I know not indeed if Colonel Royston yet hold in this belief; but from that point did I love Master Ned, if, indeed, I had not begun to do so some seconds before. And I was glad that he sat upon his horse, that raised his head some few inches above Betty's cap, for she was indeed a great lass, and twice his age, and his reproof had in great measure lost its force had he stood dwarfed beside her great body. From Betty he turned to me, as I sat in the road, and--"Thou art tired, little one," he cried, with a great tenderness in his young countenance, that to me seemed so old. "If you will ride before me, sweetheart," he said, patting the pommel of his saddle, which was new and fine, as all about his person, "I and Noll will take most gentle care of thee." At which kind words I rose to my sore feet, stretching out my arms, and crying to him that I would go with him. And, while Betty stood aghast, yet with never a thought her timid and sickly nursling would venture such a deed, I had reached his down-reached hands, had scrambled or was pulled into the saddle before my knight-errant, the little horse had plunged beneath his double burden, and we were away. As I swayed and bounced on the pommel in the first strides of that gallop along the sward that lies between the elm trees and the road, where the air rushed by so cool and green in the shade, he seized me with his right arm, fetching me round against his body so that my chin lay on the arm above the elbow. As my eyes, close shut in the first shock of our flight, came wide in the great comfort of this security, I was gazing back over the way we had sped, and I laughed aloud to see the vain pursuit of Betty. For all but her great self seemed streaming behind her in the wind of her going--cap, hair, and petticoat, while the fatness of her trembled as she ran. For all this, long as it has been in the telling, happened, as it were, in a single stroke of time, and we were yet little parted from the pursuer. And, as I laughed, Master Royston, between his chidings of his nag for so serving us, would know the reason of my mirth--so "Do but see," I cried, "how Betty runs, and you will laugh too." But he could not, till he had tamed and admonished little Noll to a better pace for my ease. And when it was time for him to laugh at the quaint figure Betty did cut, I had already begun to pity her. But Master Royston would none of it. "She is very well served," he said, "for her rude manners to thee, little one. I have a mind to give her some more of it. She is weary, is she not?" "Ay, indeed, poor Bet!" I answered, "else had she not so handled me."