s
chance of rehabilitation, but Joseph cut him short.

"Take this purse," he cried impatiently. "You will find a horse ready
saddled in the stables. Ride it hard. It will bear you to Norton at
least. There get you a fresh one, and when that is done, another. Now be
off."

CHAPTER XIX. THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY

When the Tavern Knight left the gates of Marleigh Park behind him on
that wild October night, he drove deep the rowels of his spurs, and set
his horse at a perilous gallop along the road to Norwich. The action was
of instinct rather than of thought. In the turbulent sea of his mind,
one clear current there was, and one only--the knowledge that he was
bound for London for news of this son of his whom Joseph told him lived.
He paused not even to speculate what manner of man his child was grown,
nor yet what walk of life he had been reared to tread. He lived: he was
somewhere in the world; that for the time sufficed him. The Ashburns
had not, it seemed, destroyed quite everything that made his life worth
enduring--the life that so often and so wantonly he had exposed.

His son lived, and in London he should have news of him. To London then
must he get himself with all dispatch, and he swore to take no rest
until he reached it. And with that firm resolve to urge him, he ploughed
his horse's flanks, and sped on through the night. The rain beat in
his face, yet he scarce remarked it, as again more by instinct than by
reason--he buried his face to the eyes in the folds of his cloak.

Later the rain ceased, and clearer grew the line of light betwixt the
hedgerows, by which his horse had steered its desperate career. Fitfully
a crescent moon peered out from among the wind-driven clouds. The poor
ruffler was fallen into meditation, and noted not that his nag did no
more than amble. He roused himself of a sudden when half-way down
a gentle slope some five miles from Norwich, and out of temper at
discovering the sluggishness of the pace, he again gave the horse a
taste of the spurs. The action was fatal. The incline was become a bed
of sodden clay, and he had not noticed with what misgivings his horse
pursued the treacherous footing. The sting of the spur made the animal
bound forward, and the next instant a raucous oath broke from Crispin
as the nag floundered and dropped on its knees. Like a stone from a
catapult Galliard flew over its head and rolled down the few remaining
yards of the slope into a very lake of