Wulfrey Dale, the Doctor, on his big bay, cleared hedge and road with feet to spare, flung himself off as soon as he could pull up, and ran back to help.
It was as bad as it could be. Carew lay in the road, smothered in mud and obviously damaged. His horse had just rolled off him, and the Doctor saw at a glance that one of its forelegs was broken. It was kicking out wildly with its heels, flailing clods out of the steep bank and floundering in vain attempts to rise.
Carew, on one elbow, was cursing it with every oath he could lay tongue to, and with the pointed bone handle of his crop in the other hand was hammering the poor brute's head to pulp.
"Stop it, Carew!" shouted Wulfrey, sickened at the sight, as he jumped down the bank. "Damn it, man, it wasn't her fault!"
"—— her! She's broken my back."
"You shouldn't have tried it. I told you you were too heavy for her. Stop it, I say!" and he wrenched the crop, all dripping with hair and blood, out of the other's hand, and with difficulty bit off the hot words that surged in his throat. For the man was broken and hardly responsible.
It was a hard age and given to forceful language. But never in any age are there lacking some to whom brutality to the dumb beast appeals as keenly as ill-treatment of their fellows.
Wulfrey Dale was of these, and a great lover of horses besides, and Carew's maltreatment of his broken beast cut him to the quick.
With another quick look at the useless leg, and a bitter word which he could not keep in, at the horror of the mauled head, he drew from his pocket a long knife, which had seen service on many a field, opened it, pressed down the blinded tumbling head with one hand, and with the other deftly inserted the blade at the base of the skull behind the ears and drove it home with all his force, severing the spinal cord.
"Poor old girl!" he said, as, with a quick sigh of relief, the great black body lay still.