(continued)

Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the horse's head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking back.  The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he stopped him with a blow in the face.  Then, realising that he was deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, with the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned now, following remotely.

Suddenly he stumbled and fell;  his immediate pursuer went headlong, and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists again.  He would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help.  It seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked.  She fired at six yards' distance, narrowly missing my brother.  The less courageous of the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his cowardice.  They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third man lay insensible.

"Take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver.

"Go back to the chaise," said my brother, wiping the blood from his split lip.

She turned without a word—they were both panting—and they went back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony.

The robbers had evidently had enough of it.  When my brother looked again they were retreating.

"I'll sit here," said my brother, "if I may;"  and he got upon the empty front seat.  The lady looked over her shoulder.

"Give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's side.  In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother's eyes.

So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an unknown lane with these two women.

He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance.  He had hurried home, roused the women—their servant had left them two days before—packed some provisions, put his revolver under the seat—luckily for my brother—and told them to drive on to Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there.  He stopped behind to tell the neighbours.  He would overtake them, he said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of him.  They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane.

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