“I failed him to-day through my foes and his,” Forest King thought, as he laid his length out in his mighty stride. “But I love him well; I will save him to-night.” And save him the brave brute did. The grass was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. But he would yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master's sake, and tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of play--only a steeple-chase, for a silver vase and a lady's smile, such as he and his rider had so often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of the crisp winter noons of English Shires far away. He turned his eyes on the brown mare's, and she turned hers on his; they were good friends in the stables at home, and they understood one another now. “If I were what I was yesterday, she wouldn't run even with me,” thought the King; but they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o' Pearl, so they raced neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman's ax, or the tolling bell of a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat of the flying hoofs. Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the stars faded out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines rose out of the gloom. Either his pursuers were baffled and distanced, or no hue and cry was yet after him; nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity awakened. It was strangely still, strangely lonely, and the echo of the gallop seemed to beat on the stirless, breathless solitude. As the light broke and grew clearer and clearer, Cecil's face in it was white as death as he galloped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a price was set; but it was quite calm still, and very resolute--there was no “harking back” in it. They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time the chimes of a village were striking six o'clock; it was the only group of dwellings they had ventured near in their flight; the leaded lattices were thrust open with a hasty clang, and women's heads looked out as the iron tramp of the hunters' feet struck fire from the stones. A few cries were raised; one burgher called them to know their errand; they answered nothing, but traversed the street with lightning speed, gone from sight almost ere they were seen. A league farther on was a wooded bottom, all dark and silent, with a brook murmuring through it under the leafy shade of lilies and the tangle of water-plants; there Cecil checked the King and threw himself out of saddle.