e earnestness. "A way that
is known to me alone. Thereby only canst thou escape. Oh, trust
me--trust me, dear heart! Only I can guide thee to safety and to
freedom!"

"On, my Mary!" he cried, gayly. "Lead on! Thou art my star!"

For the moment both forgot the danger behind them. The intoxication of
an ideal and self-forgetting trust--a merger of all else in
tenderness--flooded their souls and passed back and forth between them
in their mutual glances.

Then came that pursuing shout again, much nearer than before, and with a
shock the two lovers remembered their true plight.

Sir Guy reined in his steed.

"Halt--halt, Mary!" he commanded. "We must conceal us here in this dell
till that these fellows pass us. Then back to London by the way we came.
There is no other road."

Obedient now in her turn, Phoebe drew rein and followed her lover up
the bed of a small stream which crossed the road at this point. Behind a
curtain of trees they waited, and ere long saw their two pursuers dart
past them and disappear in a cloud of dust down the road.

"They will stop at the next dwelling to ask news of us, and thus learn
of our evasion," said Guy. "The chase has but begun. Come, sweet, let us
hasten southward again."

Darkness had now begun to fall in earnest, and as the two fugitives
passed the Peacock Inn, no one saw them.

They were soon near enough to the city gate to find many houses on
either hand, and Sir Guy deemed it wiser to move at a reasonable pace,
for fear of attracting suspicion in a neighborhood already aroused by
rumors of the man-hunt which had begun. They could count upon the
obscurity to conceal their identity.

They had not proceeded far beyond the inn when they met a party of
travellers on horseback, one of whom uttered a pleasant "Good-even!"

"Good-even!" said Phoebe, thinking only of due courtesy.

"What the good jere!" cried a voice from the rear of the group. "What
dost thou here, Poll?"

"My father!" exclaimed Phoebe, in terror.

"Hush!" whispered Sir Guy, putting his hand upon her bridle. "Ride
forward at an easy gait until I give example of haste."

They trotted quietly past the greater number of the group until a dark
figure approached and a voice in the gloom said, severely:

"What dost thou here? Who rides with thee, lass?"

Sir Guy now leaned forward and spurred his horse, leaping away into the
darkness without a word. In equal silence Phoebe followed his example
and galloped h