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Updated: June 7, 2025
Suddenly there breaks upon us the harsh, metallic clang of well-shod horse-hoofs upon the stony roadway the cracking of a postilion's whip the clatter of an approaching carriage. It proves to be a carriage with a pair of horses. Pierre, who has been basking idly under the window, jumps to his feet, shouting, "It is Monsieur the Bishop!"
Once or twice he had fancied he heard the tramp of horse-hoofs on the far-off trail, and now it seemed to approach nearer, mingled with the sound of voices. Gideon raised his head and looked through the doorway of the loft.
Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.
"Fear naething for me, Cuddie," said the old dame, transported to ecstasy by the success of her party; "fear naething for me! I will stand, like Deborah, on the tap o' the cairn, and tak up my sang o' reproach against these men of Harosheth of the Gentiles, whose horse-hoofs are broken by their prancing."
They could spare their hundred thousand soldiers twice or thrice over, and not miss them; their masses filled the bottoms of the ravines and hollow ways, impeding the traveller as he rode forward on his journey, and trampled by thousands under his horse-hoofs. In vain was all this overthrow and waste by the road-side; in vain their loss in river, pool, and watercourse.
No doubt the classic ear of Goffe, the Oxford Master of Arts, was singularly refreshed with the delightful prosody, which the retiring horse-hoofs still drummed on the dusty plain; but they seem to have been so seriously alarmed by their escape, that if they ever smiled again, they certainly had little cause for their good-humour; for that very day they took to the woods, and entered upon a long and wretched life of perpetual apprehension, from which death, in any shape, would have been, to better men, a comfortable relief.
She turned away lingering, not without tears on her face, laid the sheaf of arrows at the foot of the tree, and hastened off through the orchard. I was going to say something, when Will Green held up his hand as who would bid us hearken. The noise of the horse-hoofs, after growing nearer and nearer, had ceased suddenly, and a confused murmur of voices had taken the place of it.
Heaven's highway rang with the trampling of their horse-hoofs, and the dust went up from its jewelled pavement as spray from the bottom of a cataract. Anon, he came, the chieftain of that on-spurring host! his banner blazed upon the sky; his golden crest was seen beneath, nodding with its ruddy plumes; over the south-eastern hills he arose in radiant armour.
By God, he's hit you!" "Of c-course, Dig he never m-misses neither do I w-watch now, ah! hold me up, Dig so! Now, stand away!" But even as Barrymaine, livid of brow and with teeth hard clenched, steadied himself for the shot, loud and clear upon the night came the thudding of swift-galloping horse-hoofs.
He harangues his patriot band, and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot in their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old-country-staves: a storm might occur, with elemental crash: the succeeding silence of nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight; their war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in their camp and in their cups; the hurlyburly of the fight a hail-stone chorus of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and clattering horse-hoofs; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat between Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor and bass; the routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the conquerors pressing on in steady overwhelming concord; how are the mighty fallen and praise to the God of battles!
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