"Is it not so, Jorian ?" "Good!" said Jorian.
"But with the broadaxe he slashes about him like an angel from heaven--not so, Boris ?" said Jorian.
"Good!" said Boris.
"Can you ride ?" said the Prince, turning abruptly from them.
"Aye, sire!" said I.For indeed I could, and had no shame to say it.
"That horse of his is blown; give him your fresh one!" said he to the officer who had accompanied him.

"And do you show these good folk to their quarters." Hardly was I mounted before the Prince set spurs to his beast, and, with no more than a casual wave of his hand to the Princess and her train, he was off.
"Ride!" he cried to me.

And was presently almost out of sight, stretching his horse's gray belly to the earth, like a coursing dog after a hare.
Well was it for me that I had learned to ride in a hard school--that is, upon the unbroken colts which were brought in for the mounting of the Duke Casimir's soldiery.

For the horse that I had been given took the bit between his teeth and pursued so fiercely after his stable companion that I could scarce restrain him from passing the Prince.

But our way lay homeward, so that, though I was in no way able to guide nor yet control my charger, nevertheless presently the Prince and I were clattering through the town of Plassenburg like two fiends riding headlong to the pit.
Within the town the lamps were being lit in the booths, the folks busy marketing, and the watchmen already perambulating the city and crying the hours at the street corners.
But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places like blurs of scrabbled whiteness.