That fellow has bewitched her somehow, and where he's concerned--" He glanced up the slope and clutched me suddenly by the shoulder: for Whitmore himself was there, walking alone, and coming straight towards us.

"Talk of the devil--here, hide, boy--duck down, I tell you, there behind the bushes! No! Through the hedge, then--" I burst across the hedge and dropped through a mat of brambles, dragging my rug after me.

The fall landed me on all-fours upon the sunken high road, along which I ran as one demented--stark naked, too--a small Jack of Bedlam under the broadening eye of day; ran past Miss Belcher's entrance gate with its sentinel masses of tall laurels, and had reached the bend of the road opening the low cottage into view, when a sudden jingling of bells and tramp of horses drove me aside through a gate on the left, to cower behind a hedge there while they passed.
Two wagons came rumbling by, each drawn by six horses and covered by a huge white tilt bearing in great letters the words "Russell and Co., Falmouth to London." On the front of each a lantern shone pale against the daylight.

At the head of each team rode a wagoner, mounted on a separate horse and carrying a long whip.

Beside the wagons tramped four soldiers with fixed bayonets, and two followed behind: they wore the uniform of the North Wilts Regiment.
I knew them well enough by repute--these famous wagons conveying untold treasure between London and the Falmouth Packets.
They passed, and I crept out into the road again, to stare after them.
With that, turning my head, I was aware of a girl in the roadway outside the cottage door.