The spirit of the age has changed; everything has changed so utterly that one can hardly believe in the existence of one’s earlier self. But I can still remember how, at that moment, I made the acquaintance of my heart--a thing that bounded and leapt within my chest, a little sickeningly. The other details I forget. Jack Rangsley was a tall, big-boned, thin man, with something sinister in the lines of his horseman’s cloak, and something reckless in the way he set his spurred heel on the ground. He was the son of an old Marsh squire. Old Rangsley had been head of the last of the Owlers--the aristocracy of export smugglers--and Jack had sunk a little in becoming the head of the Old Bourne Tap importers. But he was hard enough, tyrannical enough, and had nerve enough to keep Free-trading alive in our parts until long after it had become an anachronism. He ended his days on the gallows, of course, but that was long afterwards. “I’d give a dollar to know what’s going on in those runners’ heads,” Rangsley said, pointing back with his crop. He laughed gayly. The great white face of the quarry rose up pale in the moonlight; the dusky red fires of the limekilns glowed at the base, sending up a blood-red dust of sullen smoke. “I’ll swear they think they’ve dropped straight into hell. “You’ll have to cut the country, John,” he added suddenly, “they’ll have got your name uncommon pat. I did my best for you.” He had had me tied up like that before the runners’ eyes in order to take their suspicions off me. He had made a pretence to murder me with the same idea. But he didn’t believe they were taken in. “There’ll be warrants out before morning, if they ain’t too shaken. But what were you doing in the business? The two Spaniards were lying in the fern looking on when you come blundering your clumsy nose in. If it hadn’t been for Rooksby you might have------ Hullo, there!” he broke off. An answer came from the black shadow of a clump of roadside elms. I made out the forms of three or four horses standing with their heads together. “Come along,” Rangsley said; “up with you. We’ll talk as we go.” Someone helped me into a saddle; my legs trembled in the stirrups as if I had ridden a thousand miles on end already. I imagine I must have fallen into a stupor; for I have only a vague impression of somebody’s exculpating himself to me. As a matter of fact, Ralph, after having egged me on, in the intention of staying at home, had had qualms of conscience, and had come to the quarry. It was he who had cried the watchword, “Snuff and enough,” and who had held the whispered consultation. Carlos and Castro had waited in their hiding-place, having been spectators of the arrival of the runners and of my capture. I gathered this long afterwards. At that moment I was conscious only of the motion of the horse beneath me, of intense weariness, and of the voice of Ralph, who was lamenting his own cowardice.