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The Squire accompanied his guest to the stable, where Master Pearson carefully examined his horse's hoofs, as well as the girths of his saddle, threw himself into it, and shaking hands with his host, started off at a quick trot down the avenue. "A hard life he must have of it," thought the Squire, who was beginning to be fonder of his ease than of physical exertion.
"I tell you, Poppins, that everything is hot to me. Here, here I'm hot." And then he struck his breast. "And yet I'm very cold. 'Tis cold to be alone; cold to have lost one's all. Poppins, I've loved a harpy." "I believe you're about right there," said Poppins. "A harpy! Her nails will grow to talons, and on her feet are hoofs. Within she is horn all over.
I rode past dim outlines of houses and through vague, dreamlike villages without seeing a soul or hearing a sound. Once I saw a light ahead by the roadside, but out it went as the rattle of Sultan's hoofs told of my coming. It was no wonder, for these poor folk were living between two armies and wanted neither, friend nor foe.
Too late, as the Bishop's Vicar, struck by his horse, fell screaming under its hoofs too late, as the consecrated vessels which he had been bearing rolled in the mud, Tavannes saw that they bore the canopy and the Host! He knew what he had done, then. Before his horse's iron shoes struck the ground again, his face even his face had lost its colour.
Night had closed in, and thick vapours hid the moon, but lamps and lighted windows illuminated the wide street. Presently it began to snow. But through the snow and the night went carriages in all directions, with great lamps that turned the flakes into white stars for a moment as they gleamed past. The hoofs of the horses echoed hard from the firm road. Could that house really belong to him?
We passed a tree with a proud pigeon sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy below; undisturbed by the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather, he let us pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves. The mist had thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees began to look strange, as though they had lost one another.
Near the part of the fence where the scuffle took place were afterwards found marks of a horse's hoofs, and traces of blood. The miserable young man contrived to get clear away: the rest of the gang were all captured by the police. The day after this adventure old Mr Tankardew and John Randolph paid a visit together to "The Shrubbery."
Just above his secret resting-place, where the great woods deepen, and the gloomy shadows lie darkly all through the long afternoons, a small party of hideously painted savages skulked silently in ambush. Suddenly to their strained ears was borne the sound of horses' hoofs; and then, all at once, a woman's voice rang out in a single shrill, startled cry.
"Yes," she gasped, "the Special Messenger noncombatant!" "The Special Messenger? You? Good God!" A dull tattoo of hoofs along the halted column, nearer, nearer, clattering toward them from the front, and: "Good-by!" she sobbed; "they're coming for me! Oh do you love me? Do you? Life was so dark and dreadful without you! I I never forgot never, never!
Then while the coulter sheared its guiding line, and the trampling of hoofs mingled with the soft curl of clods, they seemed by some trick of memory to hammer out words I had last heard far away in the little weathered church under Starcross Moor, "And preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth so as in due time we may enjoy them."
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