Each was riding one horse and leading another beside on a long rein. The road to Lyme was being used by the militia, and it would have been foolish to be seen near Shute, so they rode north-east at first, into the maze of tracks and sunken lanes that wander here and there among the rolling hills and woodlands, and could have led them to Honiton or Ottery, had they wanted. But Ann and young Paul knew these lanes well from their visits to Israel Fuller’s secret meeting places, and gradually they edged their way north, until they crossed the Honiton-Bridport road, and then west, working their round to Lyme in a wide circle that would take them north of Axminster. They rode silently in single file for the most part, each concentrating on the horses. Paul rode first, a slight, shockheaded figure, dwarfed by the great chestnut hunter of Roger Satchell’s on which he perched, and leading a bay that was little smaller. Then came Ann, sitting side-saddle on her chestnut pony, and leading the pack-horse that her father sometimes rode; and finally the gawky, angular figure of the surgeon, like a bony scarecrow astride his black stallion, softly cursing the phlegmatic grey pony beside him every time it stretched its stubborn head for some juicy grass in the hedgerow.
