The rider, already clear of his saddle, and imbedded over his boots in the green yielding slime, did his best to aid and encourage his horse by word and gesture, but the bog became only deeper and softer with every struggle, while to turn back seemed as difficult, and almost as hazardous as to charge through. But that aid was near, a fossil man and horse, in perfect preservation, might have been found centuries hence in a stratum below the surface, puzzling the geologists of the future as to how they got there. "Right hand, I tell'ee! push 'un to the right, man!" exclaimed Rube, springing eagerly from his lurking-place. "This patch o' flag be the only sound spot fur a landyard's round--Steady, lad! Let 'un catch wind theer a bit, and he'll come through." Presence of mind, that essential quality of a horseman, was never wanting to John Garnet. Guiding Katerfelto to the little knot of rushes indicated, which, true to their nature, afforded foothold where they grew, he paused for a breathing-space, ere, patting his horse's neck with a word of endearment, he roused him to another effort, that, after a plunge or two, placed him in safety, with a bank of sound heather beneath his feet. The grey trembled all over, his eye rolled, his nostril dilated; but, with a prolonged snort and a shake, he recovered his composure, rubbing his handsome head against his master, as though to congratulate him on their joint escape. "We'll never go there again, my boy!" said the rider, whom this treacherous surface had so deceived, adding, as though he did well to be angry, "why it looks like the best bit of gallopin' ground in the whole coombe!" Red Rube grinned. To one born and bred on Exmoor, this was a jest that palled with no amount of repetition. These tempting islands of green sward, smooth and level as a lake, while affording, indeed, but little firmer support, seem designed by nature to lure a horseman from another country to his downfall. But was this a horseman from another country? The harbourer's keen grey eye had taken him in at a glance, just as it would have mastered the points, size, and weight of a warrantable deer in the brief second during which the creature bounded across a ride. From the lace on his hat to the spur on his soiled boot, Red Rube had reckoned up John Garnet, as it were, to the very counting of the buttons on his coat. From Katerfelto's taper muzzle, to the last hair in his tail, he had, in the same instant, so impressed the whole animal on his mind, that he could have sworn to its identity under any circumstances, at any future time. It struck him, even while man and horse were struggling in the bog, that they answered the description of that highwayman for whose capture so large a reward was offered in the hand-bills; and it was from no considerations of humanity or fair-play that the old man refrained from knocking the stranger on the head, when he had him at disadvantage, un-horsed and knee-deep in a slough.