On, with loose reins and head bent low, the horseman rushed towards us, and judging by his speed would certainly have passed me by unnoticed; but just as he came close, Kitty must needs prick up her ears and give a loud, shrill neigh. At that the rider pulled his lathered steed up with a suddenness that wellnigh shot him from the saddle, and there, red-faced, open-mouthed and panting, sat John Coram, staring at me like a man bedaft.
"Yes, truly, for you might have broke your neck by pulling up thus sharply," I replied, and could not keep from smiling.
"Nay--friend--’tis naught--to--jest upon," quoth he severely. "Faith!--but--I--I fairly boil within."
Unbuckling his head-piece he hung it on his arm, and verily his breath roared from him like a blacksmith’s forge. Thus bared, and with the sunlight shining on his great bald pate, he looked so fat and peaceful--so unwarlike--that I was sorely put to it to save myself from laughing.
"Friend," said he at last, "I count the whinnying of that mare of thine a mercy; but for it I might well have passed thee by."
"True," I agreed; "but, say, what brings you after me in such a headlong fashion?"
John Coram fastened on his head-piece with all the care of some old dame a-tying on her cap, looked up and down the lane, then drawing closer, said:
"Ah! and from whom?" I asked, stroking my mare’s neck carelessly, for indeed I had got used to peril.
Again John Coram glanced about him, this time taking in the trees as well, as though they might hold danger; then he drew still closer, and, in a low voice, answered:
At that I started somewhat, for, as you are aware, he named no ordinary open foe, but rather one who lurked in secret places privily to murder. Therefore I paused a moment, looking hard into the steel-framed face before me ere I murmured:
"Yea, and that somewhere on this very road," replied John Coram in a fearful whisper.
’Twas now my turn to glance around and scan the trees, especially a thick-leaved oak just opposite.
"Why, in this fashion," answered Coram. "As I stood on guard last night a mile or so from here, I heard sly, slinking footsteps coming from the shadow of a wood. ’Who goes there?’ I cried, and someone gave the password of the night."