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 passed, 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 passed over, that death-chase came fairly into view. Along the side of the opposite hill swept two horsemen 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.