The Dark Mile (Historical Novel). D. K. Broster

more cloaking themselves in the grape-hued mystery of twilight. Young Invernacree, who loved them, and had something of the poet in him, came for a moment out of his absorption, some Gaelic verses about the high hilltops recurring to his memory; and then poetry and cattle-lifting were alike driven out of his mind by a distant sound ahead of him resembling that of horses galloping at a rate very unusual on this rough road, accompanied by a rumbling noise such as a heavy vehicle might make. He rounded a corner and saw that his ears had heard aright. Swaying and banging, a coach was fleeing away in front of him along the loch-bordered road—and fleeing was really the word for its progress behind its obviously runaway horses. Ian decided that he must already have heard the hoofs of these before they had broken into their mad gallop, but had been too preoccupied to realise the fact. Now . . . he struck spurs into his mare and sent her forward after the receding vehicle.

      It was instinctive, his pursuit, though even in its course he knew that he could do little good. The ill-fated coach had had too much start of him. He could not see the postillion for its bulk, and wondered whether the latter had lost his seat, and that this accounted for the coach’s wild career; but in that case he must have come upon him by the roadside. Now he saw a man’s head emerge for a moment from the left-hand window, the furthest from the loch and go back again; then a hand sought for the handle of the door and opened it.

      “Is he going to jump out? Uncommon dangerous!” thought the pursuer. “And is he alone in there, or is there another occupant?” For the man was with one hand keeping the door open, no easy task at that rate of progress; yet, as his head and shoulders remained within, it almost seemed as if he were occupied with some other person in the interior of the conveyance. And then, before he could jump—if such were his intention—the end came, and in a more catastrophic manner than the rider behind had anticipated. For the road again made a slight bend, and, to Ian’s horror, the rocking coach, instead of following it round the curve, plunged straight ahead. The horseman uttered a shout of dismay as he saw the vehicle go clear over the brink; it lurched, half stopped, then toppled over on to its side on the stones of the shore. There was a splash as it struck the shallow water—luckily the tide was out. Nor was the actual drop from the road, mercifully, more than a very few feet.

      But, before it actually went over, the man who had been trying to get out had succeeded in doing so—half scrambling, half thrown—and was now picking himself up out of the road. The postillion—he was there after all—had stuck to the horses, and by the time Ian arrived he was cutting the traces of one, which was lying struggling. The other had wrenched itself free and was making off. Seeing that the gentleman on the road was, if not altogether unhurt, at least able to get to his feet, Ian, as he swung himself off his own mount, was for making to the assistance of the postillion. But he found his arm gripped, and a hoarse, desperate voice said in his ear:

      “Help me, for God’s sake! There’s a lady—my daughter, inside the coach . . . drowning perhaps . . .”

      Horrified, Ian ran down to the shore. A lady in there—how was one going to get her out? The upper wheels of the coach as it lay on its side reared themselves at about the level of his head; one could only see the underneath of the vehicle, and its great springs.

      “I’ll climb up, sir,” he said to the traveller, now at his elbow. He perceived him to be spare, middle-aged, rather harsh-featured, with a grey wig somewhat awry from his tumble.

      Young and agile, Ian swung himself up and clambered on to the side of the coach, now become a roof, and stood there like a mariner boarding a derelict. In the accident the door had slammed itself to. Ian stooped, wrenched it open and looked in.

      Down at the bottom of the species of large, ill-lighted box thus presented to his gaze, amid fallen cushions and wraps—and a glimmer of water also—there was a lady in a blue cloak. She lay on her side without stirring—yet surely there had not been time or water enough to drown her! She must have been thrown against something hard and have struck her head as the coach went over. But which was the quickest and best method of getting her out?

      A distracted voice below was saying, “Is she hurt? Help me up . . . get her out, man! Why, the coach is half in the water!” And there was the elderly traveller trying vainly to emulate his own gymnastic feat.

      “Stay where you are, sir,” said the young man hastily. “I will pass her down to you. Postillion, leave that horse to shift for itself now, and come up here to me.”

      “Do as the gentleman bids you, James,” said his employer, and the postillion left the now freed horse, which, subdued by its recent experience, got to its hind legs and remained there trembling. Ian had thought at first that by bending in through the window, with the man to hold him, he could haul the lady out, but he soon saw that she was too far away from his reach in this position. One of them must get down into the box and lift her up to the other; he had only been deterred from doing this at once by the fear that he should trample on her. However, he must risk that. He tugged off his riding boots, and taking a careful view of what lay beneath him, lowered himself through the door and felt about with his stockinged feet until he encountered something flat and solid upon which to rest his weight. He did not know what it was; it was enough that he stood neither upon the lady nor the broken glass of the undermost window. Water lapped cold about his ankles as he removed his arms from the doorway.

      And there at his feet was the girl, as pale as the swansdown collar of her cloak. Ian stooped and very gently lifted her by the shoulders; her head fell limply back. He touched her face; it was not even wet. Thank God, her mouth and nose had not, then, been under water, though he could feel that parts of her clothing were saturated. Laying an inexpert hand upon her pulse he found it beating, as it seemed to him, regularly enough. But it was not too easy, in that confined space, and with uncertain footing, to raise the injured lady and hold her up to the postillion leaning ready to receive her at the aperture above, and Ian was afraid that the man might let her slip; however he himself supported most of her weight from below. At last the postillion had her safe and drew her through; the rescuer scrambled after her to the upper side of the coach, and together they lowered her into the arms of the agitated gentleman waiting to receive her.

      A moment or two later young Invernacree, somewhat breathless, was once again looking down on the girl. Now, however, she lay on the pebbles of the foreshore, half supported in the arms of her father, who had taken off her bonnet and was gazing with deep distress at the cut, scarcely more than a scratch, which its removal had disclosed above one shapely eyebrow. Ian went and dipped his handkerchief in the loch, and the traveller, accepting it, wiped away the blood.

      “I think the wound is but slight, sir,” said Ian earnestly. “A splinter of broken glass, perhaps. But we will get the lady at once to shelter. My father’s house is a bare mile from here. There is no vehicle obtainable, but surely the postillion and I could carry her upon a cloak; and on the way there is a small farmhouse whence I could despatch a messenger to warn my sister to have a bed ready, and where I could also arrange to have your missing horse sought for.”

      The traveller thanked him warmly, premising only that he himself would assist the man to carry his daughter, in order that the rescuer should ride on ahead as messenger. But, on attempting this arrangement, it appeared that the gentleman’s own fall from the coach had not been entirely innocuous, and that a slight wrench to one knee, of which in his devouring anxiety he had hardly been aware, would prevent that modification being carried out. He, and not Ian, must therefore ride the latter’s mare; yet, having mounted, he did not push on ahead, preferring to ride behind, leading the remaining carriage-horse, as Ian and the postillion slowly carried his daughter along. It was a strange little procession, greeted with sympathetic outcries at the farmhouse when they stopped to exchange the cloak for a more convenient hurdle, and to send on a messenger to Miss Stewart.

      When at last they came up the avenue at Invernacree, there was Grizel in the open doorway, with Jacqueline behind her, capable Grizel, skilled in leechcraft and nursing. She already had a bed prepared. Ian and the postillion carried the hurdle with its light burden up the stairs, the gentleman following them. The young lady was laid upon the bed, and Ian, descending again, gave orders that a man should ride at once for the doctor. Then he returned to the landing to wait for the young lady’s father