y: a tall and obviously rotten bank clothed in briars,
with sharp stones along its top, a wide ditch in front of it, and a
disgustingly squashy take-off. Robert Trinder and the yellow horse held
their course undaunted: the rest of the field turned as one man, and
went for another way round--I, in my arrogance, followed the Master. The
yellow horse rose out of the soft ground with quiet, indescribable ease,
got a foothold on the side of the bank for his hind legs, and was away
into the next field without pause or mistake.

"Go round, Captain!" shouted Trinder; "it's a bad place!"

I hardly heard him; I was already putting the filly at it for the second
time. It took about three minutes for her to convince me that she and
Robert were right, and I was wrong, and by that time everybody was out
of sight, swallowed up in the mist. I tried round after the others, and
found their footmarks up a lane and across a field; a loose stone wall
confronted me, and I rode at it confidently; but the filly, soured by
our recent encounter, reared and would have none of it. I tried yet
another way round, and put her at a moderate and seemingly innocuous
bank, at which, with the contrariety of her sex, she rushed at a
thousand miles an hour. It looked somehow as if there might be a bit of
a drop, but the filly had got her beastly blood up, and I have been in a
better temper myself.

She rose to the jump when she was a good six feet from it. I knew she
would not put an iron on it, and I sat down for the drop. It came with a
vengeance. I had a glimpse of a thatched roof below me, and the next
instant we were on it or in it--I don't know which. It gave way with a
crash of rafters, the mare's forelegs went in, and I was shot over her
head, rolled over the edge of the roof, and fell on my face into a
manure heap. A yell and a pig burst simultaneously from the door, a calf
followed, and while I struggled up out of my oozy resting-place, I was
aware of the filly's wild face staring from the door of the shed in
which she so unexpectedly found herself. The broken reins trailed round
her legs, she was panting and shivering, and blood was trickling down
the white blaze on her nose. I got her out through the low doorway with
a little coaxing, and for a moment hardly dared to examine as to the
amount of damage done. She was covered with cobwebs and dirt out of the
roof, and, as I led her forward, she went lame on one foreleg; but
beyond this, and a goo