Hamlets were asleep, and not a
light shone from wayside dwellings. Yet into a tired man's dreams there
came the rhythmic beat of a horse's hoofs, far distant, then nearer,
nearer, and dying again into silence. A late rider, and with this
half-conscious thought, and an uneasy turning on the pillow perhaps,
sleep again. On another road, beating hoofs suddenly came to the ears of
a wakeful woman; someone escaping in the night, perhaps, and she
murmured a prayer; she had a son who had fought at Sedgemoor. The
grinding of coach wheels on one road, followed by the barking of dogs;
and a woodcutter asleep in his hut, which lay at the edge of a forest
track, was startled by the thud of hoofs, and, springing quickly from
his hard couch, peeped from the door. Nothing to be seen, but certainly
the sound of a horse going quickly away. There was naught in his hut to
bring him a visit from a highwayman.
A man, riding in haste towards Dorchester, with papers and money in his
pocket which might save his son from Judge Jeffreys, halted suddenly.
Meeting him came another galloping horseman, and suddenly the moonlight
showed him.
"Have you passed a coach upon the road?"
The galloping horseman drew rein, and the anxious father trembled.
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