“I shall be here at daybreak,” Aymer answered.  He saddled Selim with his own hand, and with Dauvrey beside him hurried away.  They rode in silence with eyes alert, scanning sharply the ground on both sides of the road that lay like a silver stream before them.  A mile from the castle a soldier rode out from the shadow and reined across the track, his casquetel and drawn sword glistening in the moonlight.

“Hold!” he ordered.

“Yorkshire!” said De Lacy . . .  “Any news?” he demanded, as they swept by.

“None, my lord.”

At the first cross-road two horsemen barred the way.  Aymer paused to question them, but learning nothing, the pace was resumed.  Another mile was passed, and they had tarried a moment to breathe and water the horses at a rivulet that gurgled across the road, when Selim suddenly threw up his head.

“Some one comes!” said De Lacy . . . “it is news . . . he rides furiously; he must be stopped.”

They drew out into the middle of the track and waited.  Presently a running horse shot into view ahead, and the rider, seeing the two in front, shouted the royal messenger’s call:  “Way!  In the King’s name!  Way!”

“Stay, Allen,” Giles Dauvrey cried, recognizing him.  “What word?”

“Sir John has been found,” the man answered, drawing up short.

“Dead?” Aymer demanded.

“No, my lord, not yet.”

“And the Countess of Clare?”

“Gone, my lord; no trace.”

“God in Heaven! . . .  Where Is Sir John?”

“Half a league further on.”

“Tell the King I have gone thither,” Aymer called over his shoulder as he raced away.

In a patch of moonlight, fifty feet or so in from the road, lay Sir John de Bury, his eyes closed, his face upturned, motionless—­to all appearances a corpse.  De Lacy sprang down and knelt beside him.

“He is not dead, my lord,” said a soldier.

Aymer laid back the doublet and shirt, wet and heavy with blood that had come from a deep wound in the right breast, and was still oozing slowly.  The heart was beating, but very faintly, and forcing the set jaws apart with his dagger, he poured a measure of cordial down Sir John’s throat.

“May it please you, sir,” said one of the men, “we have arranged a litter of boughs, and if you think it good we will bear him back to the castle.”

“It can do him no harm,” De Lacy answered. . .  “How say you, Giles?”

“With even step it will not hurt him,” the squire replied.

Lifting the old Knight carefully they placed him on the litter and Aymer wrapped his own cloak around him, then nodded to the soldiers to proceed.

“Go slowly,” he ordered, “a jolt may end his life.  Watch his heart closely; if it grow weaker, use the cordial,” and he handed them the flask.

“The fight was not at this place,” said Dauvrey after a moment’s examination of the ground; “there are no mingling hoof marks.  De Bury likely fell from the saddle here and the horse kept on to the castle; his tracks point thither.”