d was still in my ears, I saw it all. Like
a hot iron piercing my brain the truth flashed into my mind. We were
attacked! We were attacked, and I was here helpless in this pit, this
trap! The loss of a second while I fumbled here, Mademoiselle's horse
barring the way, might be fatal.

There was but one way. I turned my horse straight at the steep bank, and
he breasted it. One moment he hung as if he must fall back. Then, with
a snort of terror and a desperate bound, he topped it, and gained the
level, trembling and snorting.

Seventy paces away on the road lay one of my men. He had fallen, horse
and man, and lay still. Near him, with his back against a bank, stood
his fellow, on foot, pressed by four horsemen, and shouting. As my
eye lighted on the scene he let fly with a carbine, and dropped one.
I clutched a pistol from my holster and seized my horse by the head.
I might save the man yet, I shouted to him to encourage him, and was
driving in my spurs to second my voice, when a sudden vicious blow,
swift and unexpected, struck the pistol from my hand.

I made a snatch at it as it fell, but missed it, and before I could
recover myself, Mademoiselle thrust her horse furiously against mine,
and with her riding-whip lashed the sorrel across the ears. As the horse
reared up madly, I had a glimpse of her eyes flashing hate through her
mask; of her hand again uplifted; the next moment, I was down in the
road, ingloriously unhorsed, the sorrel was galloping away, and her
horse, scared in its turn, was plunging unmanageably a score of paces
from me.

But for that I think that she would have trampled on me. As it was, I
was free to rise, and draw, and in a twinkling was running towards the
fighters. All had happened in a few seconds. My man was still defending
himself, the smoke of the carbine had scarcely risen. I sprang across
a fallen tree that intervened, and at the same moment two of the men
detached themselves and rode to meet me. One, whom I took to be the
leader, was masked. He came furiously at me to ride me down, but I
leaped aside nimbly, and, evading him, rushed at the other, and scaring
his horse, so that he dropped his point, cut him across the shoulder,
before he could guard himself. He plunged away, cursing and trying to
hold in his horse, and I turned to meet the masked man.

'You villain!' he cried, riding at me again. This time he manoeuvred his
horse so skilfully that I was hard put to it to prevent him