m yet ready to yield in his clasp,
with the pale flame wavering in one hand and a white arm raised to ward
him off. He had no eyes for the road ahead; a stride, and the prize
would be in his eager arms. Ahead was the darkness of the great wood; a
stride, and he was within its shadow. The moon was blotted out by the
high blackness of trees; and in a heart-beat with its light were gone the
white horse and the slim rider with its veil of gauze--gone like a
wreath of smoke or a dream which is lost in darkness. He reeled in his
saddle under the shock of it, and cried aloud in his disappointment;
baffled, he thought that he had lost his quarry among the trees. The
gray thundered on, with the reins hanging loose upon its neck, through
the damp silence of the wood, where night hung heavy, and out into the
open, where again the road gleamed white and empty beneath the moon.

And then the moon was gone, and light went out of the world, and he knew
himself for a soul cast into outer darkness. His mind was blank; he knew
not whether he lived or died, nor did he care. He lived in a nebulous
void of gray unconsciousness, horribly empty of all thought and all
sensation.

So he would have ridden, blindly, until his horse fell or he was
halted. But through sheer exhaustion his fever burned itself out, and
left him sane once more, and clinging to his horse's neck. His strength
was gone; he was dazed and drunken. He came to himself abruptly, like a
man starting from uneasy sleep, and stared about him, not knowing even
how far he had been carried. He was on the break of the slope leading
down to the marsh-ford, and the lights of Thorney glinted over the water
in his eyes.

V

His horse stumbled, and he pulled it up with an oath. Now he was vividly
conscious, every nerve strung taut, every sense alert, as a man will
sometimes oddly waken from heavy slumber. They went down the slope at a
lurching gallop, along the road churned into mire by the passing of many
carts, and splashed into the muddy waters of the ford. And on the
further bank the good gray stumbled again, tried gallantly to regain its
stride, and came crashing to the ground with a coughing groan and a long
sickening stagger. But Nicanor had saved himself from a falling horse
before. He was on his feet almost as the beast was down, reeling with
sheer weakness, but recovering with dogged persistence. He left the
horse dying at the water's edge, and started running up the stree