Where we were going and why they were carrying him along with us,
were questions it was useless to bother about. Margaret would explain
everything when we met. I could make little of the men who had rescued me.
They were clearly not farm-hands, for they were well armed, the guns I had
seen looked to me to be military carbines, and they had carried through
their business briskly and intelligently.
I heard the men on the box talking, but their speech was only about the
road and the speed. The country got rougher and wilder; the distant hills
were losing their clear-cut, rolling outlines, and becoming neighbours and
obstacles. The horses were thrashed unmercifully, but at times even the
well-plied whip could get no more than a crawl out of them.
The sergeant's end was at hand. He rallied, as men commonly do before
they put foot in the black river, and looked at me unrecognizingly. He
closed his eyes again, and began to writhe and mutter strange words.
Suddenly he cried plainly, "Curse the swine! Another wedge, ye damned
chicken-heart!" He looked at me again, and this time made out who I was,
and cursed loathsomely in his disappointment.
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