All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.
She was earning a living—she was saving Lily from the mill and her father from temptation.
Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed, frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.
Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.
Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the mill, and a short cut through a meadow of The Gaffs would soon take her there.
She failed to see a warning on the fence which said: Keep out—Danger.
Through the bars she went, intent only on soon reaching the mill beyond and glorying in the strong rich smell of autumn in leaf and grass and air.
“What a beautiful horse that is in the pasture,” she thought, and then her attention went to a meadow lark flushed and exultant. She heard shouts, and now—why was Jim, the stable boy, running toward her so fast, carrying a pitchfork in his hands and shouting: “Whoa—there, Antar—Antar,—you, sir!”
And the horse! One look was enough. With ears laid back, and mouth wide open, with eyes blazing with the fire of fury he was plunging straight at her.
Helpless, she turned in sickening doubt, to feel that her limbs were limp in the agony of fear. She heard the thunder of the man-eating stallion's hoofs just behind her and she butted blindly, as she sank down, into some one who held bravely her hand as she fell, and the next instant she heard a thundering report and smelt a foul blast of gunpowder. She looked up in time to see the great horse pitch back on his haunches, rear, quiver a moment and strike desperately at the air with his front feet and fall almost upon her.