e Hills, He was far from stirrup by stirrup
with Woodford.

Red Mike was beginning to shiver in his wet coat, and Jourdan gathered
up his reins.

"Mr. Ward," he said, "told me to tell you to stay with old Simon Betts
to-night, an' git an early start in the mornin'." Then he rode away, and
we watched him disappear in the hollow out of which he had come carrying
so much terror.

We were a sobered three as we turned back into the woods. Ghosts and all
the rumours of ghosts had fled to the chimney corners. No witch rode and
there walked no spirit from among the dead. Above us the oaks knitted
their fantastic tops, but it made no fairy arch for the dancing minions
of Queen Mab. The thicket sang, but with the living voices of the good
crickets, and the owl yelled again, diving across the road, but his
piping notes had lost their eerie treble.

There is something in the creak of saddle-leather that has a way of
putting heart in a man. To hear the hogskin rubbing its yellow elbows is
a good sound. It means action. It means being on the way. It means that
all the idle talking, planning, doubting is over and done with. Sir
Hubert has cut it short with an oath and a blow of his clenched hand
that made the glasses rattle, and every swaggering cutthroat has his
foot in the stirrup.

It is good, too, when one feels the horse holding his bit as a man might
hold a child by the fingers. No slave this, but a giant ally, leading
the way up into the enemy's country. Out of the road, weakling!

We travelled slowly back toward the Stone Coal. Far away a candle in
some driver's window twinkled for a moment and was shut out by the
trees. In the low land a fog was rising, a climbing veil of grey, that
seemed to feel its path along the sloping hillside.

I heard the boom of the Stone Coal tumbling over the welts in its
bedding as we turned down toward the old Alestock mill. The clouds had
packed together in the sky, and the moon dipped in and out like a
bobbin. As we swept into the turnpike by the long ford, Ump stopped,
and, tossing his rein to Jud, slipped down into the road. El Mahdi
stopped by the Cardinal. When I looked, the hunchback was on his knees.

"What are you doing?" I said.

Ump laughed. "I'm lookin' for hawks' feathers. Where they fly thick,
there ought to be feathers."

He nosed around on the road for some minutes like a dog, and then
disappeared over the bank into the willow bushes. The Stone Coal lay
like a sheet o