Explore "My Lady Rotha" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If it had been our fate after that to continue our flight in the same weary fashion we had before devised, lying in woods by day, and all night riding jaded horses, until we passed the gates of some free city, I do not think that I could have gone through with it. Doubtless it was my duty to go with my lady. But the long hours of daylight inaction, the slow brooding tramp, must have proved intolerable. And at some time or other, in some way or other, I must have snapped the ties that bound me.
But, as if the loss of my heart had rid us of some spell cast over us, by noon of that day we stood safe. For, an hour before noon, while we lay in a fir-wood not far from Weimar, and Jacob kept watch on the road below, and the rest slept as we pleased, a party of horse came along the way, and made as if to pass below us. They numbered more than a hundred, and Jacob's heart failed him, lest some ring or buckle of our accoutrements should sparkle and catch their eyes. To shift the burden he called us, and we went to watch them.