plan was to reach a certain farm in a
glade of the woodland within two hours of sundown, and sleep there, for
they had taken the forest path, leaving again for the Fens and Cambridge
at the dawn. This, however, proved not possible because of the exceeding
badness of the road. So it came about that when the darkness closed in
on them a little before five o'clock, bringing with it a cold,
moaning wind and a scurry of snow, they were obliged to shelter in a
faggot-built woodman's hut, waiting for the moon to appear among the
clouds. Here they fed the horses with corn that they had brought with
them, and themselves also from their store of dried meat and barley
cakes, which Jeffrey carried on his shoulder in a bag. It was a poor
meal eaten thus in the darkness, but served to stay their stomachs and
pass away the time.

At length a ray of light pierced the doorway of the hut.

"She's up," said Sir John, "let us be going ere the nags grow stiff."

Making no answer, Jeffrey slipped the bits back into the horses' mouths
and led them out. Now the full moon had appeared like a great white eye
between two black banks of cloud and turned the world to silver. It was
a dreary scene on which she shone; a dazzling plain of snow, broken by
patches of hawthorns, and here and there by the gaunt shape of a pollard
oak, since this being the outskirt of the forest, folk came hither to
lop the tops of the trees for firing. A hundred and fifty yards away
or so, at the crest of a slope, was a round-shaped hill, made, not by
Nature, but by man. None knew what that hill might be, but tradition
said that once, hundreds or thousands of years before, a big battle
had been fought around it in which a king was killed, and that his
victorious army had raised this mound above his bones to be a memorial
for ever.

The story was indeed that, being a sea-king, they had built a boat or
dragged it thither from the river shore and set him in it with all the
slain for rowers; also that he might be seen at nights seated on his
horse in armour, and staring about him, as when he directed the battle.
At least it is true that the mount was called King's Grave, and that
people feared to pass it after sundown.

As Jeffrey Stokes was holding his master's stirrup for him to mount,
he uttered an exclamation and pointed. Following the line of his
outstretched hand, in the clear moonlight Sir John saw a man, who sat,
still as any statue, upon a horse on the very poin