"No more!" I answered. "Come, then, let us begone." "Oh, Mistress Loveday, dare you trust yourself to him?" asked Dolly, in a terrified whisper. "Are you not scared? What if it should be the evil one himself?" The stranger overheard her and laughed—a very short laugh. "Have no fears, good woman. I am a Christian like yourself, and your friend is safe with me. Bid farewell in few words, mistress. It is time we were away." I kissed the weeping women, and shook Master Gates his hand. The stranger had a powerful black horse with a pillion for mine accommodation. He raised me in his arms and set me in my place, sprung to the saddle before me, and bidding me hold fast by his belt, he struck his spurs into his horse's side, and off we went. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. THE OLD HALL. SO here was I, being carried off at a breakneck speed through the dim moonlight of the August night, like a damsel in Romance whom some enchanter has trussed up and borne away on a hip-pogriff. My conductor spake never a word, and I was too busy keeping my seat to have any breath to spare for questions, had I dared to ask them. I was sure my companion was some one I had seen, but where and when I could not say. He had the Duke's ring, which none but a trusted servant could have gotten into his hands, and at all events, I could do nothing but abide the result of mine adventure. At last, after we had ridden more than an hour at this headlong pace, and I was far from any place I had ever seen before, my guide slackened his paces and turning toward me, asked how I fared. "Why, well enough, an' I had but a little breathing time," said I; "but, sir, may I ask your name?" "So you do not know me?" said he. "And yet we are not strangers. See what it is to trust the memory of a young lady." A wild notion crossed my mind—too wild, I thought, to be entertained for a single moment. "At least," said I, "you will perhaps have the goodness to tell me whither you are conveying me at such a rate." "To a place of safety, I hope," he answered. "Have no fears. Did not the Duke himself bid you trust the messenger who brought his ring? But now we are to pass a village, and you must be silent. Wrap your cloak well about you, for the air is chill." I obeyed, and we rode on through a village where every one seemed to be abed and asleep, save at the vicarage near the church, where there were lights, and from which proceeded a savory smell of cooking, and the chorus of a song, which was certainly not one of the canticles of the church. "The knaves are cooking venison!" muttered my conductor. "This gear must be looked to. It were as good a deed as eating to give them a fright." He rode close to the window as he spoke, and, striking thereon with his riding whip, he called with a sepulchral, hollow tone: "Who is the profane, drunken priest who steals the Duke's deer?"