hey were riding straight for us with drawn
swords and eager gestures.

'More slaughter,' I said wearily. 'Why will they force us to it?'

Saxon glanced keenly from beneath his drooping lids at the approaching
horsemen, and a grim smile wreathed his face in a thousand lines and
wrinkles.

'It is our friend who set the hounds upon our track at Salisbury,' he
said. 'This is a happy meeting. I have a score to settle with him.'

It was, indeed, the hot-headed young comet whom we had met at the outset
of our adventures. Some evil chance had led him to recognise the tall
figure of my companion as we rode from the field, and to follow him, in
the hope of obtaining revenge for the humiliation which he had met with
at his hands. The other was a lance-corporal, a man of square soldierly
build, riding a heavy black horse with a white blaze upon its forehead.

Saxon rode slowly towards the officer, while the trooper and I fixed our
eyes upon each other.

'Well, boy,' I heard my companion say, 'I trust that you have learned to
fence since we met last.'

The young guardsman gave a snarl of rage at the taunt, and an instant
afterwards the clink of their sword-blades showed that they had met.
For my own part I dared not spare a glance upon them, for my opponent
attacked me with such fury that it was all that I could do to keep him
off. No pistol was drawn upon either side. It was an honest contest of
steel against steel. So constant were the corporal's thrusts, now at my
face, now at my body, that I had never an opening for one of the heavy
cuts which might have ended the matter. Our horses spun round each
other, biting and pawing, while we thrust and parried, until at last,
coming together knee to knee, we found ourselves within sword-point, and
grasped each other by the throat. He plucked a dagger from his belt and
struck it into my left arm, but I dealt him a blow with my gauntleted
hand, which smote him off his horse and stretched him speechless upon
the plain. Almost at the same moment the cornet dropped from his horse,
wounded in several places. Saxon sprang from his saddle, and picking the
soldier's dagger from the ground, would have finished them both had I
not jumped down also and restrained him. He flashed round upon me with
so savage a face that I could see that the wild-beast nature within him
was fairly roused.

'What hast thou to do?' he snarled. 'Let go!'

'Nay, nay! Blood enough hath been shed,' said I. 'Let th