Soon we came to the bank of a shallow brook. Into this, without stop or parley, plunged Cedric, but instead of riding straight across as I had thought, he turned his horse’s head up-stream and urged him at a trot along its bed. For a quarter of a mile we rode thus, then coming to a ford and a half-blind pathway, turned aside in the direction away from Teramore, and again laying our heads on the necks of our mounts, sped through the woods at a ringing gallop. When we had covered a mile in this way, the path merged into a wider one; and I recognized a little vale to which my father and I had once come a-hunting, and which was scarce five miles from Mountjoy. Here for a moment we paused, and Cedric threw himself down and placed his ear to the ground. Then he rose with a glad smile and shook his head. “Dost hear nothing of hoof-beats?” I questioned. “Not a stroke,” he answered. “I had bethought me of a cave hard by here where we might be hidden if the hounds were close upon us. There, with the cross-bow, we could have stood off a hundred if need be, but we must have turned the horses loose, with the chance of their being taken.” “Nay,” said I, “we’ve shaken them off full well. In half an hour or less we can be crossing the drawbridge at Mountjoy. That noble steed thou ridest is too fine a prize to be left to the Carleton wolves.” Just then something whirred viciously through the air between us, and a steel cross-bow bolt half buried itself in a tree-trunk close at hand. Wheeling about toward the place whence came the arrow, I saw the steel cap and the ugly face of a Carleton man-at-arms over the top of a rock a hundred yards away which concealed and sheltered the rest of him. Cedric, with a twist of the bridle rein and some vicious blows with his heels, urged his horse behind the tree which had received the bolt; and I mayhap would have shown more wisdom had I done likewise. But I saw but the single enemy before me; and for the instant his arrow groove was empty. Cedric had already taken toll of two of our enemies, while I, the heir of our house whose quarrel he had espoused, had done naught but fly before their pursuit. With a yell, “A Mountjoy, A Mountjoy,” which is the battle cry of our people, I set spurs to my horse, and, sword in hand, charged straight toward the rock.