"When I said it was mine," replied the other with the grave tenderness of a gentleman dealing with an angry woman, "I meant it was mine. It was given me by a lady. These are her initials on the stopper--E.H., d'you see?--If I was to surrender this bottle to you, two things would happen. My work of weeks past would be undone, and a noble woman would be hung unjustly." He put the bottle into his pocket. "And now to prove to you that it really is mine I will tell you what it contains, shall I?--A letter on tissue paper signed A. F. Is it not so?" The flames in the boy's soul were beaten back. "How d'you know?" sullenly. "I wrote it." Breathing through his nostrils, Kit eyed him. "Then you're the Gentleman." The young man bowed with an action that was altogether French. CHAPTER XXVI THE DEAD WOMAN I He stood bareheaded in the sun in long black riding-coat and muddied boots and breeches. "What's that red riband in your button-hole?" asked the boy in a kind of awe. "That! that's the Legion of Honour." He came a step forward. "Put your finger on it. That little bit of riband once lay upon the heart of Napoleon." The boy began to tremble. That tiny square of red from which he could not take his eyes had once throbbed to the heart-beats of the Arch- enemy! "D'you know him?" "Little Boney!" laughing. "Yes, I know him." The boy listened without hearing. It was all too dreamlike. "D'you--d'you like him?" The other chuckled. "_Like_ him?--I don't know that I exactly _like_ him. You see he's not what you and I should call a gentleman. Still he serves me, so I serve him." The boy's thumb was to his mouth, baby-like. All his anger had passed. He was gazing at the other with brooding admiration. This was the man who had kept three counties agog these two months past! He was an enemy, but O! he was a hero. Strangely young too, almost a boy; tall and slight as his own sword, the grey eyes big under dark brows, the face sun-golden and lean almost to gauntness. "How _did_ you do it?" murmured the boy. The other's eyes clouded; the lids fell. "I could not have done it but for her," he said. Then for the first time the boy remembered the dead woman. II But it was no dead woman the Gentleman was standing over now; it was a chestnut mare, the sun glistening on a coat that shone like a girl's hair. She lay along the turf with lank neck, belly exposed, and shoes flashing; strangely pathetic as a horse seen in such position always looks. There was not a stain of sweat on her coat, not a trace of froth about her muzzle. A plain snaffle bridle lay beside her. Her head was bare and fine as a lady's; the eyes wide, the nostrils still. Strangely like somehow, mare and man; and about both faces something of the length and strength of the eagle. There was one marked difference. In the man life still rippled gloriously; the mare was quiet for ever. Born to the saddle as to the sea, the boy's eye ran over her. "What a beauty!" he gasped.