However, for the rest of his day’s journey he had the road virtually to himself; and by sundown he had completed his forty-fifth mile, and was clanking into the High Street of Basingstoke. At the “White Horse” in this town he woke on the following morning, with a sense of constriction at his heart, to find the water in his ewer a sheet of ice, and that smell of cold soot, that seems the prevailing atmosphere of hard winters, to proceed from everything about him. His room looked upon the stable-yard, and glancing thereinto while in process of dressing, he broke into an oath at sight of a yellow chaise that stood below with horses attached, over one of which a red-nosed post-boy sprawled expectant, awaiting his fare. “Now, by the lord!” he muttered--“if my Nemesis has not lain with me at mine own inn!” He was scowlingly speculating as to the possibility of his having to tail a second day in the wake of this rumbling jaundice, when he uttered a startled exclamation and, drawing into the covert of the window curtains, stood peering down into the yard. For the hirer of the chaise--to whom early rising would appear to be a right condition of posting--was at that moment issued from the inn, and was mounting, without any affectation of leisure, the step of the vehicle. Mr. Tuke, thinking of that presentation to his view, two nights before, of a lank, long back in the pit of the theatre, came hurriedly from his hiding-place; and at that instant, the traveller turned and flashed an upward glance at the window. With the very movement, he gave a hoarse order to the post-boy, wrenched open the door of the carriage, plunged in, and, before peeping Tom could gather his perceptions, the chaise was rolling and clattering out of the yard. So--ho! there was business afoot! Where hitherto was all avoidance and reluctance, now must be haste and scurry and pursuit. The squalid rogue Brander posting it like a lord! Surely there must be some momentous reason for the outlay. The gentleman at this point, wild with eagerness and impatience, stood below presently on the yard-steps to bolt a mouthful of meat and bread while his horse was saddling. Ten minutes later he was off and set to the chase, pounding it along at what rate he durst on the icy roads. “If they are pointed for Andover, well and good,” he murmured. “Do they take cross-tracks for the ‘Dog and Duck,’ I shall know what to apprehend.” With the thought, he swerved from the main-road into the first of the homeward by-ways; cantered down a mile of close-set lanes; turned a corner leading to a stretch of open downs, and--there, going one before him, small in the distance, was the vehicle he pursued. To overtake and constitute himself its rear-guard--such must be his object. An easily attained one, it would appear; but his horse was scarcely fresh, and a slip on those glassy ruts might ruin all.