The Virginia roads have been cursed by larger armies than any that ever marched in Flanders, but Oscar was not a swearing man.

He paused to rest his beast occasionally and to observe the landscape with the eye of a strategist.

Moonlight, he remembered, was a useful accessory of the assassin's trade, and the faint sounds of the spring night were all promptly traced to their causes as they reached his alert ears.
At the gate of the hunting-park grounds he bent forward in the saddle to lift the chain that held it; urged his horse inside, bent down to refasten it, and as his fingers clutched the iron a man rose in the shadow of the little lodge and clasped him about the middle.

The iron chain swung free and rattled against the post, and the horse snorted with fright, then, at a word from Oscar, was still.

There was the barest second of waiting, in which the long arms tightened, and the great body of his assailant hung heavily about him; then he dug spurs into the horse's flanks and the animal leaped forward with a snort of rage, jumped out of the path and tore away through the woods.
Oscar's whole strength was taxed to hold his seat as the burly figure thumped against the horse's flanks.