head drooping
helplessly downward, was his rider, bleeding from a pistol wound in the
neck, and too weak even to disengage his feet from the stirrups. In a
single glance I recognised the horseman who had ridden ahead of the
coach.

A pistol, evidently dropped from his hand, lay on the grass, and his hat
lay between the horse's feet.

If life was not already extinct, it was fast ebbing away. I lifted him
as gently as I could and laid him on the grass. He opened his eyes, and
his lips moved; but for a moment he seemed choked. I tried with some
moss to stanch his still bleeding wound, but the groan he gave as I
touched him caused me to desist.

Then he tried to speak something in French.

"What is it?" said I, in English.

A look of quick relief came into his face.

"Ride forward with the letters--for God's sake--promise."

Even in the feeble, broken words I could recognise a countryman.

"Yes," said I.

"Horses--at each post--my purse," he gasped.

"I promise I will do as you ask--as I am an Irishman and a Christian."

That seemed to satisfy him.

"Your hand," said he, at last.

I gave it to him, and as it closed on his he groaned, and died.

It had all happened so suddenly that for a minute or two I knelt where I
was, with my hand still in his, like one in a dream. Then I roused
myself, and considered what was to be done.

The dead man was a good-looking youth, scarcely twenty, dressed in the
habit of a gentleman's groom, and evidently, by the smartness of his
accoutrement, in the employ of some one of importance. As to how he had
come by his death I could only guess. But I suspected the horseman I
had seen galloping back towards Brest in the morning twilight had had
something to do with it. The highwayman had met the traveller, and
shots had been exchanged--the one fatal, the other telling enough to
send the bandit flying. The poor wounded fellow had had strength enough
to turn his horse into the wood and cling to his seat. How long he had
stayed thus, slowly bleeding to death, I could not say; but the
diligence must have passed that way two hours ago, and he must have been
well ahead of it when his journey was thus suddenly stopped.

Then I recalled his dying words, and after tethering the horse set
myself to look for the papers he spoke of. I found them at last--the
passport in his breast pocket, whence he could easily produce it, the
others in his belt. The former described the bearer