The boy was in spirits; he cracked his whip, and stimulated the horses—fresh from the stable at Okehampton—to take the hill in style. The cask was whirling on. Then it reached the sweep in the road, and it went direct against the bank, danced light-heartedly up it, reeled back, swung itself round and shot straight down the road at the horses. In another moment it was on them, leaping at them like a tiger at the throat of his prey. What followed was so sudden, and the light was so imperfect, that Joyce could not quite make out what she saw. She heard a loud cry from the post-boy, who was thrown. Whether one of the horses went down and floundered to his feet again she was not sure; she believed it was so. Next moment the chaise was off the road, the two frightened animals tearing away with it over the common. Forgetful of her father in the excitement of the spectacle and in dread of the final catastrophe, Joyce ran after the carriage, which she saw bounding over heaps of peat that had been cut and laid to dry, lurching into hollows, jolting over tufts of gorse, and jarring against stones. Then she saw against the light of the horizon the figure of a man emerging from the window of the chaise, trying to open the door. Almost simultaneously the wheel of the carriage struck a huge block of granite, and in an instant the chaise was thrown on one side, the horses were kicking furiously, and the whole converted into a wreck of living beasts and struggling men and splintered fragments of carriage. ’Ho, heigh! stay them osses,’ yelled the post-boy, who had picked himself up and was running over the down. ’Sit on their necks; kip ’em down.’ Joyce ran also, and reached the spot soon after him. The postillion went straight at the horses, regardless of everything else, and cut their traces; whereupon they ran off, and he careered in full pursuit after them. ’Leave the beasts alone, boy,’ shouted a young man who had disengaged himself from the shattered carriage, and was helping out a young lady. ’Leave the beasts and come here.’ ’No, no, sir! The osses fust. Them’s my concern.’ And away went the boy. ’Here, girl,’ said the same young man to Joyce, as she came up; ’help me.’ He signed to her what to do, to raise a man who was lying motionless among the fragments of the carriage, to carry him a little distance, and lay him on the turf at full length. ’Stay by him whilst I go for the young lady.’ Joyce nodded. The young lady was seated on the rock that had upset the carriage. ’What frightened the horses?’ she asked. ’I do not know. Are you hurt?’ ’My foot is sprained. I cannot walk; but no bones are broken, of that I have satisfied myself. How goes my father?’ ’He is seriously injured.’ ’He did wrong to try and open the door. The carriage must have fallen over on him.’ ’Will you remain here whilst I go back to him? ’Certainly. The moss is soft as a cushion on this stone.’