behind me, and I stood looking back at Oxford towers, all bath'd in
the winter moonlight, I heard the two voices roaring away up the
street:

"It was a frog leap'd into a pool--"

At length they died into silence; and, hugging the king's letter in
my breast, I stepped briskly forward on my travels.




CHAPTER IV.

I TAKE THE ROAD.


So puffed up was I by the condescension of the two princes, and my
head so busy with big thoughts, that not till I was over the bridges
and climbing the high ground beyond South Hincksey, with a shrewd
northeast wind at my back, could I spare time for a second backward
look. By this, the city lay spread at my feet, very delicate and
beautiful in a silver network, with a black clump or two to
southward, where the line of Bagley trees ran below the hill. I
pulled out the letter that Anthony had given me. In the moonlight
the brown smear of his blood was plain to see, running across the
superscription:

"_To our trusty and well beloved Sir Ralph Hopton, at our Army in
Cornwall--these._"