"Look, look!" says she. "Oh, what shall we do? 'Tis papa's curricle coming up the hill, and on my life, it is papa within it." I needed no second exhortation. There was an instant of time in which we both looked wildly about us, backwards and forwards, only to discover that it was impossible to get away from our present place without being caught in the act of doing so. A hedge was at our back, another was on the opposite side of the way, and in front stretched the long level surface of the road. Yet there was just one chance of our passing unnoticed, though heaven knows a precarious and remote one! There was a slight declivity running under the hedge at our backs. It was a kind of dry ditch, but the bed of it was so shallow that it could hardly be dignified by the name of ditch at all. I commanded Cynthia to lie perfectly flat in this, face downwards, and to squeeze herself as far into the earth as she could get, whilst I did the same, though in regard to the last particular I fear my precept was higher than my resolution. Meantime the chaise came grinding and grunting up the hill, at the same smart pace, while we lay in our ridiculously inadequate hiding-place, perfectly convinced in our own minds that we must be discovered. What an agony of suspense we lay in, stretched full length, Cynthia's head pressed firmly against my heel, and our noses nestling in the dry earth! We durst hardly breathe as the carriage came nearer and nearer. How it was its occupants failed to see us I cannot understand, for we could have been scarcely shielded at all from their observation. But sure enough the curricle went past us, and as it did so we could even detect the familiar voices issuing out of it, above the noise of the horses and the vehicle. One belonged to my lord the Duke, Mrs. Cynthia's papa, a terribly irascible loud-toned voice to be sure; whilst the other, smooth, polished and elegant, was that of Mr. Humphrey Waring. When at last they had fairly passed us by at a deuce of a rattle, we were able to sit up from our tight positions and show our noses again. We gazed at one another solemnly, and then broke into a peal of laughter apiece. "Phew!" says I, "it was as bad a two minutes as ever I've had. I thought papa sounded very angry too." "Poor papa!" says Cynthia, with a very odd mingling of sorrow and mirth in her face. "I wouldn't have given much for you, sir, had he spied us; and for that matter I would have given even less for myself." "I suppose he is in full pursuit of us?" says I. "There cannot be a doubt of it," says his daughter. "And if I know anything of his Grace, he'll hardly sleep in his bed again until he hath tracked us down. He's a terrible implacable man when he's aroused. He'll be hunting us night and day, and he'll spend his last penny sooner than he'll be baulked by us, now that he hath seen fit to start on this business."