“And now I think I’ll drive in with you, Dawson” (dismounting, and handing his horse to a trooper). “I suppose a decent dinner will pick me up, though I feel just as much inclined to hang myself as do anything else at present. I should like to meet this travelled friend of yours; strangers are most agreeable.”

Sir Ferdinand was right in thinking it was hardly worth while going through the form of seeing whether we had waited for him. Lieutenant Lascelles, on leave from his regiment in India, had taken French leave. When inquiry was made at the hotel, where dinner had been ordered by Mr. Dawson and covers laid for a dozen, he had just stepped out. No one seemed to know exactly where to find him. The hotel people thought he was with the Mr. Dawsons, and they thought he was at the hotel. When they surrounded the tent, and then rushed it, all that it contained was the body of old Jacob Benton, lying dead drunk on the floor. A horse-rug was over him, his racing saddle under his head, and his pockets stuffed with five-pound notes. He had won his race and got his money, so he was not bound in honour to keep sober a minute longer.

Rainbow was gone, and there was nothing to be got out of him as to who had taken him or which way he had gone. Nobody seemed to have “dropped” to me. I might have stayed at Turon longer if I’d liked. But it wasn’t good enough by a long way.

We rode away straight home, and didn’t lose time on the road, you bet. Not out-and-out fast, either; there was no need for that. We had a clear two hours’ start of the police, and their horses were pretty well knocked up by the pace they’d come home at, so they weren’t likely to overhaul us easy.

It was a grand night, and, though we didn’t feel up to much in the way of talking, it wasn’t bad in its way. Starlight rode Rainbow, of course; and the old horse sailed away as if a hundred miles or a thousand made no odds to him.

Warrigal led the way in front. He always went as straight as a line, just the same as if he’d had a compass in his forehead. We never had any bother about the road when he led the way.