Before they reached Southwark, there rang out behind them the sound of hoofs upon the stones of the bridge.
"Can these be your father's minions, think you?" said Sir Guy.
"Nay!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Rest assured, they were scattered too far to dog our steps again to-night."
They emerged some moments later on the Southwark side and saw the pillory towering ahead of them.
"How far shall we fare to-night, love?" asked the knight.
"To Newington on horseback," Phoebe replied, "and then--well, then shalt thou see more faring."
There was a loud cry from the bridge, startling the pair from their fancied security.
"There they ride! The watch, ho! Stop the traitor! Stop him! For the Queen! For the Queen!"
"God help us!" cried Phoebe. "'Tis the two yeomen of the Peacock Inn!"
With one accord the pair clapped spurs to their horses' sides and resumed once more the flight which they had thought concluded.
When Rebecca set out for the Panchronicon from London Bridge, she knew that she had a long walk in prospect, and settled down to the work with dogged resolution. Her trip was quite uneventful until she neared the village of Newington, and then she realized for the first time that she did not know exactly where to find the deserted grove. One grove looked much like another, and how was she to choose between garden walls "as like as two peas," as she expressed it?
"Look here, Rebecca Wise," she said, aloud, as she paused in the middle of the road, "you'll be lost next you know!"
She looked about dubiously and shook her head.
"The thing fer you to do is to set right down an' wait fer that pesky good-fer-nothin' Copernicus Droop!" she remarked, and suiting action to speech she picked her way to a convenient mile-stone and seated herself.
Having nothing better to do, she began to review mentally the events of the last two days, and as she recalled one after the other the unprecedented adventures which had overtaken her, she wondered in a dreamy way what would next befall. She built hazy hypotheses, sitting there alone in the moonlight, nodding contentedly. Suddenly she straightened up, realizing that she had been aroused from a doze by a cry near at hand.
Turning toward London, she saw a wriggling mass about fifty feet away which, by a process of slow disentanglement, gradually developed into a man's form rising from the ground and raising a fallen bicycle.