All at once, the fumes of wine passed from his brain, and left him sober and horrified, the heart sinking like lead in his breast.
It flashed over his mind that Berry’s wild leap for liberty, made just as he turned the vehicle around, could hardly fail to result in her instant death on the rough and rocky road.
A loud groan escaped his blanched lips, and he drew the frightened horse swiftly back upon its haunches that he might spring out to go to her assistance.
But the spirited animal, frightened out of all reason by Berry’s leap, and his master’s wild cry of alarm, now spurned control, and darted forward at headlong speed, dragging the lines from Bonair’s hands, so that the light trap rocked so wildly from side to side he could barely keep his seat by clinging to the edges.
He felt himself rushing to instant death, and in his horror over Berry’s fate, he did not greatly care, though the instinct of self-preservation made him shout aloud while he clung desperately to the swaying vehicle that, after a mile or so of this tremendous rush, became shattered into pieces, mercifully enough for him, because he suddenly fell through the wreck to the ground, miraculously unharmed. The maddened horse still rushed forward with furious leaps, trying to rid himself of the fettering shafts that clung and hindered his flight.
He lay prostrate in the dust several moments, bruised, battered, and shaken, but, luckily, with no bones broken, so that presently he stood upright again, the only living thing in sight upon the lonesome road.
The moon and stars shone down upon him coldly, and the night winds seemed to reproach him in subtle whispers.
“Where is she, the girl who trusted you, whose tender faith you shattered with your reckless words?” it seemed to say.
With a groan he looked backward, then retraced his steps with difficulty, he was so shaken up from the shock and the fall.
But he knew that he must find her, dead or alive, must restore her to her home, for which she had pleaded pitifully.