He listened for a moment or two, and then said, "Yes, it sounds like a horse gallopin'...." They listened again, and then she proceeded. "You'd near think it was runnin' away," she said. The sound of hooves rapidly beating the ground and the noise of quickly-revolving wheels came nearer. "It _is_ runnin' away," she said, getting up from the bank and moving into the middle of the road where she stood looking in the direction from which the sound came. "Don't stand in the road," Henry shouted to her. "You might get hurt." She did not move nor did she appear to hear what he was saying. He had a strange sensation of shrinking, a desire not to be there, but he subdued it and went to join her in the middle of the road. "Here it is," she said, turning to him and pointing to where the road made a sudden swerve. He looked and saw a galloping horse, head down, coming rapidly towards them. There was a light cart behind it, bumping and swaying so that it seemed likely to be overturned, but there was no driver. It was still some way off, and he had time to think that he ought to stop the frightened animal. If it were allowed to go on, it might kill some one in the village. There would be children playing about in the street.... "I'll stop it," he said to himself, and half-consciously he buttoned his coat. He tried to remember just what he ought to do. William Henry Matier had told, him not to stand right in front of a runaway horse, but to move to the side so that he could run with it. He would do that, and then he would spring at its head and haul the reins so tightly that the bit would slip back into the horse's mouth.... He moved from the middle of the road, and was conscious that Sheila had moved, too. His breath was coming quickly, and he felt again that sense of shrinking, that curious desire to run away. He saw a wheel of the cart lurch up as it passed over a stone in the road, and instantly panic seized him. "My God," he thought, "if that had been me!... He saw himself flung to the ground by the maddened horse and the wheel passing over his body, crunching his flesh and bones. He had the sensation of blood gushing from his mouth, and for a moment or two he felt as if he had actually suffered the physical shock of being broken beneath the cart wheel.... "I can't!" he muttered, and then he turned and ran swiftly to the side of the road and climbed on to the bank, struggling to break through the thorn hedge at the top of it. His hands were torn and bleeding and once he slipped and fell forward and his face was scratched by the thorns.... 7