beasts,
fresh and fast in the camp, flew like greyhounds beneath them.

Another night ride that they had ridden together came to the minds of
both; but they spoke not a word as they swept on, their sabers shaken
loose in their sheaths, their lances well gripped, and the pistols with
which they had been supplied sprung in their belts, ready for instant
action if a call should come for it. Every rood of the way was as full
of unseen danger as if laid over mines. They might pass in safety;
they might any moment be cut down by ten score against two. From every
hanging scarp of rugged rock a storm of musket-balls might pour; from
every screen of wild-fig foliage a shower of lances might whistle
through the air; from every darkling grove of fir trees an Arab band
might spring and swoop on them; but the knowledge scarcely recurred
to the one save to make him shake his sword more loose for quick
disengagement, and only made the sunny blue eyes of the other sparkle
with a vivid and longing zest.

The night grew very chill as it wore on; the north wind rose, rushing
against them with a force and icy touch that seemed to freeze their
bones to the marrow after the heat of the day and the sun that had
scorched them so long. There was no regular road; they went across the
country, their way sometimes leading over level land, over which they
swept like lightning, great plains succeeding one another with wearisome
monotony; sometimes on the contrary, lying through ravines, and defiles,
and gloomy woods, and broken, hilly spaces, where rent, bare rocks were
thrown on one another in gigantic confusion, and the fantastic shapes of
the wild fig and the dwarf palm gathered a hideous grotesqueness in the
darkness. For there was no moon, and the stars were often hidden by
the storm-rack of leaden clouds that drifted over the sky; and the only
sound they heard was the cry of the jackal, or the shriek of the night
bird, and now and then the sound of shallow water-courses, where the
parched beds of hidden brooks had been filled by the autumnal rain.

The first five-and-twenty miles passed without interruption, and the
horses lay well and warmly to their work. They halted to rest and bait
the beasts in a rocky hollow, sheltered from the blasts of the bise,
and green with short, sweet grass, sprung up afresh after the summer
drought.

"Do you ever think of him, sir?" said Rake softly, with a lingering love
in his voice, as he stroked the gray