He heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling footsteps, and a reassuring voice.  Then the little man appeared, a rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him.  They approached each other without speaking, without a salutation.  The little man was fatigued and shamed to the pitch of hopeless bitterness, and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master.  The latter winced a little under his dependent’s eye.  “Well?” he said at last, with no pretence of authority.

“You left him?”

“My horse bolted.”

“I know.  So did mine.”

He laughed at his master mirthlessly.

“I say my horse bolted,” said the man who once had a silver-studded bridle.

“Cowards both,” said the little man.

The other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his eye on his inferior.

“Don’t call me a coward,” he said at length.

“You are a coward, like myself.”

“A coward possibly.  There is a limit beyond which every man must fear.  That I have learnt at last.  But not like yourself.  That is where the difference comes in.”

“I never could have dreamt you would have left him.  He saved your life two minutes before...  Why are you our lord?”

The master gnawed his knuckles again, and his countenance was dark.

“No man calls me a coward,” he said.  “No ...  A broken sword is better than none ...  One spavined white horse cannot be expected to carry two men a four days’ journey.  I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped.  You begin to understand me?  I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation.  It is men of your sort who unmake kings.  Besides which—­I never liked you.”

“My lord!” said the little man.

“No,” said the master. “No!”

He stood up sharply as the little man moved.  For a minute perhaps they faced one another.  Overhead the spiders’ balls went driving.  There was a quick movement among the pebbles; a running of feet, a cry of despair, a gasp and a blow...

Towards nightfall the wind fell.  The sun set in a calm serenity, and the man who had once possessed the silver bridle came at last very cautiously and by an easy slope out of the ravine again; but now he led the white horse that once belonged to the little man.  He would have gone back to his horse to get his silver-mounted bridle again, but he feared night and a quickening breeze might still find him in the valley, and besides, he disliked greatly to think he might discover his horse all swathed in cobwebs and perhaps unpleasantly eaten.

And as he thought of those cobwebs, and of all the dangers he had been through, and the manner in which he had been preserved that day, his hand sought a little reliquary that hung about his neck, and he clasped it for a moment with heartfelt gratitude.  As he did so his eyes went across the valley.