His promised wife, on the contrary, seemed in high spirits, as she was unquestionably in great beauty. Her black eyes, flushed and sparkled, her tawny cheek glowed with a rich deep crimson, while her manner betrayed no little self-a.s.sertion, her tone something, amounting almost to defiance, when addressed by her future lord. Talkative she never had been from childhood, but to-night she was less taciturn than usual, and seemed strangely eager to break such occasional silence as gave scope for her own thoughts.

Fin, looking on her with admiring eyes, did not fail to notice that in figure she had grown thin, to leanness, and that there shone a brilliancy, unnatural even for a gipsy, in the uneasy glances that watched his movements so narrowly, yet never rested for an instant on his face.

Thyra always seemed unlike other girls, thought Fin, and this preoccupation, no doubt, was but the slyness of love.

He took her hand, while the old beldame was busy refilling her pipe, and raised the slender, shapely fingers to his lips, with a comely grace, that a gipsy wears no less naturally than a prince of the blood.

"To-morrow, Thyra," said he, "you will make Fin Cooper the happiest man alive. To-morrow we shall be one in the sight of all our people, never to part again. The parson of the Gorgios joins a couple by the hand, like a brace of thieves chained together in the dock, but the Romipen of the Romany, a true gipsy marriage, solders them heart to heart, as I would weld tin and copper into bra.s.s! To-morrow, my la.s.s, you will be mine. To-night I am altogether yours. Ask me what you will, beautiful Thyra, I can deny you nothing at such a time as this!"

Her hand remained in his while he spoke: when he dropped it she shivered from head to foot.

"I am cold," she murmured, "so cold. There will be snow to-morrow, Fin, deep snow, amongst these hills. The Gorgio bride wears white on her marriage-day. A Romany la.s.s might do worse than follow the example."

Her fixed gaze, that seemed looking on some object miles and miles away, her sorrowful tone, so quiet and so very weary, disturbed him. He caught her hand once more, and would have drawn her into his arms, but for the shake and snort of a horse at the tent-door, and Parson Gale's well-known voice, bidding him rouse and show himself, with a ta.s.s of brandy in his hand.

A man who has little to offer is usually very hospitable. Fin sprang forward to welcome the intruder, with cordial alacrity, and summoned a bare-legged urchin from half-a-score within call, to lead the Parson's horse into a sheltered nook behind the adjoining copse, where two or three donkeys were pulling at a truss of hay. Abner Gale was then hurried into the tent, and supplied with brandy; the inclemency of the weather rendering that liquor unusually grateful to his burly frame.

"All friends, here?" asked the Parson, holding the untasted cup in his hand.

"All friends," replied Fin Cooper. "The old woman is stone deaf, and this time to-morrow Thyra will be my wife!"

Gale was equal to the occasion. Ere Waif could turn her head, he imprinted a kiss on her cheek, and tossed off the brandy to her health.

"I claim my priest's dues," said he gallantly, "the first right to salute a bride. And now to business, Fin. Not a moment is to be lost. I want to borrow the sure-footed roan again to-night. I'll pay you handsome this time."

With the lofty politeness of men who deal in horses honestly or otherwise, Fin ignored the question of money altogether.

"Oh! that's nothing between me and you," said the gipsy; "but the last journey you went our roan might as well have been stag-hunting. You must have galloped him a dozen miles on end without drawing bridle. 'Tis a good little beast as was ever bred on the moor, but I needn't tell you, Parson, that horseflesh is not iron. What do you want with him, now?"

"To mount d.i.c.k Boss," was the answer.

Fin made a wry face, and Waif held her breath. A sheriff's officer seemed the last person to whom it was natural for a gipsy to lend his horse.

Parson Gale put his head out at the tent-door, looked about him into the dark night through which snow-flakes were falling thick; and, having satisfied himself, he could not be overheard, proceeded to unfold his plans, the more frankly that he had every reason to count on the a.s.sistance of both his listeners.

"There's money be to got by the job," said he, with an evil scowl on his heavy brows. "Blood-money, but what of that? We will share and share alike. This pretty la.s.s of yours, Fin, she found out where the deer harboured. You and d.i.c.k Boss, and another handy chap or two, shall help me take him, and when King George comes down with the reward, G.o.d bless him--there will be twenty guineas each to spend in drink! If that won't make a blithe wedding, Fin Cooper, I'll engage to remain a bachelor till my dying day!"

The gipsy was a man of business. "And your share, Parson?" he asked, calculating the sum to be divided with great exact.i.tude.

"I don't desire to be paid," replied the Parson. "I do it for the sport!"

Waif leaped from her seat, with flashing eyes, and her hand on the knife she always wore, but sank back laughing wildly, and speaking in short disjointed gasps.

"Good!" she said. "Good! He's the right sort, Fin, this Gorgio. Bid him tell us how he means to set about the job."

