ing in his stirrups
and placing his hand to his ear.

"Hah!" cried the King. "Are they coming on again?"

"No, sir; all is quiet, but we have many good English miles to ride, and
it would be wise to keep our horses at a steady pace to get well beyond
the outlaws' grasp, for you do not want to reach my old friend's manor
and rouse his people up with a following of outlaws at our heels."

"There, I give up," said the King, "and I must give you your due, Leoni.
You are the wisest man I know, and I am afraid that you possess a very
ungrateful master. Forward, gentlemen, and let's get there, for I am
beginning to grow boar-like and to long to stretch my sore and weary
limbs in a good bed, if I can, or merely on a heap of straw. Here,
Leoni, I suppose you have not brought any of that healing salve with
which you have treated me more than once when I came to misfortune in
the hunt?"

"By rights, sir, I am a _chirurgien_, or leech," said Leoni gravely.
"On my travels a few simples and my little case are things I never leave
behind."

These were almost the last words spoken during the ten-mile ride, the
latter part being intensely silent, until Leoni drew rein upon the slope
of a wooded hill and pointed across a little valley, where a silver
streamlet flashed before their eyes, to the gables of a long low English
manor-house whose diamond-shaped casements glittered like the facets of
so many gems in a setting of ivy, full in the light of the unclouded
moon.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE NEXT MORNING.

"Yes! Hallo! What is it?"

Denis started up upon his left elbow, gazing in a confused way at a
glistening oaken door.

He was in a well-furnished room with tall narrow window through which
the sun shone brightly, lighting up the furniture, and streaming across
the bed in which he lay; but for some moments it did not light up his
intellect, which was still oppressed with the impressions of a confused
dream, half real, half imaginary, of chasing horses, being ridden down,
fighting for life, and then galloping on and on all through the night,
while as he stared at the door he was conscious of a heavy, dull, aching
pain extending from his right hand right up his shoulder, and giving him
sharp twinges every time he breathed.

"Some one called," he thought to himself, and as the idea passed through
his brain a pleasant-sounding voice said in English:

"Breakfast directly. May I come in?" Then the door was thrown open,