It was after seven when Nur Jehan and her pony cantered along the top of the plateau and down to the east. At the main road Benita insisted that Nur Jehan’s day had been long enough and that he should not walk the six miles to Stow-on-the-Wold and back again.

I accepted the excuse, though I knew the stallion was not in the least tired. It was best that we should separate quickly. On the way down through cut woodland, where hazel and alder grew close to the path, I had once heard another horse. There was nothing surprising in that, but I had to know who the rider was — and I was not going to revive her memories of the valley below the Wen Acre Plantation by suddenly playing Red Indians through the undergrowth and leaving her with the impression that her future husband was in need of a psychiatrist.

To avoid the close cover I took Nur Jehan straight up the bare, sharp slope and back towards the barn along high ground. The long fields were still bathed in light and deserted as prairie. The routine of the farms was over for the day.

I too felt permeated by the light. Benita brought this dear land with her just as surely as if she had been heiress to a thousand acres. I could neither analyze nor recognize myself. It is a startling rebirth to begin living in the future after ten years of obsession with the past. I found myself thinking of the economics of marriage with all the responsibility of a sound young man at the beginning of his career. I was at the beginning in a way. I had never bothered with half a dozen different appointments which were quite certainly within my reach. The next one with a decent salary would be mine. That and her pencil — any zoologist would jump at the chance of getting her as an illustrator — would keep us in reasonable comfort for a start. I smiled with amusement at my own dreaming.

“Good evening, sir! That is a splendid animal.”

Hearty, perfectly in keeping with his surroundings, the man rode out of a little covert of thorn on the edge of the escarpment. He appeared to have just passed through it. There was nothing to suggest that he had watched me take leave of Benita, noted my route back and waited for me.

His face was strong and casual. If I had not seen him before I might never have noticed its quality of intentness. He wore a bowler hat, breeches and boots, a faultless jacket. The bushy eyebrows were not there. My guess that they had been stuck on was right; their purpose was to prevail as the dominant point in any description of him. Nor was his hair dark any more. It was white, prematurely white. Yet we had all called him the dark gentleman. He looked older and more distinguished than at Hernsholt. He was riding a chestnut mare, a Cots wold hunter of sixteen hands, up to his weight and with powerful quarters.

My start disconcerted Nur Jehan. In collecting the stallion I managed to collect myself.

“Good evening, sir!” I replied.

How right I had been to tackle him in my own way! He was indeed above suspicion. Even if I could have proved that he had taken a room in my street, the police would be almost bound to accept his innocent explanation of it. It was inconceivable that he should have blown a postman in half, murdered Sporn and Weber, and ingeniously kept Dickfuss praying three days for death before he allowed him to die. I could have sworn the man was a magistrate and in the running for sheriff of the county.

“Are you going far?” he asked.

“Just exercising.”

It would have been the end of me if I had admitted that I was bound directly for the lonely clump of trees on the horizon half a mile ahead where, as he must have known, I was camping. My only hope was to keep him off and lead him, without arousing any suspicion, suddenly down to the world of farms and villages. He had caught me on the only evening when I had for a moment forgotten him. I was completely at his mercy. I had no chance of beating him to the draw, since the clumsy holster of the Mauser was under my left armpit.

“A worthwhile job,” he said cordially. “Of course we have all heard of you and Nur Jehan.”

“You live here?” I asked.

“No. I am just staying with friends.”

His manners were pleasant and assured. Evidently he had not the least idea that I had recognized him. Inside me I was screaming to myself that if he killed me he was doomed, that my friends knew enough about him to establish his identity, and that I must tell him so. But would he think it true? Was it in fact true? There was no evidence against him but mine. And I was not going to be alive to give it.

He came up on my right, for he had to. We were now walking our horses side by side. Imperceptibly the pace slowed. I could not allow him to drop behind and shoot me through the back, but I could not stop without some explanation. I could not even sit up, touch Nur Jehan with my heel and bolt for it. True, I might get clear. I was familiar enough with his character to know that he never took a chancy shot. But the fellow was an experienced horseman; he would spot at once that it was deliberate flight. It was quite possible that he would raise his bowler hat ironically and vanish — to reappear on some other evening when love had made me careless at whatever home I shared with Benita.

“He is only half trained,” I said in order to put the blame for any sudden move on Nur Jehan. “He was brought up as a pet.”

“Yes. Always disastrous. Is he excitable?”

“No. And your mare?”

He was evasive. He did not know. That proved at any rate that the mare did not belong to him. He was the sort of man who would unhesitatingly be lent a good horse.

Whatever move I made must not be obvious. It must appear to this purring tiger that Nur Jehan was solely responsible. I sat loosely and continued to chat. Then I drove my left heel hard into the stallion’s tender rib and prayed that I wouldn’t be thrown.

Nur Jehan failed me. Instead of bucking or bolting, he snorted, shook his head and continued to walk. He clearly liked the horse alongside him and was not going to be deterred from a promising acquaintanceship by carelessness on the part of his rider.

My companion noticed nothing, for he could not see my left leg and I had not gathered my horse. I tried it again. This time Nur Jehan stopped dead, offended and puzzled. He did not particularly resent pressure which he felt to be accidental; what he would not stand was deliberate use of a sore rib to give orders. But the friend on his back was sitting easily and not giving any orders. The circumstances were all wrong.

This considerate rider also stopped. That was what I dreaded and had been trying to avoid. Unless we were to stay there all night I had to start first and allow him to remain for a decisive second or two behind me. I played the inefficient horseman and sawed at Nur Jehan’s mouth, who began to dance.

“Completely untrainable!” I shouted angrily.

“Weren’t you perhaps a little hard on his mouth?”

“Damn his mouth!”

“Patience, my dear sir!” advised my executioner very pleasantly. “Patience always leads to the result you want in the end.”

He had now started to ride with half his right hand stuffed carelessly into his outside coat pocket. He went ahead for a moment and crossed my path on the excuse of looking closely at some sheep which he pretended to admire. He made it extremely difficult for me to avoid coming up on his right. Riding side by side in that position I had no defense against a shot through the pocket and into the liver — or into anywhere if the unseen weapon were of sufficient caliber to knock me off my horse.

To follow him and come up on his left was awkward, but Nur Jehan’s behavior was perfect. He danced just enough to disguise the fact that the edging to the left was deliberate. We rode on over the turf, both breaking from canter to walk a little abruptly but not so unreasonably as to be unnatural. I had an irrelevant and vivid vision of some gymkhana or riding school — so long ago that I could not remember which and certainly did not try —at which I had to turn an obstinate pony among posts. This despairing exercise upon which I was now engaged had equally simple rules. Come up on your companion’s right and you are dead. But you must not be caught avoiding it, nor he trying to force you into it.