came out. Belward had some beer brought.

A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.

As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people,
a coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted
his eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings
away from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle, however;
but he had not come to England to show surprise at anything. As the
coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse,
keen, dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the
uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not he
alone, but Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds
of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner
and was gone.

The landlord was at Belward's elbow.

"The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That's Maister Ian
Belward, sir."

Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and
put a foot in the stirrup.

"Who is 'Maister Ian'?"