Poor beast! how wickedly she must have been
riding him, in her utter absorption in her thoughts. He was wet, not
alone with rain, but with sweat. He snorted out hot, smoking breaths.
She spoke to him, and he moved forward at her command. He was trembling
too. Not more than two hundred yards, and she turned him into the lane.
But it was wet and slippery, and strewn with stones. His trembling and
her uncertain hold on the bridle combined to produce disaster. He set
his foot upon a stone which slid beneath it, he stumbled, and she could
not help him to recover, so he fell, and only by Heaven's mercy not
upon her, with his crushing, big-boned weight, and she was able to drag
herself free of him before he began to kick, in his humiliated efforts
to rise. But he could not rise, because he was hurt--and when she,
herself, got up, she staggered, and caught at the broken gate, because
in her wrenching leap for safety she had twisted her ankle, and for a
moment was in cruel pain.
When she recovered from her shock sufficiently to be able to look at the
cottage, she saw that it was more of a ruin than it had seemed, even
at a short distance. Its door hung open on broken hinges, no smoke rose
from the chimney, because there was no one within its walls to light
a fire.
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