‘And I owe ye both one,’ said Saxon, who had scrambled down from his place of refuge. ‘I pay my debts, too, whether for good or evil. I might have stayed up there until I had eaten my jack-boots, for all the chance I had of ever getting down again. Sancta Maria! but that was a shrewd blow of yours, Clarke! The brute’s head flew in halves like a rotten pumpkin. No wonder that they stuck to my track, for I have left both my spare girth and my kerchief behind me, which would serve to put them on Chloe’s scent as well as mine own.’ ‘And where is Chloe?’ I asked, wiping my sword. ‘Chloe had to look out for herself. I found the brutes gaining on me, you see, and I let drive at them with my barkers; but with a horse flying at twenty mile an hour, what chance is there for a single slug finding its way home?’ Things looked black then, for I had no time to reload, and the rapier, though the king of weapons in the duello, is scarce strong enough to rely upon on an occasion like this. As luck would have it, just as I was fairly puzzled, what should I come across but this handy stone, which the good priests of old did erect, as far as I can see, for no other purpose than to provide worthy cavalieros with an escape from such ignoble and scurvy enemies. I had no time to spare in clambering up it, for I had to tear my heel out of the mouth of the foremost of them, and might have been dragged down by it had he not found my spur too tough a morsel for his chewing. But surely one of my bullets must have readied its mark.’ Lighting the touch-paper in his tobacco-box, he passed it over the body of the hound which had attacked me, and then of the other. ‘Why, this one is riddled like a sieve,’ he cried. ‘What do you load your petronels with, good Master Clarke?’ ‘With two leaden slugs.’ ‘Yet two leaden slugs have made a score of holes at the least! And of all things in this world, here is the neck of a bottle stuck in the brute’s hide!’ ‘Good heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘I remember. My dear mother packed a bottle of Daffy’s elixir in the barrel of my pistol.’ ‘And you have shot it into the bloodhound!’ roared Reuben. ‘Ho! ho! When they hear that tale at the tap of the Wheatsheaf, there will be some throats dry with laughter. Saved my life by shooting a dog with a bottle of Daffy’s elixir!’ ‘And a bullet as well, Reuben, though I dare warrant the gossips will soon contrive to leave that detail out. It is a mercy the pistol did not burst. But what do you propose to do now, Master Saxon?’ ‘Why, to recover my mare if it can anywise be done,’ said the adventurer.’ Though on this vast moor, in the dark, she will be as difficult to find as a Scotsman’s breeches or a flavourless line in “Hudibras.”’ ‘And Reuben Lockarby’s steed can go no further,’ I remarked. ‘But do mine eyes deceive me, or is there a glimmer of light over yonder?’ ‘A Will-o’-the-wisp,’ said Saxon. “An _ignis fatuus_ that bewitches, And leads men into pools and ditches.”