a sob.

The Colonel looked about him. The solitude of the valley was unbroken.
No cabin smoked, no man worked within sight, so that the haste of these
two, their sweating faces, their straining steps, seemed portentous.
"Shall I take up the lad?" Colonel John asked.

Plainly the man hesitated. Then, "You will be doing a kindness," he
panted. And, seizing the lad in two powerful arms, he swung him to the
Colonel's stirrup, who, in taking him, knocked off the other's
jockey-cap.

The man snatched it up and put it on with a single movement. But
Colonel John had seen what he expected.

"You walk on a matter of life and death?" he said.

"It is all that," the man answered; and this time his look was defiant.

"You are taking the offices, father?"

The man did not reply.

"To one who is near his end, I suspect?"

The priest--for such he was--glanced at the weapon Colonel John wore.
"You can do what you will," he said sullenly. "I am on my duty."

"And a fine thing, that!" Colonel John answered heartily. He drew rein,
and, before the other knew what he would be at, he was off his horse.
"Mount, father," he said, "and ride, and God be with you!"

For a moment the priest stared dumbfounded. "Sir," he said, "you wear a
sword! And no son of the Church goes armed in these parts."

"If I am not one of your Church I am a Christian," Colonel John
answered. "Mount, father, and ride in God's name, and when you are
there send the lad back with the beast."

"The Mother of God reward you!" the priest cried fervently, "and turn
your heart in the right way!" He scrambled to the saddle. "The blessing
of all----"

The rest was lost in the thud of hoofs as the horse started briskly,
leaving Colonel John standing alone upon the road beside Bale's
stirrup. The servant looked after the retreating pair, but said
nothing.

"It's something if a man serves where he's listed," Colonel John
remarked.

Bale smiled. "And don't betray his own side," he said. He slipped from
his saddle.

"You think it's the devil's work we've done?" Colonel John asked.

But Bale declined to say more, and the two walked on, one on either
side of the horse, master or man punching it when it showed a desire to
sample the herbage. A stranger, seeing them, might have thought that
they were wont to walk thus, so unmoved were their faces.

They had trudged the better part of two miles when they came upon the
horse tethered by the reins to one of two gate-p