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But it was not in the King to yield to a little; he flung his head up, champing angrily at the bit, then walked down to the starting-post with his old calm, collected grace; and Cecil, looking at the glossy bow of the neck, and feeling the width of the magnificent ribs beneath him, stooped from his saddle a second as he rode out of the inclosure and bent to the Seraph. "Look at him, Rock!
"Won't you wish me luck, Miss Bloxam?" said Lionel, quietly, as the bugle summoned the competitors in the match to the starting-post. "Certainly, with all my heart," rejoined Blanche. "All our sympathies are of course with you. But do you think you can win?" "I really don't know. If it was only a mile, Montague would find me troublesome to get rid of; but this is hardly far enough for me."
Hence the insensible and almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth, and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh. Pitiable error! Reflection first leads us to gloom, but its next stage is to brightness. The Laughing Philosopher had reached the goal of Wisdom; Heraclitus whimpered at the starting-post.
His voice was, however, lost, or rather unheeded, in the midst of the shrieks, shouts, and yells that were, by this time, bursting from fifty mouths on every side of him. The guards still maintained their posts at the side of the captives, but it was with that sort of difficulty with which steeds are restrained at the starting-post, when expecting the signal to commence the trial of speed.
George glanced round to see that no acquaintances were near, and joined in this promenade. The Ambler turned his black, wild eye, crescented with white, threw up his head, and gazed far into the distance. 'If one could only make him understand! thought George. When his horse left the paddock for the starting-post George went back to the stand.
The mudjee monedo, seeing the necessity of more speed, now passed Monedowa in the shape of a deer. They were now far around the circle of the lake, and fast closing in upon the starting-post, when Monedowa, putting on his red and blue plumage, glided along the air and alighted upon the track far in advance.
"I am a swift skater," answered Thialfe. "Try him," said the King. And Thialfe was led to a plain of ice, as smooth as glass, and one named Hugr was set to run against him. But though Thialfe was the swiftest skater ever known in the world, yet Hugr glided past him so fleetly that he had returned to the starting-post before Thialfe had done more than a quarter of the distance.
So he rode to the starting-post, happy in himself and modestly confident the very model of what a well-to-do English countryman should wish to be a Rugby and Balliol man, above suspicion for honesty, a busy man of affairs, a consummate horseman, a bad speaker, and a true-hearted Liberal, holding an equally unblemished record for courage in convictions and at fences.
The starting-post was about three miles from the Castle; but, long before the hour, the surrounding hills were covered with people; squire and farmer; with no lack of their wives and daughters; many a hind in his smock-frock, and many an 'operative' from the neighbouring factories. The 'gentlemen riders' gradually arrived.
The distance along the valley was to be two miles out, and home again; the starting-post being also the winning-post, and the flags, which were placed on every fence which the horses were to pass, were to be passed on the left hand of the rider both going and coming; so that although the horses had to leap the same fences forward and backward, they could not come over the same place twice.
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