She was too inexperienced a traveller, and had been too dispirited to call to the driver and ask him to give her a cast in his cart. When he stopped, her strained nerves caused her heart to beat fast, while she urged her trembling steps to carry her on, as she pretended not to notice the stoppage. The driver was occupied with a commission and a puzzle of his own. He first peered through the sinking sunbeams, and next shouted after her, leaping from his cart, flinging down his reins—confident in the discretion of his team of horses, running heavily in pursuit, and finally laying a powerful hand on Lady Bell’s shoulder to arrest his object. Happily, he spoke in the same breath, before she shrieked out, with no Squire Trevor near at this time to come to the rescue. “Holloa! madam, be you parson’s new wife as I was to overtake and pick up, if so be she hadn’t met and ridden on with parson? We ha’ mounted and wedged in the feather bed, ready, where yo’ll sit soft and steady, and I ha’ been told to take you to the town.” Lady Bell recovered her wits immediately. “No, my good man,” she said; “I think the lady must have met her husband, since it is getting late; but will you let me take her place till we come up with her?” The man in the smock had pulled his forelock, had looked and spoken simply and kindly, and she believed she could see that she might trust him, while her circumstances would hardly be rendered more wretched though he failed her. The driver consented without any difficulty, and hoisted her carefully to her seat, where, as the horses jogged on, she could think of nothing for a time but the welcome rest and comparative ease which had succeeded her sore weariness and flagging exertions. But as the sun set, the evening fell, and the September night-air blew chill and cold, the horses floundered in and out of the holes in the road; the countryman shouted to the horses in language which Lady Bell could not understand, with a violence which seemed to contradict her impression of his kindliness, and he took it upon him to beguile his way with a lusty stave, fit to split her ears. Lady Bell began to think that she knew of no house to shelter her, no bed to lie down upon, except that on which she sat by a countryman’s charity. Her deed might have got wind, her husband might be following her; and what countryman, for the very reason that he was simple and honest, would keep a runaway wife from her husband? Then she commenced to shake and shiver as with an ague fit, till even the attention of her unobservant companion was called to her.