Rowland rode for some distance without perceiving that he was followed; if Richard could but get within pistol-shot of him, for alas, he seemed to be mounted on the fleeter animal!  Heavens!-could it be?  Yes it was! it was his own lost Lady the cavalier rode!  For a moment his heart beat so fast that he felt as if he should fall from his horse.

Rowland became aware that he was pursued, but at the first glimpse of the long, low, rat-like animal on which the roundhead came floundering after him, burst into a laugh of derision, and jumping a young hedge found himself in a clayish fallow, which his mare found heavy.  Soon Richard jumped the hedge also, and immediately Bishop had the advantage.  But now, beyond the tall hedge they were approaching, they heard the sounds of the conflict near:  there was no time to lose.  Richard breathed deep, and uttered a long, wild, peculiar cry.  Lady started, half-stopped, raised her head high, and turned round her ears.  Richard cried again.  She wheeled, and despite spur, and rein, though the powerful bit with which Rowland rode her seemed to threaten breaking her jaw, bore him, at short deer-like bounds, back towards his pursuer.

Not until the mare refused obedience did Rowland begin to suspect who had followed him.  Then a vague recollection of something Richard had said the night he carried him home to Raglan, crossed his mind, and he grew furious.  But in vain he struggled with the mare, and all the time Richard kept ploughing on towards him.  At length he saw Rowland take a pistol from his holster.  Instinctively Richard did the same, and when he saw him raise the butt-end to strike her on the head, firmed—­and missed, but saved Lady the blow, and ere Rowland recovered from the start it gave him to hear the bullet whistle past his ear, uttered another equally peculiar but different cry.  Lady reared, plunged, threw her heels in the air, emptied her saddle, and came flying to Richard.

But now arose a fresh anxiety:-what if Bishop should, as was most likely, attack the mare?  At her master’s word, however, she stood, a few yards off, and with arched neck and forward-pricked ears, waited, while Bishop, moved possibly with admiration of the manner in which she had unseated her rider, scanned her with no malign aspect.

By this time Rowland had got upon his feet, and mindful of his duty, hopeful also that Richard would be content with his prize, set off as hard as he could run for a gap he spied in the hedge.  But in a moment Bishop, followed by Lady, had headed him.

‘Thou wert better cry quarter,’ said Richard.