“So I do, more than any other on earth. If I had seen him before, I doubt if I had been here.”
“I understood you to say you met him at Corbiton.”
“Met him, yes, by dim candle-light, smooth and courteous. But I never really saw him until now. You cannot rightly judge a man—a fighter, that is—until you have looked at him on horseback. That man knows my business. For the first time since I set out I doubt my success.”
“Will you turn back?” she asked, her voice quavering.
“Oh, no! I’m his Roland. If we do not cross swords, we’ll run a race, and may the best man win. But I feel strangely uncomfortable about the neck, and I think of my ancestor Johnnie and the Scottish king.”
He raised his chin and moved his head from side to side, as if the rope already throttled him. Then he laughed, and she gazed at him in fascinated terror, wondering he could jest on a subject so gruesome.
“That man is likely to defeat me,” he continued. “His plans are all laid, and already I feel the toils tightening around me. I am satisfied he knows every move I have made since I left him. The unseen spy is on my track, and, by my sword, I’d rather circumvent him than rule the kingdom. Wull, whaur’s yer wits? Now’s the time ye need them, my lad. In the first place, I dare not go through Northampton; that’s clear.”
“Why?”
“In my soul I’m certain a crisis awaits me there. I’ll be nabbed in Northampton. Then the question, ‘Why did you refuse a pass to Oxford’?”
“Did he offer you one?”