He lingered beneath the blasted oak, time enough to look to his pistols, and time enough, too, for him to recall the ghostly reputation of the lonely tree, so his nerves were crisping as he rode by it into the common. But he quieted The Jade’s fretty step, and, in the action and the thought of what might be before him, steadied himself till, though his body was trembling with eagerness, his head was cool. He took the precaution of making the mare keep a slow trot that was half muffled in the turf, though he urged her as much as he dared on the uneven ground; for to the east, as he looked over his shoulder, the dark was beginning to pale. The early summer morning must be near at hand, for when he had crossed the open there was light enough for him to make out the break in the trees where the bridle path wound down to the ford. Hugh went in cautiously, with the reins taut in his left hand and his right on his pistol; but for all that The Jade’s feet splashed in the sloughs of the pathway with a loudness that startled him. He pulled up a moment and listened; ahead he could hear the lap, lap of swift water, but for the rest the wood was silent. He was about to press the mare forward with a touch of the spur, when, flinging up her head, she whickered shrilly. Right upon that, somewhere to the front by the water’s edge, a horse neighed. Next moment Hugh felt the lash of low boughs across his neck, as he pulled The Jade round with her haunches in among the bushes by the path. Spite of the crash of the branches, and the pounding of the blood in his temples that near deafened him, he caught the sound of hoof-beats on his left, coming down on him from the common as well as up from the river. At that he urged The Jade forward, straight into the bushes at the other side of the path, where the limbs grew so low that he bent down with his bare head pressed against her mane. For all the hurry and tumult, his ears were alert, and presently he heard their horses crashing behind him among the trees at the right. Then, cautiously as he could pick his way in the gray dimness, he turned The Jade’s head to the common. Brushing out through the last of the oaks he faced southward, and, as he did so, cast a glance behind him. Out of the shadows of the trees in his rear he saw the dim form of a horseman take shape, and a command, loud in the hush of morning, reached him: “Halt, there!”