Fin Cooper, turning to the Parson, thought he had never seen so wicked a smile as that which gleamed in Gale's eyes, and curled round his mouth while he repeated, "I do it for the sport, lad; he's a right deer, I tell ye; and if I don't set him up to-morrow, I swear I'll never go hunting again."

"That's why you want the roan?" asked Fin, turning the matter over in his mind, as a question of profit and loss.

"Right," answered the Parson; "d.i.c.k Boss must be on a good nag, and so must I. If John Garnet should get the wind of us, he'll show a clean pair of heels, you may take your oath. But what of that? Let worst come to worst, four mounted men spreading wide, and knowing every yard of the ground, ought to ride him down, though the grey horse had a wing at each foot instead of an iron shoe. But that's not my plan. Hark ye, Fin; we'll be in the saddle before daybreak, and we'll take him while he's asleep."

Waif stirred uneasily, but only muttered again, "Good! good! Mind what he says, Fin, for surely the Gorgio speaks fair."

"'Tis as easy as drinking out of a gla.s.s," continued the Parson, scarce noticing her interruption. "d.i.c.k Boss and the roan, his two men riding their own nags, yourself, Fin, on something that can gallop a bit, I never knew you without one--and game old Ca.s.sock to bring me along with the best of ye. It would be a rare chase, lad--I could almost wish he might slip through our fingers, and ride for it over the moor, but he'll never have the chance, Fin; he'll never have the chance!"

"Suppose he shows fight, Parson," suggested the gipsy, who was a bold fellow enough on occasion, but regarded such matters with a keen eye to business. "'Tis none of your dunghill fowls this, but a c.o.c.k of the game, with never a morsel of white in his wing, put him down where you will. Suppose he lugs out on d.i.c.k Boss, and whistles a brace of b.a.l.l.s into you and me?"

"I'm not afraid of him," answered Gale; "it makes no difference in the reward, Fin, whether we take him dead or alive."

"Come back, Thyra!" exclaimed the gipsy, with more of a husband's authority than was yet permissible in his tone. "Where are you going, la.s.s? Come back, I tell ye."

She was already through the tent-door, but returned at his bidding.

"It's stifling hot in here, Fin," she said; "I should have choked but for that mouthful of fresh air."

"And you were so cold a while ago," he replied, watching her narrowly.

"Parson Gale," he added, turning to his visitor, "take the roan and welcome. The lad will show you where to find him. I'll meet you at the head of the coombe an hour before daybreak. It's a job that won't work well in the dark; but the less time we put off the better when once the sun's up. Will you take another cup of brandy, Parson? You've a cold ride before you, and we've not done with the snow yet."

But Gale declined, and Waif, who suffered nothing to escape her notice, argued from this unusual abstinence an intense longing to work out the project of his revenge.

So John Garnet was to be in the power of his enemies, bound hand and foot, delivered over to a shameful death, with to-morrow's dawn, and it wanted but three hours of daylight now. John Garnet, with his merry eyes, his winning smile, and frank, kindly face. Was this to be the end of all? The nightcap, and the nosegay, and the hangman's cart rumbling over the stones on Tyburn-hill. John Garnet, the man she used to love so dearly she would have followed him bare-footed through the world. And it was _her_ doing--_her_ revenge. Yes! If she had driven a knife into his throat she could not more surely have slain him, than when she betrayed the secret of his hiding-place, and denounced him to Parson Gale. The man she used to love, the man she loved so fondly, so madly still. Now that it was too late, the whole tide of her feelings seemed to turn, and she would have given her own life freely, then and there, to save him, aye even for the blue-eyed girl, whom from the moment she saw them whispering together in the orchard she hated, with the fierce, pitiless hatred of her race.

She gasped for breath, the tent and its occupants swam before her eyes; a deadly faintness seemed to hang fetters of ice about her limbs, and she turned sick, with a maddening fear, lest the strength and hardihood she had so prized might fail her, in this, the extremity of her need.

Fin Cooper watched her with shrewd suspicious glances. The gipsy, a man of few words, but keen in perception, and ready of resource, drew his own conclusions from the restlessness he could not fail to notice in his promised wife, and resolved not to let her out of his sight till he started on horseback to join Parson Gale and his satellites. Once in the saddle, he had no fear that Waif could outstrip them, or give John Garnet warning of his danger, till he was safe in their hands.

So he sat and smoked in silence, stretching his legs across his own tent-door, while Waif gnawed her lip in an agony of remorse within, and the snow fell fast through the darkness without. But towards dawn the air turned colder and the sky began to clear. Fin Cooper rose, shook himself, drank a mouthful of brandy, and bestowing a sarcastic nod on its inmates, left the tent to saddle his horse and depart. In a moment the girl slipped out behind him, and, lightly clad as she was, sped through the sleeping encampment, swift and noiseless as a deer. Her grandmother, waking from a doze, never doubted but that Thyra had returned to her own tent, and unwilling to face the night-air, composed herself to sleep again with the pipe still in her mouth. Fin Cooper, riding steadily up the coombe, chuckled to think how he had outwitted his bride, and stifled the pangs of jealousy it seemed so unreasonable to entertain, now that the lapse of an hour or two must deliver his rival into his hand, while the swarm of gipsies he left behind him, huddled up in their blankets under their canvas coverings, snored healthily and loud, thinking little, and caring less, about the pearl of their tribe, her anguish, her sorrows, her coming espousals, or, indeed, anything but their own warmth, comfort, and repose.

