A horse stood quietly nibbling the grass, and on his back, fallen forward, with arms clasping the beast's neck, and head drooping helplessly downward, was his rider, bleeding from a pistol wound in the neck, and too weak even to disengage his feet from the stirrups. In a single glance I recognised the horseman who had ridden ahead of the coach. A pistol, evidently dropped from his hand, lay on the grass, and his hat lay between the horse's feet. If life was not already extinct, it was fast ebbing away. I lifted him as gently as I could and laid him on the grass. He opened his eyes, and his lips moved; but for a moment he seemed choked. I tried with some moss to stanch his still bleeding wound, but the groan he gave as I touched him caused me to desist. Then he tried to speak something in French. "What is it?" said I, in English. A look of quick relief came into his face. "Ride forward with the letters--for God's sake--promise." Even in the feeble, broken words I could recognise a countryman. "Yes," said I. "Horses--at each post--my purse," he gasped. "I promise I will do as you ask--as I am an Irishman and a Christian." That seemed to satisfy him. "Your hand," said he, at last. I gave it to him, and as it closed on his he groaned, and died. It had all happened so suddenly that for a minute or two I knelt where I was, with my hand still in his, like one in a dream. Then I roused myself, and considered what was to be done. The dead man was a good-looking youth, scarcely twenty, dressed in the habit of a gentleman's groom, and evidently, by the smartness of his accoutrement, in the employ of some one of importance. As to how he had come by his death I could only guess. But I suspected the horseman I had seen galloping back towards Brest in the morning twilight had had something to do with it. The highwayman had met the traveller, and shots had been exchanged--the one fatal, the other telling enough to send the bandit flying. The poor wounded fellow had had strength enough to turn his horse into the wood and cling to his seat. How long he had stayed thus, slowly bleeding to death, I could not say; but the diligence must have passed that way two hours ago, and he must have been well ahead of it when his journey was thus suddenly stopped.