His cool equable soul was stirred to its depths.

There was surely a grim fore-ordering in this chain of incidents.

But for the horse's colic there would have been no halt.
But for his skill in horse doctoring the sick beast would have been cut loose, and Colonel Flowerdue's party would have met only a coach laboring through the snow and would not have halted to discover its occupants....

He was a prisoner bound by a promise, but this meeting with Flowerdue had opened up a channel to communicate with London and that was not forbidden.

It flashed on him suddenly that the change of mind which he had suffered was no longer a private matter.