for sheer joy that his strength had come back.  But he would yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master’s sake, and tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of play—­only a steeple-chase, for a silver vase and a lady’s smile, such as he and his rider had so often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of the crisp winter noons of English Shires far away.  He turned his eyes on the brown mare’s, and she turned hers on his; they were good friends in the stables at home, and they understood one another now.  “If I were what I was yesterday, she wouldn’t run even with me,” thought the King; but they were doing good work together, and he was too true a knight and too true a gentleman to be jealous of Mother o’ Pearl, so they raced neck-and-neck through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman’s ax, or the tolling bell of a convent clock, the only sound on the air save the beat of the flying hoofs.

Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the stars faded out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines rose out of the gloom.  Either his pursuers were baffled and distanced, or no hue and cry was yet after him; nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity awakened.  It was strangely still, strangely lonely, and the echo of the gallop seemed to beat on the stirless, breathless solitude.  As the light broke and grew clearer and clearer, Cecil’s face in it was white as death as he galloped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a price was set; but it was quite calm still, and very resolute—­there was no “harking back” in it.

They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time the chimes of a village were striking six o’clock; it was the only group of dwellings they had ventured near in their flight; the leaded lattices were thrust open with a hasty clang, and women’s heads looked out as the iron tramp of the hunters’ feet struck fire from the stones.  A few cries were raised; one burgher called them to know their errand; they answered nothing, but traversed the street with lightning speed, gone from sight almost ere they were seen.  A league farther on was a wooded bottom, all dark and silent, with a brook murmuring through it under the leafy shade of lilies and the tangle of water-plants; there Cecil checked the King and threw himself out of saddle.

“He is not quite himself yet,” he murmured, as he loosened the girths and held back the delicate head from the perilous cold of the water to which the horse stretched so eagerly; he thought more of Forest King than he thought, even in that hour, of himself.  He did all that was needed with his own hands; fed him with the corn from the saddle-bags, cooled him gently, led him to drink a cautious draught from the bubbling little stream, then let him graze and rest under the shade of the aromatic pines and the deep bronze leaves of the copper beeches; it was almost dark, so heavy and thickly laced were the branches, and exquisitely tranquil in the heart of the hilly country, in the peace of the early day, with the rushing of the forest brook the sole sound that was heard, and the everlasting sighing of the pine-boughs overhead.