, racing for more than life, flying with
the speed of the wind.

"I failed him to-day through my foes and his," Forest King thought, as
he laid his length out in his mighty stride. "But I love him well; I
will save him to-night." And save him the brave brute did. The grass
was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks
looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and
reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have
thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and
its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. But he would
yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master's sake, and
tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of play--only a
steeple-chase, for a silver vase and a lady's smile, such as he and his
rider had so often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of the
crisp winter noons of English Shires far away. He turned his eyes on the
brown mare's, and she turned hers on his; they were good friends in the
stables at home, and they understood one another now. "If I were what
I was yesterday, she wouldn't run even with me," thought the King; but
they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and
too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o' Pearl, so they raced
neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill
wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman's ax, or the tolling bell of
a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat of the flying
hoofs.

Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the stars faded
out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines rose out of the gloom.
Either his pursuers were baffled and distanced, or no hue and cry was
yet after him; nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent
land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity awakened. It
was strangely still, strangely lonely, and the echo of the gallop seemed
to beat on the stirless, breathless solitude. As the light broke and
grew clearer and clearer, Cecil's face in it was white as death as he
galloped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a price was set;
but it was quite calm still, and very resolute--there was no "harking
back" in it.

They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time the chimes of a
village were striking six o'clock; it was the only group of dwellings
they had ventured near in their flight; the l