"Captain Miles!" I shouted, urging my pony forward. "Captain Miles! Take Trotter and ride him across the heath."
"Why, 'tis Master Hammond!" he exclaimed. "Nay, lad, that beast would not ship a crew like me: But they'll have their work cut out to take me. Come, young sir, I'll trouble you to give a hand with my mare, if you will."
Together, with Constance helping us, we dragged the body of the animal off the road, and hid it in a slight depression behind some furze bushes. Then hurriedly we strove to conceal the tell-tale tracks on the dusty road.
The dragoons were now only a bare quarter-mile away.
[1] The period between the 20th June and the 20th July, during which time the ancient right of "Pannage", i.e. turning out pigs to feed on acorns and beech-mast, within the New Forest was withheld.
The Two Dragoons on the Brockenhurst Road
"Leave me and shape your own course, Master Hammond!" exclaimed the Captain composedly, for he had regained both his breath and his wits. "You can do no more, and I'll warrant I can shift for myself."
So saying, he wriggled along the ground over the bank that screened us from the soldiers, and lay hidden in the bracken on the same side of the highway as the troopers.
Meanwhile, filled with anxiety on the behalf of Jeremy Miles--for he was always a general favourite amongst the youths in and around Lymington--Constance and I resumed our way, endeavouring to appear as unconcerned as possible.
Less than a minute must have passed since we saw Captain Miles's great frame disappear beneath the bracken, when we heard the clatter of the troopers' horses as their hoofs struck the road. Knowing that it would ill play our part to refrain from curiosity, we stopped and looked back at the pursuing soldiers.
They were of the same troop that we had seen in Lyndhurst a short half-hour ago. Great, swarthy men they were, hardened to cruelty by reason of their service at Tangiers, and, though I knew it not at the time, ready to practise the barbarities acquired from the Moors upon their own countrymen, as many a poor peasant of the marshes of Somerset had learned to his cost.
"Curse him!" exclaimed one, with an oath. "Where hath he gone? Are we to let a guinea slip through our fingers after all our trouble?"