rauders up.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

FIRST BLOOD.

Denis was in no trim for running, but he ran.

"This would wake anyone up," he muttered to himself. "The villain! The
dog! I see it all: he must have given those two fellows drink till they
were helpless, and then led the horses quietly away. Oh, if I had only
been ten minutes sooner, instead of sleeping like the untrusty cur I
was! I never dare face the King now! I'm running now as hard as ever I
can run, not to bring back the horses, but to go right away. I never
dare show my face before him again. Here," he thought, "am I to go on
whining like some foolish girl? I can--I will get there first, in time
to stop him. I never used my sword in earnest yet, but if I can only
get face to face with that insolent hound I'll make him bleed, or he
shall me. Too late! Too late!" he groaned, for the man's head had
disappeared beyond the hedge.

"There must be some turning yonder, and he has gone; and once out there
in the open country he, a man who rides with such horses as ours, it
will be folly ever to expect to see him again."

The boy ran on, not growing breathless, but nerved as it were to the
highest pitch of excitement, seeing nothing now, but reaching the hedge
at last close by a rough gate, over which he vaulted lightly, to find
himself in a winding green lane, but with nothing in sight to his left,
nothing to his right, and no turning visible, and stretching right away.

"There hasn't been time for him to get to here, for the horses were only
walking," he argued to himself, and then with sinking heart, "Oh!" he
ejaculated, half aloud. "Perhaps it was only my mistake. I jumped at
the conclusion that it was the man we saw."

There was nothing for it but to continue along the lane till he met
Saint Simon, and then he felt that they must go back to the inn and
rouse people to a pursuit.

He began running at a gentle trot now, to husband his strength for what
might come, when all at once his heart seemed to give a violent leap and
then stand still; for coming round a bend he caught sight of the black,
heavily maned head of the King's horse, and then of the soft, pointed
cap of the horse-dealer whom he had credited with the theft.

He was not looking forward, but bending over to his right, evidently
doing something to the rein of another horse he was leading--Denis's
own--while, in the middle of the three abreast, he was mounted on Saint
Simon's. The th