Thus saying he waved his hand, and Barecolt, striking his horse with his heel, led the way along the road at a quick pace. Arrah Neil followed, and was at his side in a moment; but good Diggory Falgate, who seemed less accustomed to equestrian exercise than either of his companions, was not a little inconvenienced by the trotting of his horse. Merciless Captain Barecolt, however, though, to tell the truth, he saw the difficulty with which their companion followed them at a still increasing distance, kept up the same rapid rate of progression for some six or seven miles, speaking now and then a word to his fair companion, but showing, upon the whole, wonderful abstinence from his usual frailty. At length they reached the top of a long sloping hill which commanded a view over a wide extent of country behind them, and along at least one-half of the road they had followed from Hull; and turning his horse for a moment or two, Captain Barecolt paused and examined the track beneath his eyes, to see if he could discover any signs of pursuit. All was clear, however. The sun, now risen a degree or two above the horizon, but still red and large from the horizontal mist through which it shone, cast long shadows from tree, and house, and village spire, over the ground in some places, and in others, bright gleams of rosy light; but almost all the world seemed still slumbering, for no moving object was to be seen on the road, and nothing even in the fields around but where team of horses driven slowly by a whistling ploughman, at about a hundred yards upon the left of the party on the hill, wended slowly onward to commence their labours for the day. "You may go a little slower now, young lady," said Barecolt, after he had concluded his examination; "we have a good start of them, and I do not think they would venture to send out far in pursuit." "Thank God!" answered Arrah Neil, not in the common tone of satisfaction with which those words are usually pronounced, but with the voice of heartfelt gratitude to Him from whom all deliverance comes. "But do you think we are really safe?" continued Arrah, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps it would be better to go on quickly for a time; but that good man who came with us seems hardly able to make his horse keep up with us."