Smith himself appeared to be taken off his guard; for, after bidding me beware what I did, he called with the same harshness to the man to release the rein, or take the consequences. "Oh, I am all right," the fellow answered roughly, peering at him through the darkness. "You are Mr. Smith?" "Well?" "Fairholt sent me--to stop you." "Fairholt!" "Ay, he is here." "Here?" my companion cried, in a tone of rage and surprise. "What the----! Why, he should be--you know where, by this time!" "Ay, but his horse threw him this morning, and he is lying at the White Horse here, with a broken leg!" Smith cursed the absent man for a fool. "I wish he had broken his neck!" he said savagely. And then, after an interval, "Has he sent anybody?" "He has had something else to think about," the man answered drily. "And so would you, master, with his leg!" Smith swore again, and sat gloomily silent. "He says if you can stead it off for twenty-four hours," the man continued, "he will arrange that----" "No names," Smith cried sharply, interrupting him. "Well, that--someone shall take his place and do the job." Smith did not answer for a time, but at length in a curt, incisive tone, "Tell him, yes," he said. "I will see to it. And you--keep a still tongue, will you? You were going with him, I suppose?" "Ay." "And you will come with the other?" "May be. And if not I shall not blab." Smith by a nod showed that the man had taken his meaning; after which, bidding him good-night, he pricked up his horse. "Come on," he said, addressing me with impatience. "I thought to have had companions, and so ridden more securely. But we must make the best of it." Heaven knows that I too would have liked companions, and took the road again dolefully enough. Nor was that the worst of it; Smith, in speaking to the stranger, had mentioned Fairholt. Now, I knew the name, and knew the man to be one of the messengers attached to the Secretary's office, one whose business it was to execute warrants and arrest political prisoners. But what had Smith, riding to a secret interview with a man outlawed and in hiding, to do with messengers? With Fairholt? And then, as if this were not enough to disturb me with a view of treachery, black as gulf seen by traveller through a rift in the mist--if this glimpse, I say, were not enough, how was I going to reconcile Smith's statement that he had expected companions with his first cry, uttered in wrath and surprise--that Fairholt ought to be by this time--well, at some distant point?