nnie front to front; and she, being as quick as thought, lowered her
nose to sniff at it. It might be a message from her master; for it made
a mournful noise. But luckily for Winnie's life, a rise of wet ground
took the ball, even under her very nose; and there it cut a splashy
groove, missing her off hindfoot by an inch, and scattering black mud
over her. It frightened me much more than Winnie; of that I am quite
certain: because though I am firm enough, when it comes to a real
tussle, and the heart of a fellow warms up and tells him that he must go
through with it; yet I never did approve of making a cold pie of death.

Therefore, with those reckless cannons, brazen-mouthed, and bellowing,
two furlongs off, or it might be more (and the more the merrier), I
would have given that year's hay-crop for a bit of a hill, or a thicket
of oaks, or almost even a badger's earth. People will call me a coward
for this (especially when I had made up my mind, that life was not worth
having without any sign of Lorna); nevertheless, I cannot help it: those
were my feelings; and I set them down, because they made a mark on me.
At Glen Doone I had fought, even against cannon, with some spirit and
fury: but now I saw nothing to fight about; but rather in every poor
doubled corpse, a good reason for not fighting. So, in cold blood riding
on, and yet ashamed that a man should shrink where a horse went bravely,
I cast a bitter blame upon the reckless ways of Winnie.

Nearly all were scattered now. Of the noble countrymen (armed with
scythe or pickaxe, blacksmith's hammer, or fold-pitcher), who had stood
their ground for hours against blazing musketry (from men whom they
could not get at, by reason of the water-dyke), and then against the
deadly cannon, dragged by the Bishop's horses to slaughter his own
sheep; of these sturdy Englishmen, noble in their want of sense, scarce
one out of four remained for the cowards to shoot down. "Cross the
rhaine," they shouted out, "cross the rhaine, and coom within rache:"
but the other mongrel Britons, with a mongrel at their head, found it
pleasanter to shoot men who could not shoot in answer, than to meet the
chance of mischief from strong arms, and stronger hearts.

The last scene of this piteous play was acting, just as I rode up. Broad
daylight, and upstanding sun, winnowing fog from the eastern hills,
and spreading the moors with freshness; all along the dykes they shone,
glistened on the willow-t