If he sought France, the Extradition Treaty would deliver him up; Russia--Austria--Prussia were of equal danger; he would be identified, and given up to trial. Into the Italian service he knew many a scoundrel was received unquestioned; and he might try the Western world; though he had no means to pay the passage, he might work it; he was a good sailor. Yachts had been twice sunk under him, by steamers, in the Solent and the Spezzia, and his own schooner had once been fired at by mistake for a blockade runner, when he had brought to, and given them a broadside from his two shotted guns before he would signal them their error. As these things swept, disordered and aimless, through his mind, he wondered if a nightmare were upon him; he, the darling of Belgravia, the Guards' champion, the lover of Lady Guenevere, to be here outlawed and friendless; wearily racking his brains to solve whether he had seamanship enough to be taken before the mast, or could stand before the tambour-major of a French regiment, with a chance to serve the same flag! For a while he lay like a drunken man, heavy and motionless, his brow resting on his arm, his face buried in the grass; he had parted more easily with the woman he loved than he had parted with Forest King. The chimes of some far-off monastery, or castle-campanile, swung lazily in the morning stillness; the sound revived him, and recalled to him how little time there was if he would seek the flight that had begun on impulse and was continued in a firm, unshrinking resolve; he must go on, and on, and on; he must burrow like a fox, hide like a beaten cur; he must put leagues between him and all who had ever known him; he must sink his very name, and identity, and existence, under some impenetrable obscurity, or the burden he had taken up for others' sake would be uselessly borne. There must be action of some sort or other, instant and unerring. “It don't matter,” he thought, with the old idle indifference, oddly becoming in that extreme moment the very height of stoic philosophy, without any thought or effort to be such; “I was going to the bad of my own accord; I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this; it would have been the same thing, anyway, so it's just as well to do it for them. Life's over, and I'm a fool that I don't shoot myself.” But there was too imperious a spirit in the Royallieu blood to let him give in to disaster and do this. He rose slowly, staggering a little, and feeling blinded and dazzled with the blaze of the morning sun as he went out of the beech wood. There were the marks of the hoofs on the damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them--he would never rid the horse again!