Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/268

come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last pursuit. MacIan could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed; the long, gray coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long, gray neck of some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he and Turnbull were the two knights on one steed on the old shield of the Templars.

The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder—a ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.

They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden-path, and the clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn. Though the white vapour was still a veil,