Free Lord Tony's Wife by Emmuska Orczy

out of the porch.
    ‘Haven’t you got a boy or a man who can give that lout a hand with those sacrι horses?’ queried Martin-Roget impatiently. ‘He hardly knows a horse’s head from its tail.’
    ‘No, zir, I’ve no one to-night,’ replied the woman gently. ‘My man and my son they be gone down to Watchet to ‘elp with the cargo and the pack-‘orzes. They won’t be ‘ere neither till after midnight. But,’ she added more cheerfully, ‘I can straighten a saddle if you want it.’
    ‘That’s all right then—but…’
    He paused suddenly, for a loud cry of ‘Hallo! Well! I’m…’ rang through the night from the direction of the rear of the house. The cry expressed both surprise and dismay.
    ‘What the–is it?’ called Martin-Roget loudly in response.
    ‘The ‘orzes!’
    ‘What about them?’
    To this there was no reply, and with a savage oath and calling to the woman to show him the way Martin-Roget ran out in the direction whence had come the cry of dismay. He fell straight into the arms of his guide, who promptly set up another cry, more dismal, more expressive of bewilderment than the first.
    ‘They be gone,’ he shouted excitedly.
    ‘Who have gone?’ queried the Frenchman.
    ‘The ‘orzes!’
    ‘The horses? What in–do you mean?’
    ‘The ‘orzes have gone, Mounzeer. There was no door to the ztables and they be gone.’
    ‘You’re a fool,’ growled Martin-Roget, who of a truth had not taken in as yet the full significance of the man’s jerky sentences. ‘Horses don’t walk out of the stables like that. They can’t have done if you tied them up properly.’
    ‘I didn’t tie them up,’ protested the man. ‘I didn’t know ‘ow to tie the beastly nags up, and there was no one to ‘elp me. I didn’t think they’d walk out like that.’
    ‘Well! if they’re gone you’ll have to go and get them back somehow, that’s all,’ said Martin-Roget, whose temper by now was beyond his control, and who was quite ready to give the lout a furious thrashing.
    ‘Get them back, Mounzeer,’ wailed the man,’ ‘ow can I? In the dark, too. Besides, if I did come nose to nose wi’ ‘em I shouldn’t know ‘ow to get ‘em. Would you, Mounzeer?’ he added with bland impertinence.
    ‘I shall know how to lay you out, you satanι idiot,’ growled Martin-Roget, ‘if I have to spend the night in this hole.’
    He strode on in the darkness in the direction where a little glimmer of light showed the entrance to a wide barn which obviously was used as a rough stabling. He stumbled through a yard and over a miscellaneous lot of rubbish. It was hardly possible to see one’s hand before one’s eyes in the darkness and the fog. The woman followed him, offering consolation in the shape of a seat in the coffee-room whereon to pass the night, for indeed she had no bed to spare, and the man from Chelwood brought up the rear—still ejaculating cries of astonishment rather than distress.
    ‘You are that careless, man!’ the woman admonished him placidly, ‘and I give you a lanthorn and all for to look after your ‘orzes properly.’
    ‘But you didn’t give me a ‘and for to tie ‘em up in their stalls, and give ‘em their feed. Drat ‘em! I ‘ate ‘orzes and all to do with ‘em.’
    ‘Didn’t you give ‘em the feed I give you for ‘em then?’
    ‘No, I didn’t. Think you I’d go into one o’ them narrow stalls and get kicked for my pains.’
    ‘Then they was ‘ungry, pore things,’ she concluded, ‘and went out after the ‘ay what’s just outside. I don’t know ‘ow you’ll ever get ‘em back in this fog.’
    There was indeed no doubt that the nags had made their way out of the stables, in that irresponsible fashion peculiar to animals, and that they had gone astray in the dark. There certainly was no sound in the night to denote their presence anywhere near.
    ‘We’ll get ‘em all right in the morning,’ remarked the woman with her exasperating