ris. "Is it not so, Jorian?"

"Good!" said Jorian.

"But with the broadaxe he slashes about him like an angel from
heaven--not so, Boris?" said Jorian.

"Good!" said Boris.

"Can you ride?" said the Prince, turning abruptly from them.

"Aye, sire!" said I. For indeed I could, and had no shame to say it.

"That horse of his is blown; give him your fresh one!" said he to the
officer who had accompanied him. "And do you show these good folk to
their quarters."

Hardly was I mounted before the Prince set spurs to his beast, and,
with no more than a casual wave of his hand to the Princess and her
train, he was off.

"Ride!" he cried to me. And was presently almost out of sight, stretching
his horse's gray belly to the earth, like a coursing dog after a hare.

Well was it for me that I had learned to ride in a hard school--that is,
upon the unbroken colts which were brought in for the mounting of the
Duke Casimir's soldiery. For the horse that I had been given took the
bit between his teeth and pursued so fiercely after his stable companion
that I could scarce restrain him from passing the Prince. But our way
lay homeward, so that, though I was in no way able to guide nor yet
control my charger, nevertheless presently the Prince and I were
clattering through the town of Plassenburg like two fiends riding
headlong to the pit.

Within the town the lamps were being lit in the booths, the folks busy
marketing, and the watchmen already perambulating the city and crying the
hours at the street corners.

But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and
pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode
through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places
like blurs of scrabbled whiteness. So I leaned forward and let the beast
take his chance of uneven causeway and open sewer. I expected nothing
less than a broken neck, and for at least half a mile, as we flew upward
to the castle, I think that the certainty of naught worse than a broken
arm would positively have pleasured me. At least, I would very willingly
have compounded my chances for that.

Presently, without ever drawing rein, we flew beneath the dark outer port
of the castle, clattered through a court paved with slippery blocks of
stone, thundered over a noble drawbridge, plunged into a long and gloomy
archway, and finally came out in a bright inner palace court with lamps
lit all about it.

I was at t