ed the dark Chantry woods, and saw them still gazing
after him and waving their hands. Then the path wound amongst the trees
and they were lost to sight; but long afterwards when a clearing exposed
once more the Shalford meadows Nigel saw that the old man upon the gray
cob was riding slowly toward Saint Catharine's Hill, but that the girl
was still where he had seen her last, leaning forward in her saddle and
straining her eyes to pierce the dark forest which screened her lover
from her view. It was but a fleeting glance through a break in the
foliage, and yet in after days of stress and toil in far distant lands
it was that one little picture--the green meadow, the reeds, the slow
blue-winding river, and the eager bending graceful figure upon the white
horse--which was the clearest and the dearest image of that England
which he had left behind him.

But if Nigel's friends had learned that this was the morning of his
leaving, his enemies too were on the alert. The two comrades had just
emerged from the Chantry woods and were beginning the ascent of that
curving path which leads upward to the old Chapel of the Martyr when
with a hiss like an angry snake a long white arrow streaked under
Pommers and struck quivering in the grassy turf. A second whizzed past
Nigel's ear, as he tried to turn; but Aylward struck the great war-horse
a sharp blow over the haunches, and it had galloped some hundreds of
yards before its rider could pull it up. Aylward followed as hard as he
could ride, bending low over his horse's neck, while arrows whizzed all
around him.

"By Saint Paul!" said Nigel, tugging at his bridle and white with anger,
"they shall not chase me across the country as though I was a frighted
doe. Archer, how dare you to lash my horse when I would have turned and
ridden in upon them?"

"It is well that I did so," said Aylward, "or by these ten finger-bones!
our journey would have begun and ended on the same day. As I glanced
round I saw a dozen of them at the least amongst the brushwood. See now
how the light glimmers upon their steel caps yonder in the bracken
under the great beech-tree. Nay, I pray you, my fair lord, do not ride
forward. What chance has a man in the open against all these who lie
at their ease in the underwood? If you will not think of yourself, then
consider your horse, which would have a cloth-yard shaft feathered in
its hide ere it could reach the wood."

Nigel chafed in impotent anger. "Am I to b