“There must be some turning yonder, and he has gone; and once out there in the open country he, a man who rides with such horses as ours, it will be folly ever to expect to see him again.”
The boy ran on, not growing breathless, but nerved as it were to the highest pitch of excitement, seeing nothing now, but reaching the hedge at last close by a rough gate, over which he vaulted lightly, to find himself in a winding green lane, but with nothing in sight to his left, nothing to his right, and no turning visible, and stretching right away.
“There hasn’t been time for him to get to here, for the horses were only walking,” he argued to himself, and then with sinking heart, “Oh!” he ejaculated, half aloud. “Perhaps it was only my mistake. I jumped at the conclusion that it was the man we saw.”
There was nothing for it but to continue along the lane till he met Saint Simon, and then he felt that they must go back to the inn and rouse people to a pursuit.
He began running at a gentle trot now, to husband his strength for what might come, when all at once his heart seemed to give a violent leap and then stand still; for coming round a bend he caught sight of the black, heavily maned head of the King’s horse, and then of the soft, pointed cap of the horse-dealer whom he had credited with the theft.
He was not looking forward, but bending over to his right, evidently doing something to the rein of another horse he was leading—Denis’s own—while, in the middle of the three abreast, he was mounted on Saint Simon’s. The three horses were fully in sight some fifty yards away, just as the man sat up again and began to urge them on from their walk, when he suddenly caught sight of Denis in the act of drawing his sword in the middle of the lane to bar his way.
The effect was to make him pull up short, and then with a cry to the horses he swung them round and set off back at a canter, to disappear round the bend directly after, with Denis running far in his rear.
“Now,” panted the lad, “if Saint Simon has only done his work we have him between us.” And he tried to utter a prolonged whistle, which he hoped might reach his charger’s ear; but he had not breath to give more than the faintest call.
“Oh, if I could only run ten times as fast!” he groaned. “I know what he’ll do. He will get them into a gallop, and ride my poor comrade down. If I were only at his side! And I seem to crawl!”
But he was running pretty fast, though to his misery he heard the dull thud, thud of the cantering horses grow fainter and fainter till it seemed to die right away.