So Waif sped on, fast as her supple limbs could carry her, through the copse, and up the coombe, and across the moor, wrapped in its cheerless shroud, stretching, as it seemed in her impatience, to a limitless expanse that mortal foot could never compa.s.s, mortal eye was powerless to scan. Oh! for the wings of the curlew! Oh! for the speed of the red-deer. She would give all the rest of her life, willingly, thankfully, for two leagues, only two leagues, less to traverse, for two hours, only two hours more to spare. Was it the snow that showed everything so distinctly, or was this really the light of morning stealing, cold and pitiless, over a world of white? Toiling, hurrying, panting, all agape with pain and fear, she yet found breath to curse the coming day. And still she hardly knew how or why she was straining nerve and sinew in this desperate race. There could be nothing in common now, between herself and the man whom she hated so bitterly, yet loved so well. He had deceived her, aye, as he had deceived many another, before it came to her turn (here Waif's small white teeth closed hard on her dainty lip), and would deceive more, no doubt, hereafter, with the same alluring smile, if through her agency he should escape the penalty of his misdeeds, and survive for future treachery. How could he be so false, so cruel, so heartless? Were all men like this, Fin Cooper and the rest, or was John Garnet a vile exception to his kind? She knew not, she cared not. Good or bad, she loved him! she loved him! how could she ever have thought otherwise? and she would do all in her power to save him, cost what it might.

Oh, that endless stretch of moor--those weary dragging miles! Curse them! Curse them! It was broad daylight already, and she had only now caught sight of the Severn Sea, lowering a dark and sullen line beyond the snowy waste. A band of iron seemed to enclose her head, a weight to drag at each of her limbs, a cold hand to tighten round her heart. What if her strength were to fail, and she should be too late after all.

To see him once again!--once again! Only to look in his face and die!

She would be content then, and ask for nothing more. But the time pa.s.sed, ah! so quickly, and her lagging feet so laboured in the snow-drifts, that he might be taken long before she could arrive at Porlock, and even then the only mercy she asked of heaven might be denied.

Her lips were parched and dry, her knees trembled, she could hold out at such exhausting speed no longer, and yet she had scarce accomplished half the distance to her goal. She knew that deep, dark ravine well, narrowing yonder in her front to some eight or nine yards from bank to bank. It would save more than a mile could she cross it at that point where the blighted fir-tree stood. Above and below it widened into a deep precipitous coombe, tangled with brushwood, through which a silver thread of running water laughed and whispered many a fathom down in its slippery bed of stones. No. It was too far to leap, and she must go round. She lost heart utterly; and the wind, rising once more in mocking gusts, seemed to flout and buffet her, driving another snow-storm in her face.

But on its wings it carried a dull, smothered beat, faint and distant, yet drawing nearer with each regular monotonous foot-fall. It was the tramp of horses, galloping at speed over the snowy surface of the moor; and Waif, eager, erect, motionless, listening with every nerve, as the red hind listens to the tufters, made out distinctly that the nearest rider was far ahead of two or three others in pursuit.

As the blinding storm pa.s.sed over, that death-chase came fairly into view. Along the side of the opposite hill swept two hors.e.m.e.n at headlong pace, the one a quarter of a mile before the other, and increasing his distance with every stride. A third laboured hopelessly in the rear; and two more, one of whom she recognised as her affianced husband, were making for the head of the coombe, with the obvious intention of hemming in and cutting off the object of their pursuit.

Keener even than a gipsy's eye-sight, the instincts of love and hate told Waif that the first rider was John Garnet, the second Abner Gale.

"Have I found thee, oh, mine enemy!" muttered the Parson, plying Ca.s.sock with his spurs, while he scanned the ravine before them, and reflected, not without a grim humour, how impossible it seemed that any creature unprovided with wings should reach the other side. He knew that deep and yawning chasm, where the fir-tree stood, well as he knew his own stable-door; but he did _not_ know the grey horse's dauntless courage, nor the recklessness of a man like John Garnet riding for his life!

Waif, however, could understand and rely on both. Tearing the 'kerchief from her bosom while she ran, she hurried down to the deep precipitous edge at its narrowest part, and waved for the man she loved her signal to come on.

How _like_ him, she thought, to spare a hand, even at such a crisis, and raise his hat from his comely head ere he forced it firmly down and set his horse going for the leap.