“We will!” His bright look as she patted his shoulder--a very venturesome act---gave her much cheer; and when, after she had cantered a good way down the road, she turned and saw him still leaning on the bridge looking after her, her heart throbbed with pleasure. Despite all his reserves and peculiarities, and her own conscious failings, there was one thing to which she clung as to a root of comfort that would never be taken away, and would surely bear blossom and fruit afterwards--the belief that her husband truly loved her. [Illustration: On horseback p212] “If so,” she thought, “I suppose all will come right in time, and Agatha Harper will be as happy as, or happier than, Agatha Bowen.” So on she went, yielding to the delicious excitement of being on horseback. She was also much interested by the country round about, which appeared to her as old, desolate, and strange as if she had been a Thane's daughter riding across the moors to the gates of that renowned castle which, as Harrie declared, putting on the physiognomy of some school-child drawling out a history-lesson, “was celebrated for being the residence of the ancient Saxon kings.” “And this was the place,” continued she in the same tone, pointing to an old gate-post--“this was the place where His Majesty's most illustrious horse did stop when His Majesty's most sainted body was dragged along by the leg, in the stirrup, on account of the wound given him when he was a-drinking at the castle-door, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida. All of which is to be seen to the present day.” Agatha first laughed at this comical view of the subject, then she felt a little repugnance at hearing that stern old tragedy so lightly treated. As she walked her horse along the road which might have been, and probably was, the very same Saxon highway as in those times, she thought of the wounded horseman dashing out from between those green hills and of the murdered body dropping slowly, slowly from the saddle, dragged in dust, and beat against stones, until the woman that loved him--for even a king might have had some woman that loved him--would not have known the face she thought so fair.