THE FIGHT BY THE RIVER For a while Hugh and Eve heard nothing, but Grey Dick's ears were sharper than theirs, quick as these might be.

About half a minute later, however, they caught the sound of horses' hoofs ringing on the hard earth, followed by that of voices and the crackle of breaking reeds.
Two of the speakers appeared and pulled up their horses near by in a dry hollow that lay between them and the river bank.

Peeping between the reeds that grew about the mouth of the earth-dwelling, Eve saw them.
"My father and the Frenchman," she whispered.

"Look!" And she slid back a little so that Hugh might see.
Peering through the stems of the undergrowth, set as it were in a little frame against the red and ominous sky, the eyes of Hugh de Cressi fell upon Sir Edmund Acour, a gallant, even a splendid-looking knight--that was his first impression of him.

Broad shouldered, graceful, in age neither young nor old, clean featured, quick eyed, with a mobile mouth and a little, square-cut beard, soft and languid voiced, black haired, richly dressed in a fur robe, and mounted on a fine black horse, such was the man.
Staring at Acour, and remembering that he, too, loved Red Eve, Hugh grew suddenly ashamed.