise never to see him, nor speak to him again!"

"It's a bargain."

"It's a bargain."

Then they shook hands, and although Abner Gale would fain have ratified this strange betrothal with a kiss, there was something in Nelly's face that absolutely cowed him, and he forbore.

They soon separated where their respective paths diverged. The Parson made his way over the moor, wondering that he did not feel more elated with his triumph, while Nelly rode home alone, looking into vacancy with a white face and fixed, tearless eyes, that seemed to express neither sorrow nor impatience, nor fear, but only mute wonder, and an uncomplaining, apathetic despair.