Dick heaved a gentle sigh, then looked at his empty pistol and his sword. "This is an occasion for horses, not for weapons," he said, with his former quietness. "To think that, after all the flying, the fighting, and the killing, a man should be nabbed at last, merely for want of a fresh horse. Why do you wait, Gerard? You can easily escape with Catherine. You must save her." "And leave you? Never!" "Well said, my brother," whispered Catherine. "I see yonder a kind of country inn, to judge from the horse-shed near it," said Dick, indicating a low building a short distance ahead on their road. He started towards it afoot, followed by the two who were mounted. When he reached the shed, he saw therein, to his amazement, two horses. A peasant was in the act of giving them grain. "Whose animals are these, my friend?" queried Dick. "They belong to a soldier, mein herr, who arrived last night with the black, and won the gray from another guest, at cards." "And where is this fortunate person to be found?" "In the house, mein herr; in the first room at the head of the stairs." "I'll go and try to make a bargain with him," said Dick. "No," said Gerard, "let me go. I am now better able to make bargains than you are." And he leaped off his horse and ran to the house. He desired that he, not Dick, should be at the expense of the purchase. Dick stood waiting beside Catherine, looking now into her anxious eyes with a reassuring smile, now towards the distant troops that were steadily drawing nearer on the road. Soon Gerard reappeared from the house, with a dejected face. "The fellow refuses to sell," he said. "He sat playing a violin, and blamed me for interrupting his music. I think we should be justified in taking one of his horses, in spite of him." "You cannot do that, mein herr," said the peasant, looking towards the inn, from which came the sounds of men gambling and drinking. "What sort of a man is this horse-owner?" asked Dick, not as if with any hope, but as if duty required the last possible effort. "A gaunt rascal," said Gerard, "who began to answer me in French, and then veered into a kind of Scotch-English, with an Irish phrase or two." A strange, wondering look came over Dick's face. "Let me try," he said, in a barely audible voice, and made hastily for the house. He flung open the door, rushed up the rickety stairs, and stopped before a chamber at their head. From within came the sound of a fiddle scraping out the tune of "Over the hills and far away." Dick burst into the room, crying out, "Tom MacAlister, dear old Tom, _I_ am the man that wants to buy your horse!" * * * * * "'Tis no sic a vast warld, they that do a mickle travelling will discover," said MacAlister, as he and the three fugitives cantered westward towards Mayence, having left the Frankfort territory, and, consequently, the Frankfort city guard, far behind them.