Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/59

Rh hoped to secure their release if it should happen that they had been overtaken and captured.

"I'll warrant," Hugh muttered to himself as he jogged on at the quickest pace his steed could maintain, "that they will never take young Mortimer without a fight, unless he fears that resistance may endanger the Lady Amabel!"

Every few hundred rods, Hugh stopped his horse and listened to detect the sound of horses' hoofs, or the clash of arms. But in spite of this precaution he did not hear Luke the Lurdane's party until he ran right into the midst of them, for it happened that during one of his listening pauses, they had been watering their horses at a little stream by the roadside, and so he could hear nothing. Suddenly, rounding a turn in the road, Hugh saw the four horsemen directly in front and not thirty feet away. Luke the Lurdane instantly cried out: "Forward and take him!" setting his men the example by slapping his horse upon the flank, and riding directly toward Hugh. Hugh, seeing that the only safe course was the boldest, instead of losing time by wheeling about to take flight, drove his spurs deep into the mare's sides, and dashed forward to meet the charge, at the same time drawing a heavy hunting-knife—the one Lord Mortimer had given him as a prize. Luke's horse shied as Hugh's approached. Luke