e and Grey Roland alike were just conscious of the bit in the
sensitive mouth. For the moment, with that tense grip of the knees,
they were as one flesh; the need was they should be of one spirit.
With a quiet word La Mothe soothed the excitement which might have
plunged them both to sudden destruction on the rounded cobbles of the
paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high
road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home
into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl
of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were
shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe
heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through
the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like
the surf of a far-off sea. Away to the side, with a stretch of
sunburnt grass between, lay the river. Let Bertrand keep to the
winding road and all was well. Gallop how he might Grey Roland would
wear him down, but let him swerve, let the fluttering of a bird startle
him aside, and Ursula de Vesc's prophetic terrors would be justified.

As the memory of her dread flashed into his mind afresh, there swept
across Stephen La Mothe one of those sudden storms of temptation which
at some time or another beat into every life, even the most sheltered,
and surely prove that the curse of primal sin still dwells inherent in
our best humanity. "He will drown! Well, let him drown!" and in the
instant of the thought, by some instinct of the brain, the loose rein
was drawn in with a jerk, which forced the grey to change his stride.
Let him drown and there was an end to the tangle which made a hell in
the possible heaven of Amboise, an end to the unnatural strife of
father and son, an end to the threatened rending asunder of France, who
was the mistress and mother of them all, whether King, Dauphin, or pawn
in the terrible game of life and death, an end to the danger which hung
over the head of Ursula de Vesc. Let him drown: death would pay all
debts, and the crooked would be made straight.

Gritting his teeth La Mothe drew a deep breath. With the fuller
realization of the thought the sudden convulsion of his heart choked
him, and while his blood buzzed the louder for the possibility, fate,
chance, or what you will threw the cards in the game his way. Beyond a
bend of the road a waggoner's leisurely wain plodded its