"What time may I expect you back, sir?" enquired Clegg, as I jingled downstairs. "I cannot say. I may be late or very early so--get to bed." "If you are travelling far, sir, might I suggest that your pistols are ready in their holsters upstairs--" "I shall not need them!" said I, and stepped out into the street where Wildfire danced and capered in the grasp of Tom, my groom. "He do be werry fresh, sir," warned Tom. "So much the better!" said I. "Hold him until I give the word." So saying, I swung to saddle, settled feet in stirrups and gripped the reins short in gloved hand. "An evil night, sir!" said Clegg. "And you won't take your pistols?" "No! Let go, Tom!" Back sprang the groom and, snorting joyfully, Wildfire sprang away. CHAPTER V STORM AND TEMPEST A blusterous wind that fluttered the skirts of my long, caped coat, that filled the night with stir and tumult and flaws of sudden rain; a wind that whirled black masses of ragged cloud across a lowering heaven lit by a pallid moon that peeped stealthily and vanished, to peep again. And glancing from desolate, wind-swept streets to flying cloud-wrack, I judged there was worse to come and knew a strange, unnatural joy therefore, as I bent my head to buffeting wind and reined the fiery animal I bestrode to less furious pace. We crossed the river at London Bridge, a dark horror of moving waters swirling here and there in the ineffectual beam of lamp or lanthorn; on past gloomy streets and narrow courts where dim forms jostled, and ever and always the blusterous wind rioting 'twixt heaven and earth, booming in chimneys, moaning in dark corners, rattling windows, clapping-to crazy shutters and setting signboards a-swing on scolding hinges. On and on through this ever-growing turbulence, while Wildfire tossed proud head, snorted defiance upon the elements, and bored eagerly upon the bit. But once the great city was behind us, I gave him his will and away we went headlong into the wind, the clatter of his galloping hoofs drowned in the universal uproar. But fast as he sped, the demon of doubt and suspicion and growing dread kept pace, and for once, riding Wildfire, I forgot Wildfire and all else save the hell within me. A black-bodied chaise picked out in yellow! And now came the rain to lash me and I bared my head the better to feel it. Before me in the swirling dark were twinkling lights lurching rapidly nearer, and down upon me loomed a stagecoach, a mountainous shape that flitted by me like a phantom. A phantom? The very night seemed peopled by phantoms; I sped past phantom wains and waggons, piled high with phantom loads, that moved with no sound of hoofs or wheels; spectral horsemen flitted by, soundless; in the shadow of hissing hedgerow and raving, wind-tossed trees crawled miserable, nebulous shapes, seen but to be lost again, swallowed in the howling murk.