After the first shower of bolts the slopes upon each side of the company of horsemen became alive with warriors, slipping down the hill upon them like brown and living torrents. There was a ruddy glare ahead, where the ardent rays of the sun, now setting, were beating against the breastplates of an advancing foe. Uprose, then, loud cries of "Douglas, and the Duke of York!" "Long live the White Rose!" which was met with shouts of "Death to the traitors!" "Long live Tyrrell and the Duke of Warwick!" Sir Richard was just upon the point of yielding to the instinctive call that would have placed him in the singular position of giving battle against the enemies of his supposed own foes, when the Renegade Duke's hand fell heavily upon the bridle of his prancing stallion. "Cock-shut time is come!" he was shouting in the young knight's ear. "I am ready to obey thy command of this morning. Ride with me to the left!" Quick as a flash Sir Richard wheeled, and together they drove upward along a narrow roadway that debouched from the one over which they had been traveling, unlimbering their battle-axes as they sped along. When the wooded summit of the down intervened between them and the scene of the conflict, they drew rein and went at it. Whatsoever else the Renegade Duke may have been, Sir Richard was quick to discover that as a foeman he was not in the least to be despised. Blow after blow he was parrying, and that with a neatness and cleverness that set the impetuous young knight somewhat by the ears. Indeed, growing out of the very frenzy of his eagerness, he realized that his attacks were losing an alarming measure of their force and accuracy. There was now need of immediate action, as, upon the further side of the down, the crash of arms seemed to be subsiding. It was just as he was charging his antagonist afresh that Sir Richard heard the thunder of hoof-beats along the narrow road upon which the Duke and he were fighting for their very lives. Summoning every vestige of energy and strength at his command, he aimed a blow full at his foeman's head-piece. When it appeared to be upon the point of striking, the Renegade Duke executed a swift demivolte. The heavy ax, glancing along his helm, clove off its jaunty white plume, and crashed fair upon the chamfron of his mount. There followed then a momentary reeling and staggering, like a maimed ship in a sudden gale, whereupon horse and rider fell, furiously plunging and kicking, into a thornhedge beside the road. By now the echoes of the approaching hoofbeats were reverberating clear and crepitant from against the steep side of the opposite hill. The Renegade Duke had not done sinking into the crackling brush when Sir Richard wheeled, and, touching rowels lightly to his stallion's foam-flecked side, made off with all the speed there was left in him. CHAPTER X OF A NIGHT IN A SHEPHERD'S HUT, AND A SURPRISE IN THE MORNING