my sword.

'Chloe had to look out for herself. I found the brutes gaining on me,
you see, and I let drive at them with my barkers; but with a horse
flying at twenty mile an hour, what chance is there for a single slug
finding its way home?' Things looked black then, for I had no time to
reload, and the rapier, though the king of weapons in the duello, is
scarce strong enough to rely upon on an occasion like this. As luck
would have it, just as I was fairly puzzled, what should I come across
but this handy stone, which the good priests of old did erect, as far as
I can see, for no other purpose than to provide worthy cavalieros with
an escape from such ignoble and scurvy enemies. I had no time to spare
in clambering up it, for I had to tear my heel out of the mouth of the
foremost of them, and might have been dragged down by it had he not
found my spur too tough a morsel for his chewing. But surely one of my
bullets must have readied its mark.' Lighting the touch-paper in his
tobacco-box, he passed it over the body of the hound which had attacked
me, and then of the other.

'Why, this one is riddled like a sieve,' he cried. 'What do you load
your petronels with, good Master Clarke?'

'With two leaden slugs.'

'Yet two leaden slugs have made a score of holes at the least! And of
all things in this world, here is the neck of a bottle stuck in the
brute's hide!'

'Good heavens!' I exclaimed. 'I remember. My dear mother packed a bottle
of Daffy's elixir in the barrel of my pistol.'

'And you have shot it into the bloodhound!' roared Reuben. 'Ho! ho! When
they hear that tale at the tap of the Wheatsheaf, there will be some
throats dry with laughter. Saved my life by shooting a dog with a bottle
of Daffy's elixir!'

'And a bullet as well, Reuben, though I dare warrant the gossips will
soon contrive to leave that detail out. It is a mercy the pistol did not
burst. But what do you propose to do now, Master Saxon?'

'Why, to recover my mare if it can anywise be done,' said the
adventurer.' Though on this vast moor, in the dark, she will be as
difficult to find as a Scotsman's breeches or a flavourless line in
"Hudibras."'

'And Reuben Lockarby's steed can go no further,' I remarked. 'But do
mine eyes deceive me, or is there a glimmer of light over yonder?'

'A Will-o'-the-wisp,' said Saxon.

"An _ignis fatuus_ that bewitches,
And leads men into pools and ditches."

Yet I confess that it burns