I gave one mighty twist to the manacles on my wrists, and whether those that set them had been kindly, being of my own name and clan, or whether the gyves were weak, I cannot tell. At all events, my hands were free, and so, with never a weapon in my possession, I leaped on a horse—the same, indeed, which the King had been riding—and set it to the gallop after the man whose death was my life. It was the maddest, foolishest venture, for doubtless my enemy was well armed. But I seemed to see my love, and all the endowment of grace and favour I was to receive with her, vanishing away with every stride of John Mure’s horse. Besides, there was a King and an Earl looking on; so upon the King’s horse I settled down to a long chase. I was already far forward ere behind me I heard the clatter of mounting men, the crying to restive horses to stand still, and the other accompaniments of a cavalcade leaping hastily into the saddle. But when I looked at John Mure upon his fleet steed, and saw that I upon the King’s horse but scarcely held mine own, I knew that the stopping of the murderer must be work of mine, if it were to be done at all. So I resolved to chance it, in spite of whatever armoury of weapons he might carry. But first I cleared my feet of the great stirrups which the King used, so that if it came to the bitter pinch, and I was stricken with a bullet or pierced with steel, I should not be dragged helpless along the ground with my foot in the iron, as once or twice I had seen happen in battle. And that, though an easily memorable, is, I can bear witness, not a bonny sight. My charger stretched away as though he had been a beagle running conies of the down into their holes. But John Mure’s horse went every whit as fast. I saw well that he made for the deep, trackless spaces of Killochan wood. The oak trees that grew along its edge stretched out their arms to hide him; the birken shaw waved all its green boughs with a promise of security. I shortened my grip upon the stout golden-crowned staff which the King carried at the pommel of his saddle. Yet as John Mure drave madly towards the wood, and sometimes looked over his shoulder to see how I came on, I was overjoyed to notice a wide ditch before him which he must needs overleap—and at that business, if at no other, I thought to beat him, being slim and of half his weight. So I kept my horse to the right upon better ground, though it took me a little out of the straight course for the wood. His horse at the first refused the leap, and I counted upon him as mine. But I counted too soon, for he went down the bankside a short way to an easier place, where there was a landward man’s bridge of trees and sods. Here he easily walked his horse across, and, having mounted the bank, he waved his hand at me and set off again toward the wood.