galloping full flight down the slope.

With a call to the others to stand steady and wait for me, I wheeled
my mare about and rode off in chase, to round him up. The almost
total darkness made this hunting mighty unpleasant; but I knew that,
bating the chance of being flung by a mole-hill, I had my gentleman
safe enough. For, to begin with, he must soon find the pace irksome,
with two firkin casks jolting against his ribs; and at the foot of
the descent the river would surely head him off. To be sure it was
frozen hard and he might have crossed it dry-footed, but the alders
on the bank frighted him back, and presently I had him penned in an
angle between hedge and stream. Here, as I slowed up and advanced to
coax him, from out of the darkness behind him there broke suddenly a
shouting and pounding of hoofs, and close in front of me (but hidden
by the hedge) a troop of horsemen clattered down from the farther
slope and up the lane where my comrades were gathered.

If for a moment I doubted what it all might mean, a couple of
pistol-shots, followed by a loose volley that mixt itself with oaths
and yells, all too quickly put this out of doubt. My men were being
charged, without question or challenge, by a troop of the enemy,
while separated by a quarter of a mile of darkness and stiff rising
ground from me, who alone carried their credentials. Little need to
say in what hurry I wheeled my mare about to the slope, struck spur,
dragged my trumpet loose on its sling and blew, as best I could, the
call that both armies accepted for note of parley. Belike (let me do
the villains this credit), with the jolt and heave of the mare's
shoulders knocking the breath out of me, I sounded it ill, or in
the noise and scuffle they heard confusedly and missed heeding.
The firing continued, at any rate, and before I gained the gate the