It was after some such experiences as these that Eustace had left the fishermen and striven to win the friendship of the rustics, but had been met by the placid stolidity and uncomprehending ignorance which seemed to form almost as absolute a barrier between them as the lack of reason and speech in brute beasts. Indeed, they and their sheep and oxen seemed to understand each other better than he and the labouring men upon the land. It was discouraging and uphill work from first to last; and the one man whom he really desired to gain, and felt certain possessed the stamp of mind and the intelligence he longed to meet, avoided him with a persistence which led him to the conclusion at last that Tresithny had warned his grandson to have no dealings with the gentleman from the castle. But accident led at last to a meeting, and from that meeting dated the train of circumstances which led to a strange but lasting friendship between the two men whose walks in life lay so widely apart. Eustace was out upon the downs riding a mettlesome young horse from the Duke’s stable. He was a fearless horseman, but not an experienced one. During the years he had spent in travel and in Germany, horse exercise had not come much in his way, save as a means of locomotion, and then the animals ridden had not been of a fiery kind. He had a firm seat and a steady hand, but he was by no means familiar with the tricks of a flighty young mare, when the spring of the year sets the hot blood of all young things stirring joyously in their veins, and incites them to all sorts of vagaries and extravagant gambols. Eustace was possessed with the master-mind that must always gain the upper hand of any creature under his control; and perhaps he was a thought too stern in his desire after discipline; for in lieu of indulging the wild spirits of his steed with a healthy gallop over the short elastic turf, which might soon have reduced her to quietness and submission, he held her with a strong firm hand, resolved that he and he alone would decide the time when her limbs should be allowed to stretch themselves as they longed to do;--with the effect that the beautiful, high-spirited creature, fretted beyond the limits of endurance, commenced to buck-jump with such alarming persistence and velocity, that Eustace was at last unseated, and measured his length ignominiously upon the short turf, whilst his horse, tossing her dainty head with a gesture of visible triumph, set off at a mad gallop straight across the green down, which she hardly seemed to touch with her feet.