‘You can saddle him, then. You know my saddle?’
‘Yes, sir. There’s the label hangs over it.’
Churchill went into the harness-room, and while the man was bringing out Tarpan, put on a pair of hunting spurs, an unnecessary proceeding, it would seem, with such a horse as Tarpan, which was more prone to need a heavy hand on the curb than the stimulus of the spur. The bay came out of his loose box looking slightly mischievous, ears vibrating, head restless, and a disposition to take objection to the pavement of the yard, made manifest by his legs. The Squire paid no attention to these small indications of temper, but swung himself into the saddle and rode out of the yard, after divers attempts on Tarpan’s side to back into one of the coachhouses, or do himself a mischief against the pump.
‘I never seed such a beast for trying to spile his money value,’ mused the underling when horse and rider had vanished from his ken. ‘He seems as if he’d take a spiteful pleasure in laming his-self, or taking the bark off to the tune of a pony.’
Away over the broad free expanse of grey moorland rode Churchill Penwyn. There had been plenty of rain of late, and the soft turf was soft and springy. The horse’s rapture burst forth in a series of joyful snorts as he felt the fresh breeze from the broad salt sea and stretched his strong limbs to a thundering gallop.
Past the trees that he had planted, far away from the roads that he had made, went the Squire of Penwyn, up to the open moorland above the sea the wide grey waters facing him with their fringe of surf, the darkening evening sky above him, and just one narrow line of palest saffron yonder where the sun had gone down.
Even at that wild pace, earth and sea flying past him like the shadows of a magic lantern, Churchill Penwyn had time for thought.
He surveyed his life, and wondered what he might have made of it had he been wiser. Yes, for the crime by which he had leaped at once into possession of his heart’s desires seemed to him now an act of folly; like one of those moves at chess which, lightly considered, point the way to speedy triumph, and whereby the rash player wrecks his game.
He had won wife, fortune, position; and lo! in little more than two years, the knowledge of his crime had slain that idolized wife, and an undreamed-of claimant had arisen to dispute his fortune.
The things he had grasped at were shadows, and like shadows had departed.