e turned in
his saddle, looked very coolly and steadily at Nigel, then gave his own
bridle a shake and darted off, swift as a hawk, toward the hills upon
the left.

Pommers had met his match that day. The white horse, two parts Arab,
bore the lighter weight, since Nigel was clad in full armor. For five
miles over the open neither gained a hundred yards upon the other.
They had topped the hill and flew down the farther side, the stranger
continually turning in his saddle to have a look at his pursuer. There
was no panic in his flight, but rather the amused rivalry with which
a good horseman who is proud of his mount contends with one who has
challenged him. Below the hill was a marshy plain, studded with great
Druidic stones, some prostrate, some erect, some bearing others across
their tops like the huge doors of some vanished building. A path ran
through the marsh with green rushes as a danger signal on either side of
it. Across this path many of the huge stones were lying, but the white
horse cleared them in its stride and Pommers followed close upon his
heels. Then came a mile of soft ground where the lighter weight again
drew to the front, but it ended in a dry upland and once again Nigel
gained. A sunken road crossed it, but the white cleared it with a mighty
spring, and again the yellow followed. Two small hills lay before them
with a narrow gorge of deep bushes between. Nigel saw the white horse
bounding chest-deep amid the underwood.

Next instant its hind legs were high in the air, and the rider had been
shot from its back. A howl of triumph rose from amidst the bushes, and
a dozen wild figures armed with club and with spear, rushed upon the
prostrate man.

"A moi, Anglais, a moi!" cried a voice, and Nigel saw the young rider
stagger to his feet, strike round him with his sword, and then fall once
more before the rush of his assailants.

There was a comradeship among men of gentle blood and bearing which
banded them together against all ruffianly or unchivalrous attack. These
rude fellows were no soldiers. Their dress and arms, their uncouth cries
and wild assault, marked them as banditti--such men as had slain the
Englishman upon the road. Waiting in narrow gorges with a hidden rope
across the path, they watched for the lonely horseman as a fowler waits
by his bird-trap, trusting that they could overthrow the steed and then
slay the rider ere he had recovered from his fall.

Such would have been the fate