"Good for you!" snapped Blake. "Even your brother Christopher, with the starry look o’ dreams about his face, was sure that it would take seven days. I wager a guinea to a pinch o’ snuff that you’re not in Oxford in five days and a half." "That is a wager?" "I said as much, sir." "Then lend me the pinch of snuff. I emptied my box in waiting for you, and was feeling lonely." Blake laughed as he passed his box over. There was an arresting humour about the man, a streak of the mother-wit that made the Metcalf clan at home in camp or city. "I’ll see you to the next stage," he said, reining his horse about—"that is, if you care for an idle man’s company. I’ve nothing in the world to do just now." The other only nodded, touched his horse sharply with the spur, and Blake found himself galloping with a fury that, even to his experience of night adventures, seemed breakneck and disastrous. At the end of a mile their horses were in a lather; at the end of two they had to check a little up the rise of a hill. On the top of the hill, clear against the sky, they saw a horseman sitting quiet in saddle. They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight. [Illustration: "They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight."] "A Mecca!" panted Blake’s companion. "Cousin does not slay cousin," said the man on the hill-top, rattling his sword into the sheath again. "Have they found Rupert?" The second rider was given his errand briefly and without waste of breath. Then he flicked his horse, and Blake was tempted to follow him, too. There was something uncanny, some hint of mystery and deep, resistless strength about this picketing of the road north. Blake had a quick imagination; he saw this chain of riders, linking York with Oxfordshire, spurring through a country fast asleep—only they and the moon and the nightingales awake—until, kinsman passing the message on to kinsman at each two-miles stage, the last rider came in with his tale of "Boot and saddle." Indeed, Blake urged his mare to follow the second horseman; but she was reluctant, and was sobbing under him after the headlong gallop. "I had forgotten. She has carried me from Oxford already," he said, turning to his companion. "She’s a good little mare," said Metcalf, with instinctive judgment of all horseflesh. "She will have time to rest if you’re minded to share the waiting time with me." "Your five days and a half?" laughed the other, as they returned at a quiet pace to their first meeting-place. "Yes, I shall stay, if only to claim my wager. It is not in human power for your company to muster in the time." "It is a game we have played often during these last months. Lord Fairfax, in the north, swears there’s witchcraft in it, because we have carried news from York to Skipton, from Skipton into Lancashire, while single messengers were spurring half-way on the road."