ave I to
cut her horse's harness? They may put me in prison for it. Besides, what
an ass I have been. If she is what I think, she will know now that I
am her enemy, engaged on very special service." Looking back at the
inn-door, I saw a party of people gesticulating in the road. A man was
shouting to me. Others seemed to be laughing. Then, to my great joy,
round the turn of the road came an open carriage with two horses, going
at a good pace. There came my masters. All was well. I chuckled to
myself as I thought of the lady's face, when these two passed her,
leaving her without means of following them. When we were well out of
sight of the inn, I rode back to the carriage to report, wondering how
they would receive my news. They received it with displeasure, saying
that I had disobeyed my orders, not only in acting as I had done; but in
coming back to tell them. They bade me ride on at once to Egmont, before
I was arrested for cutting the lady's harness. As for their own plans,
whatever they were, my action altered them. I do not know what they did.
I know that I turned away with a flea in my ear from the Duke's reproof.
I remember not very much of my ride to Egmont, except that I seemed to
ride most of the time among sand-dunes. I glanced back anxiously to see
if I was being pursued; but no one followed. I rode on at the steady
lope, losing sight of the carriage, passing by dune after dune, rising
windmill after windmill, to drop them behind me as I rode. In that low
country, I had the gleam of the sea to my left hand, with the sails of
ships passing by me. The wind freshened as I rode, till at last my left
cheek felt the continual stinging of the sand grains, whirled up by the
wind from the bents. Where the sea-beach broadened, I rode on the sands.
The miles dropped past quickly enough, though I rode only at the lope,
not daring to hurry my horse. I kept this my pace even when going
through villages, where the people in their strange Dutch clothes
hurried out to stare at me as I bucketed by. I passed by acre after acre
of bulb-fields, mostly tulip-fields, now beginning to be full of colour.
Once, for ten minutes, I rode by a broad canal, where a barge with a
scarlet transom drove along under sail, spreading the ripples, keeping
alongside me. The helmsman, who was smoking a pipe as he eyed the luff
of his sail, waved his hand to me, as I loped along beside him. You
would not believe it; but he was one of the Oulton fishe