He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would break every bone in the blockhead's skin.
How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious? Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?
He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.
Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.
It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.
"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly circumlocution, he had broached his topic.
"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench--it was little Jacob Berry's--corroborated that view of the mystery.
A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their feet this mine of supernaturalism.
"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o' that'll do for me, I can tell you."
And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the trap and drove away.
"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."
Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.
"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"
"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying as I won't be domd!"
Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank astonishment.
