A horse stood quietly nibbling the grass, and on his back, fallen forward, with arms clasping the beast’s neck, and head drooping helplessly downward, was his rider, bleeding from a pistol wound in the neck, and too weak even to disengage his feet from the stirrups. In a single glance I recognised the horseman who had ridden ahead of the coach.
A pistol, evidently dropped from his hand, lay on the grass, and his hat lay between the horse’s feet.
If life was not already extinct, it was fast ebbing away. I lifted him as gently as I could and laid him on the grass. He opened his eyes, and his lips moved; but for a moment he seemed choked. I tried with some moss to stanch his still bleeding wound, but the groan he gave as I touched him caused me to desist.
Then he tried to speak something in French.
“What is it?” said I, in English.
A look of quick relief came into his face.
“Ride forward with the letters—for God’s sake—promise.”
Even in the feeble, broken words I could recognise a countryman.
“Yes,” said I.
“Horses—at each post—my purse,” he gasped.