We two set out to perform an impossibility: for though, starting
together on a long journey, a good steady walker might tire out a horse
carrying a man, and in a fortnight's work, before we had got half-way to
Barnstaple, I knew that my father would have arranged to catch the
coach, and I remembered that the coach would change horses every ten or
twelve miles; and as all this forced itself into my mind, I sat down on
a stone by the road-side.
"Tired?" said Bigley, wiping the perspiration from his face.
"No, not yet; but I've been thinking, and my thoughts get heavier every
moment," I replied.
"What do you mean?" cried Bigley.
"That we cannot do this," I said; "and we should be doing something far
more sensible if we go back home, and write a letter to my father. Why,
it would get to him days before we could."
Bigley took off his cap and rubbed his ear.
"I'm afraid you are right," he said; "but I don't like to go back."
"Then let's go on to Barnstaple, and write to him from there."
"To be sure!" cried Bigley, jumping at the compromise. "Come along."
"No, I said; it will not do. I've left his letter behind, and I don't
know where to write."
"Oh, Sep!" cried Bigley reproachfully. "Then, we must go back."
We stood looking at each other just as we had made a fresh start, and
the weariness we were beginning to feel brought with it a strange
low-spirited sensation that was depressing in the extreme.
"Come along," I said. "Let's get back, or we shall lose another day
before we can get off a letter."
"Wait a minute," said Bigley; "there's the half-way house not a quarter
of a mile away. We'll go on there and have some bread and cheese and
cider, then we shall be able to walk back more quickly."
It did not take us long to reach the pretty little road-side ale-house,
where the first thing I saw was the doctor's pony tied up to the gate by
the rough stable or shed.
"Some one ill?" I said. "Shall we tell Doctor Chowne what we were
going to do?"