“So I do, more than any other on earth. If I had seen him before, I doubt if I had been here.” “I understood you to say you met him at Corbiton.” “Met him, yes, by dim candle-light, smooth and courteous. But I never really saw him until now. You cannot rightly judge a man--a fighter, that is--until you have looked at him on horseback. That man knows my business. For the first time since I set out I doubt my success.” “Will you turn back?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Oh, no! I’m his Roland. If we do not cross swords, we’ll run a race, and may the best man win. But I feel strangely uncomfortable about the neck, and I think of my ancestor Johnnie and the Scottish king.” He raised his chin and moved his head from side to side, as if the rope already throttled him. Then he laughed, and she gazed at him in fascinated terror, wondering he could jest on a subject so gruesome. “That man is likely to defeat me,” he continued. “His plans are all laid, and already I feel the toils tightening around me. I am satisfied he knows every move I have made since I left him. The unseen spy is on my track, and, by my sword, I’d rather circumvent him than rule the kingdom. Wull, whaur’s yer wits? Now’s the time ye need them, my lad. In the first place, I dare not go through Northampton; that’s clear.” “Why?” “In my soul I’m certain a crisis awaits me there. I’ll be nabbed in Northampton. Then the question, ‘Why did you refuse a pass to Oxford’?” “Did he offer you one?” “Yes. The next question will be,’ Why are you south of the limit set by yourself, travelling to Oxford on another’s pass?’ To that query there’s no answer. I’m a self-convicted spy, and then the scaffold, according to all the rules of war.” “Pardon me if I do not follow your argument. If he has tracked you, as you think, there is no more reason he should stop you at Northampton than at Newark or Grantham. Aside from that, why did he not hold you when he had you?” “Oh, I had not put my neck into the noose then. As for arresting me at Newark or at Grantham, I see now that such was his intention, but our friend Hezekiah failed him. It was undoubtedly Cromwell’s purpose that we should have gone back with Benton.” “Still, I do not believe you. If Cromwell is as crafty as you seem to believe, it is likely he wishes you to reach Oxford. Unless that was the case, why should he have offered you the pass?” “My lass, there are several sides to this problem, and what you say has the stamp of probability on it. Nevertheless, I’ll overset his arrangements. I am the only one of us three who cannot give good excuses for being in these parts. Here is the pass which protects you and old John,” he said, giving her the document. “You and he will to Oxford at your leisure. I shall gallop across country, will evade the Parliamentary lines as best I may, and will be in Oxford to-morrow morning. That will throw Old Noll a day out of his count.” “Then you leave me to meet Cromwell alone?”