Meanwhile Denise had been saved by the terror of her horse from being trampled and crushed like Black Isoult. The beast had broken through, and fled at a gallop, with Denise lying out like a child along his neck. There were other horses galloping about her, some with riders, many with empty saddles, and one common instinct seemed to shepherd the beasts together, so that Denise found herself swept along in the thick of the herd. Lying upon her nag’s neck, with her cheek laid against the coarse coat, and her hair blowing in the wind, Denise became conscious at last of a black horse galloping beside hers, stride for stride. At first she saw only the beast’s head with its red nostrils, and ill-tempered ears laid back, and the whites of its eyes showing. Then a man’s figure drew into view, and she had a glimpse of a blue surcoat with a blur of gold thereon, and a great iron helmet that gaped like a frog. Denise was no longer a piece of wreckage carried along in the thick of the flood. The black horse seemed to know his master’s mind, and began to guide Denise’s nag as one beast will guide and rule another. The man, who had been sitting stiffly in the saddle, bent forward and caught the trailing halter of Denise’s horse. “Hold fast, Sanctissima,” he said, “we shall soon be out of the mill race.” Denise knew that it was Gaillard, but fate carried her at the gallop, and she was too conscious of the wind in her ears and the way the ground rushed under her. “If I can save you a broken neck,” he went on, shouting the words through the black cleft in the great helmet, “I shall deserve your forgiveness. The fools yonder are rushing like a drove of pigs for the river. They will drown one another. We will take our own road.” Denise felt like one falling and falling in a dream. There was no end to it, and she had not enough breath in her to feel the finer, spiritual fear. It was impossible to so much as think in the rush and welter of all those flying, thundering shapes. Her body was taken up with holding to the body of her horse. They drew clear of the main torrent at last, and went cantering in the dusk over the rolling grassland. Gaillard was sitting straight in the saddle, and watching a gush of flame that had leapt up over Lewes town. The King’s men who still held the castle, had thrown springalds of fire down upon the houses, setting the thatch ablaze so that the houses should not cover Simon’s men who were crowding to the assault. The glare of the burning town seemed an echo from the red sunset above the western hills. A distant uproar rose into the twilight, though the summits of the downs were solemn and still. Denise felt her horse slacken under her now that they had turned aside from the rush of the pursuit.