Chapter 17

Now Jim was quite mistaken in supposing that by leaving the field in
a roundabout manner he had deceived Dairyman Tucker as to his object.
That astute old man immediately divined that Jim was meaning to track
the fugitives, in ignorance (as the dairyman supposed) of their
lawful relation. He was soon assured of the fact, for, creeping to a
remote angle of the field, he saw Jim hastening into the town.
Vowing vengeance on the young lime-burner for his mischievous
interference between a nobleman and his secretly-wedded wife, the
dairy-farmer determined to balk him.

Tucker had ridden on to the Review ground, so that there was no
necessity for him, as there had been for poor Jim, to re-enter the
town before starting. The dairyman hastily untied his mare from the
row of other horses, mounted, and descended to a bridle-path which
would take him obliquely into the London road a mile or so ahead.
The old man's route being along one side of an equilateral triangle,
while Jim's was along two sides of the same, the former was at the
point of intersection long before Hayward.

Arrived here, the dairyman pulled up and looked around. It was a
spot at which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important,
led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to
Idmouth and the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to
London; but on the other there appeared the back of a carriage, which
rapidly ascended a distant hill and vanished under the trees. It was
the Baron's who, according to the sworn information of the gardener
at Mount Lodge, had made Margery his wife.

The carriage having vanished, the dairyman gazed in the opposite
direction, towards Exonbury. Here he beheld Jim in his regimentals,
laboriously approaching on Tony's back.

Soon he reached the forking roads, and saw the dairyman by the
wayside. But Jim did not halt. Then the dairyman practised the
greatest duplicity of his life.

'Right along the London road, if you want to catch 'em!' he said.

'Thank 'ee, dairyman, thank 'ee!' cried Jim, his pale face lighting
up with gratitude, for he believed that Tucker had learnt his mistake
from Vine, and had come to his assistance. Without drawing rein he
diminished along the road not taken by the flying pair. The dairyman
rubbed his hands with delight, and returned to the city as the
cathedral clock struck five.

Jim pursued his way through the dust, up hill and down hill; but
never saw ahead of him the vehicle of his search. That vehicle was
passing along a diverging way at a distance of many miles from where
he rode. Still he sped onwards, till Tony showed signs of breaking
down; and then Jim gathered from inquiries he made that he had come
the wrong