This seemed to amuse the captain, and he talked and chuckled to himself, sang snatches of songs, and woke the echoes of the little village street at the top of the next hill, where the tall, square church tower stood up wind-swept and dreary to show mariners the way to Dartmouth harbour.
Then came a long ride along a very shelf of a road, where it seemed as if a false step on the part of his horse would send both rolling down the declivity to the edge of the sheer rocks, where they would fall headlong to the fine shingle below.
But drunken men seem favourites with their horses, for when Captain Armstrong lurched to starboard his nag gave a hitch to keep him in the saddle, and when he gave another lurch to larboard the horse was ready for him again—all of which amused the captain more and more, and he chuckled aloud, and sang, and swore at his cousin for a cold, fishy, sneaking hound.
“He’d like to see me die, and get the estate,” he said; “but I’ll live to a hundred, and leave half a score of boys to inherit, and he sha’n’t get a groat, a miserable, sanctified dog-fish. Steady, mare, steady! Bah, how thirsty I am! Wish I’d had another drop.”
He kicked his horse’s ribs, and the docile creature broke into a gentle amble, but only to be checked sharply.
“Wo-ho, mare!” cried the captain, shaking his head, for he was dizzy now, and the dimly-seen trees sailed slowly round. “Wind’s changing,” he said; “steady, old lass! Walk.”
The mare walked, and the captain grew more confused in his intellect; while the night became darker, soft clouds rolling slowly over the star-spangled sky.
The ride was certainly not sobering James Armstrong, and he knew it, for he suddenly burst into a chuckling laugh.
“I know what she’ll say,” he said. “Ladyship will ride the high horse. Let her. I can ride the high horse, too—steady, mare! What’s the matter with you?”
He had been descending into a narrow pass where the road had been cut down in the hill side, leaving a high, well-wooded bank on either hand, and here it was far more dark than out in the open, and the mare, after walking steadily on for some distance with her well-shod hoofs clinking upon the loose stones, suddenly shied, stopped short, and snorted.