“Another minute, and we should have been out of sight,” she said; “we may yet trick them in the wood.”
They kept together now, labouring uphill with faces that began to betray distress. Marpasse had a stitch in her side, her stockings were at her ankles, and her hair over her shoulders. They could hear the men shouting, but paid no heed to it, for if there were but thicker cover on the other side of the hill, they might take to it and escape.
As they topped the slope they heard the trampling of horses in the valley behind them. Marpasse looked eagerly to right and left, and an angry cry escaped her, for a wood of great forest trees dipped gently away from them, the trunks pillaring broad aisles that were carpeted with sleek and brilliant sward. A man could see through the wood as though looking along the aisles of a church, where children could do no more than play hide-and-seek round the piers and pillars.
“No luck for us! They can ride us down here almost as well as in a meadow.”
Denise caught Marpasse’s arm.
“The knife, Marpasse; give it me.”
Marpasse was panting, one hand at her side.
“No, no, not that, my dear!”
“I will not be taken alive, Marpasse. Give me the knife, and run. They will not trouble you when they find me here.”
Marpasse drew Denise behind the trunk of a great tree, for she had seen a helmet come up over the edge of the hill, to be followed by the tossing mane of a horse.