Oh! be quick, be quick!"

Now at length they understood, and flew this way and that with candles
and lanterns. Two minutes later--it could scarcely have been more--I
was in front of the stables just as Hans led out the bay mare, a famous
beast that for two years I had saved all my money to buy. Someone
strapped on the saddle-bags while I tested the girths; someone else
appeared with the stout roan stallion that I knew would follow the mare
to the death. There was not time to saddle him, so Hans clambered on to
his back like a monkey, holding two guns under his arm, for I carried
but one and my double-barrelled pistol.

"Send off the messengers," I shouted to my father. "If you would see me
again send them swiftly, and follow with every man you can raise."

Then we were away with fifteen miles to do and five-and-thirty minutes
before the dawn.

"Softly up the slope," I said to Hans, "till the beasts get their wind,
and then ride as you never rode before."

Those first two miles of rising ground! I thought we should never come
to the end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she should
bucket herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion--a most
enduring horse, though not so very swift--had stood idle for the last
thirty hours, and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset.
Therefore being in fine fettle, they were keen for the business; also we
were light weights.

I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his