His mind was perfectly clear. It seemed as if his desperate condition had given him a large quiet leisure for introspection. As objects on the road shot by him he noted each one; and, with a curious double consciousness, began watching the flow of his own thoughts. He even wondered at the calmness and lucidity of his mind, and asked himself the reason. "Perhaps it is the imminence of death," he reflected; "but death, now that it has come so near, has no terrors. That is John Hawksbury's cottage. I wonder if his son has returned from India. I must be careful on the bridge. God grant that we don't meet a cart!" They were nearing a village, and Scattergood heard the pealing of bells mingled with the roar of the wind in his ear. As they shot past the church he saw a wedding-party standing aghast in the churchyard. He saw the bride, leaning on the bridegroom's arm. The party had just emerged from the porch, and the look of terror on the bride's face was clearly visible to Scattergood. "Poor girl," he reflected; "she'll take this for a bad omen." He saw men running and heard their shouts. At the end of the village street a brave lad stood with arms outstretched. "A hero," thought Scattergood; "he will surely be rewarded in the resurrection of the just." They were out of the village in a flash. A furlong beyond it the road turned sharply at right angles. "She will jump the hedge at that point," thought Scattergood; "I must be ready." Ethelberta swung round the bend with hardly a check; but the rider, ready for that also, still kept his seat. A moment later she leapt over some obstacle in the road which Scattergood, short-sighted as he was, could not see. His glasses were gone, and the cold wind beating in his eyes had half blinded him. He was losing the sense of his whereabouts, and there were moments when he saw himself as a mere inanimate object held in the grip of the brute force that was pulsing beneath him. "And yet," he reflected, "I am not utterly abandoned after all. I know what is happening; the leaf on the torrent knows nothing. A point for a lecture on Necessity and Freedom--all the difference between the two involved in that single fact! To have one's wits about him and be unafraid--what a power is that to break the ruling of Fate! Nothing save a shock can unhorse me. It is a match between Pure Reason in Scattergood and madness in Ethelberta. Would that it had been so in the old days! But, please God, I shall beat her this time. Ha! She's giving in!" They were breasting the two-mile hill on this side Charlton Towers, and with the rise in the gradient came a slackening of the pace. Ethelberta, with head down, still held the bit between her teeth; but the first rush of her speed was exhausted. Scattergood felt the difference instantly, and marked its gradual increase, promising himself that he would have her in hand before they reached the level ground on the top of the hill. Some distance ahead of him he could