He heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling footsteps, and a reassuring voice. Then the little man appeared, a rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him. They approached each other without speaking, without a salutation. The little man was fatigued and shamed to the pitch of hopeless bitterness, and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master. The latter winced a little under his dependant's eye. “Well?” he said at last, with no pretence of authority.
“You left him?”
“My horse bolted.”
“I know. So did mine.”
He laughed at his master mirthlessly.
“I say my horse bolted,” said the man who once had a silver-studded bridle.
“Cowards both,” said the little man.
The other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his eye on his inferior.
“Don't call me a coward,” he said at length.
“You are a coward like myself.”