but no men stepped into the road to stop
their progress, and those few they met running in the direction of the
palace hastened to get out of their way, and stood with their backs
pressed against the walls of the narrow thoroughfare looking after them
with wonder.

Even those who suspected their errand were helpless to detain them, for
sooner than they could raise the hue and cry or formulate a plan of
action, the carriage had passed and was disappearing in the distance,
rocking from wheel to wheel like a ship in a gale. Two men who were so
bold as to start to follow, stopped abruptly when they saw the
outriders draw rein and turn in their saddles as though to await their
coming.

Clay's mind was torn with doubts, and his nerves were drawn taut like
the strings of a violin. Personal danger exhilarated him, but this
chance of harm to others who were helpless, except for him, depressed
his spirit with anxiety. He experienced in his own mind all the
nervous fears of a thief who sees an officer in every passing citizen,
and at one moment he warned the driver to move more circumspectly, and
so avert suspicion, and the next urged him into more desperate bursts
of speed. In his fancy every cross street threatened an ambush, and as
he cantered now before and now behind the carriage, he wished that he
was a multitude of men who could encompass it entirely and hide it.

But the solid streets soon gave way to open places, and low mud cabins,
where the horses' hoofs beat on a sun-baked road, and where the
inhabitants sat lazily before the door in the fading light, with no
knowledge of the changes that the day had wrought in the city, and with
only a moment's curious interest in the hooded carriage, and the grim,
white-faced foreigners who guarded it.

Clay turned his pony into a trot at Langham's side. His face was pale
and drawn.

As the danger of immediate pursuit and capture grew less, the carriage
had slackened its pace, and for some minutes the outriders galloped on
together side by side in silence. But the same thought was in the mind
of each, and when Langham spoke it was as though he were continuing
where he had but just been interrupted.

He laid his hand gently on Clay's arm. He did not turn his face toward
him, and his eyes were still peering into the shadows before them.
"Tell me?" he asked.

"He was coming up the stairs," Clay answered. He spoke in so low a
voice that Langham had to lean from his saddl