Now he was out on the highway, the bay plunging and leaping beneath him, and groping wildly he got one foot into the stirrup. Just then the black horse with its bareheaded rider came abreast of him, passed him, and Hugh galloped blindly at its heels. Well in the rear he heard the beat of other horse-hoofs, but he had both feet in the stirrups now and the reins in his hands, so he turned boldly into the fields behind the black horse. There was a dark wall, he remembered, that he jumped recklessly, and a stretch of rough ground, where he must hold his reins taut. There the black slackened pace somewhat and Hugh galloped up breathless. “We’ll give them the slip yet, will we not?” he cried, and then he heard Strangwayes breathing in quick painful gasps, and saw he sat drooping forward in his saddle. “Dick, Dick,” he almost screamed, “sure, you’re not—” “Ay,” Strangwayes panted, “I’m hit.” CHAPTER VI THE END OF THE JOURNEY For perhaps an hour the black and the bay crashed at a fierce pace across the dark countryside. Hugh had afterwards a confused remembrance of thickets where he must bend his head to escape the swishing boughs, of a ford where the water flew high as the girths, of a cluster of cottages, black and silent in the night. Cleared land and highway sped by him hazily, but always he had the mist in his face, faint hoof-notes that ever grew fainter behind him, and just before him the black horse with the piteously slouching figure in the saddle. Once and again Hugh had cried out to him: How grievously was he hurt? Could not he stay to look to it? Each time the terse reply had come: “’Tis nothing. Ride on.” But the pursuing horses were at last no longer audible; moment after moment passed, and still no sound reached them but the echo of their own gallop. Slowly the black’s pace sobered to a trot, and Hugh rode up knee to knee with his friend. “Dick, ’tis not mortal? Tell me,” he entreated. “‘Not as wide as the church door,’ as saith the gentleman in the play,” Strangwayes replied, but for all his gay tone Hugh caught in his voice a strained note that frightened him; “a mere pistol wound. That knave in the window gave’t me. Why did you not shoot him down?” “’Twas my uncle,” Hugh replied. “A sweet family you belong to, then,” Strangwayes muttered. “I would it had been me he shot. If he has killed you—” Hugh gulped out. “Nonsense!” Strangwayes answered testily. “Ride on, and trouble me with no more such talk.”