They were quit of him now; but how to find the way home Captain Arbuthnot did not very well know.

He rode forward boldly, however, keeping his eyes upon the stars, and steering, so far as the circuitous lanes would allow him, north by west.
Bearing away too far to the right, as men are apt to do in the darkness, he missed the cross-ways by Ashen-cross, whence his true line ran straight through Pelynt; and after an hour or so of blind-man's-buff in a maze of cornfields, the gates of which seemed to hide in the unlikeliest corners, emerged upon a fairly good high road, which at first deceived him by running west-by-north and then appeared to change its mind and, receding through west, took a determined southerly curve back towards the coast.

In short, Captain Arbuthnot had entirely lost his bearings.
Deciding once more to trust the stars, he left the high road, struck due north across country again and by and by found himself entangled in a valley bottom beside the upper waters of the same stream which Gunner Sobey had forded two hours before and some miles below.
The ground hereabouts was marshy, and above the swamp an almost impenetrable furze-brake clothed both sides of the valley.
The Dragoons fought their way through, however, and were rewarded, a little before dawn, by reaching a good turf slope and, at the head of it, a lane which led them to the small village of Lanreath.
The inhabitants of Lanreath, aroused from their beds by the tramp of hoofs and with difficulty persuaded that their visitors were not the French, at length directed Captain Arbuthnot to the village inn, the "Punchbowl," where he wisely determined to bait and rest his horses, which by this time were nearly foundered.

Being heavy brutes, they had fared ill in the morass, and the most of them were plastered with mud to their girths.
The troopers, having refreshed themselves with beer, flung themselves down to rest, some on the settles of the inn-kitchen, others on the benches about the door, and others again in the churchyard across the road, where they snored until high day under the curious gaze of the villagers.
So they slept for two hours and more; and then, being summoned by trumpet, mounted and took the road again, the most of them yet heavy with slumber and not a few yawning in their saddles and only kept from nodding off by the discomfort of their tall leathern stocks.
In this condition they had proceeded for maybe two miles, when from a by-lane on their left a horseman dashed out upon the road ahead, reined up, and, wheeling his horse in face of them, stood high in his stirrups and waved an arm towards the lane by which he had come.
It took Captain Arbuthnot some seconds to recognise this apparition for Mr.Smellie.

But it was indeed that unfortunate man.
He had lost both hat and wig; his coat he had discarded, no doubt to be rid of its noisome odour: and altogether he cut the strangest figure as he gesticulated there in the early sunshine.