Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/20

Rh "Off! Every second is life!" While she spoke he was in the saddle; the horses, young and wild, broke away at a touch in a stretching gallop, with the brave hound coursing beside them, mad with the joy of his liberty. The hoofs were noiseless on the moss that was damp and yielding by the moisture from the swamps, and the belt of the cypress screened their flight from the monastery; the monks would search for hours, till their torches flared out, in every nook and cleft of the rocks around, ere ever they would dream how that midnight ride had borne away their prisoner.

Out of the cypress-grove and beyond the beetling wall of the crags the moonlight lay in a broad white sheet, clear and soft as dawn, across the open country, scarcely broken by a tree or hut. Afar the still green fields of rye and maize were scarcely stirred by a breath, and the twisted boughs of the olives were veiled with a soft mist, the steam of the marshes and the plains. Through the luminous half-light the horses dashed at racing speed, while the water-threaded earth trembled beneath them, and the rank grasses were crushed under their fleet hoofs.

Through the shallow pools, with the water splashed to their girths, and circling away in