He glanced over
his shoulder as he spoke, and noted that the distance between them and
their pursuers was constantly widening, until, turning a corner, they could
neither see nor hear them.
And now the Colonel's spirits fairly bubbled over. He was a superb rider,
and swinging carelessly in his saddle, his hands hardly touching the reins,
he kept up a running stream of jocular comment.
"It looks to me like the old gentleman's going to be distanced," he cried,
with a chuckle, "He can't say a word, though, for he made the conditions of
this race. The start was a trifle straggling, as Jack Calloway told me once
when he left seven horses at the post in a field of ten, and perhaps the
Beau and the Queen didn't have the worst of it."
In every possible way he sought to divert his companion's mind. Once or
twice she delighted him by faintly smiling a response to his speeches. They
had passed the last of the straggling houses, and the turnpike stretched
before them, a white ribbon winding through the green meadow-land. They had
to wait while a sleepy tollgate-keeper lifted his wooden bar, and straining
their ears, they could just catch the faint, far-away sound of galloping
horses.
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