e headed it up, or plunged at the water's edge
till Mistress Hortense cried out: "Oh--please! I cannot see you risk
yourself on that beast! Oh--please won't you ride farther down where I
can get back!"

"Ho--away, then," calls Blood, mighty glad of that way out of his
predicament, "but don't try the wall here again, Mistress Hillary! I
protest 'tis not safe for you! Ho--away, then! I race you to the end
of the wall!"

And off he gallops, never looking back, keen to clear the wall and meet
my lady half-way up. Hortense sat erect, reining her horse and smiling
at me.

"And so you would go away without seeing me," she said, "and I must
needs ride you down at the risk of the lieutenant's neck."

"'Tis the way of the proud with the humble," I laughed back; but the
laugh had no mirth.

Her face went grave. She sat gazing at me with that straight, honest
look of the wilderness which neither lies nor seeks a lie.

"Your horse is champing to be off, Hortense!"

"Yes--and if you looked you might see that I am keeping him from going
off."

I smiled at the poor jest as a court conceit.

"Or perhaps, if you tried, you might help me to hold him," says
Hortense, never taking her search from my face.

"And defraud the lieutenant," said I.

"Ah!" says Hortense, looking away. "Are you jealous of anything so
small?"

I took hold of the bit and quieted the horse. Hortense laughed.

"Were you so mighty proud the other night that you could not come to
see a humble ward of the court?" she asked.

"I am only a poor trader now!"

"Ah," says Hortense, questioning my face again, "I had thought you were
only a poor trader before! Was that the only reason?"

"To be sure, Hortense, the lieutenant would not have welcomed me--he
might have told his fellow to turn me out and made confusion."

And I related M. Radisson's morning encounter with Lieutenant Blood,
whereat Mistress Hortense uttered such merry peals of laughter I had
thought the chapel-bells were chiming.

"Ramsay!" she cried impetuously, "I hate this life--why did you all
send me to it?"

"Hate it! Why----?"

"Why?" reiterated Hortense. "Why, when a king, who is too busy to sign
death-reprieves, may spend the night hunting a single moth from room to
room of the palace? Why, when ladies of the court dress in men's
clothes to run the streets with the Scowerers? Why, when a duchess
must take me every morning to a milliner's shop, where she meets her
lo