"I cannot say at present, Sir Massingberd," returned my tutor with deliberation. "He is a beauty to look at; and if he has no vice, is a bargain at five-and-thirty pounds."
"Vice! Why should he have vice, man? A child might ride him for that matter. I got him with the best of characters. But you'll never teach those lads to ride if you are always at their stirrup-leather, like this. Let them ride alone, and race together. Don't treat them like a brace of mollycoddles. Why, at their age, I could have backed any horse in Christendom without a saddle. I wonder you don't give Miss Marmaduke a leading-rein."
The colour, which had faded from the lad's cheeks, returned to them again at this sneer; but Mr. Long only remarked: "If you had had a leading-rein yourself, Sir Massingberd, at seventeen, it would have been a great deal better for you," and rode on without the least consciousness, as I believe, of having made any such observation.
When we had advanced about a mile, and had left the village quite behind us, my tutor expressed a wish to change horses with Marmaduke.
"I want to try his paces," said he; and certainly, if he had been a horse-breaker by profession, he could not have taken more pains with the animal. He trotted, he cantered, he galloped; he took him into a field, and over some fences; he forced him by a wind-mill in full work; and, in short, he left no means untried to test his temper. In the end, he expressed himself highly satisfied. "Really," said he, "Sir Massingberd has got you a first-rate steed, with plenty of courage, yet without vice; he makes me quite dissatisfied with my poor old mare."
The next day, and the next, we rode again without my tutor; and on the fourth day it was agreed that we should take an expedition as far as Crittenden, some ten miles away, where Mr. Long wished us to do some commissions for him. By this time, Marmaduke was quite accustomed to his recent acquisition; enjoyed the exercise greatly; and since Sir Massingberd was much engaged with his guests, passed altogether more agreeable days. On the afternoon in question, the Hall party were out shooting, and had taken with them all the stable domestics except a raw lad who scarcely knew how to saddle a horse.
"I cannot think what is the matter this afternoon with 'Panther'" (we so called his skittish animal), exclaimed Marmaduke, as he rode up to the Rectory door. "I could scarcely get him to start from the yard, and he came here mostly upon his hind-legs. Is there anything wrong with his girths, think you? Ned did not know where to lay his hands on anything, and my uncle has taken William with him to 'mark.'"
"Nay," said I, "I see nothing the matter. We will soon take off his superfluous energy over Crittenden Common."
Long, however, before we reached that spot, we had had galloping enough and to spare. Twice had Panther fairly taken the bit between his teeth (as the romance-writers term it, and Heaven forbid that a mere sportsman should correct them), and sped along the hard high-road at racing pace; and twice had Marmaduke, by patience and hard pulling, recovered the mastery, albeit with split gloves and blistered hands. It was not enjoyment to ride in this fashion, of course, and had it not been for the commissions which had been entrusted to us, it is probable that we should have returned home. It puzzled us beyond measure to account for the change of conduct in the bay. The difference was as decided as that between a high-spirited child who requires, as we say, "careful treatment," and a vicious dwarf: heretofore he had been frisky, now he was positively fiendish. He shied and started, not only at every object on the roadside, but before he arrived at them. At the end of the high table-land which is called Crittenden Common, and descends into the quiet little market-town of the same name, there really was something to shy at. A gipsy encampment, with fire and caldron, and tethered donkey, which had been concealed in a hollow, came suddenly into view as we cantered by; an old crone, with a yellow handkerchief in lieu of a bonnet, and shading her beady eyes with her hand, watched with malicious enjoyment the struggle between man and horse which her own appearance had gone far to excite. In a very few moments, Marmaduke's already overtaxed muscles gave way, and the bay, maddened with resistance, and released from all control, rushed at headlong speed down the steep chalk-road that led by many a turn and zigzag into Crittenden. It was frightful to watch from the summit of this tamed precipice—this cliff compelled into a road—the descent of that doomed pair. No mule could be surer footed than was Panther, but the laws of gravitation had nevertheless to be obeyed. At the second turning, the bay, after one vain effort to follow the winding of the road, pitched, head first, down the grassy wall which everywhere separated the zigzags from one another; over and over rolled horse and rider to the hard road below, and there lay, their horrible and abnormal movements exchanged for a stony quiet. I jumped off my horse, and ran down the two steep slopes, which at another time I should have descended hand over hand. Yet on my way I had time to think with what sorrow this news would be received at Fairburn Rectory, with what joy at the Hall! Marmaduke's hand still held the rein, which I disentangled from it with feverish haste, lest that four-footed fiend, which snorted yet through its fiery nostrils, and glared defiance from its glazing eyes, should arise and drag the dear lad's corpse among the cruel stones. After what I had seen of his fall, I had scarcely a hope that he was alive. There was blood at his mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere upon the white and dazzling road. "Marmaduke, Marmaduke," cried I, "speak, speak, if it be but a single word! Great Heaven, he is dead!"
"Dead! no, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "He'll live to do a power of mischief yet to woman and man. The devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age."