After an hour’s run they returned to the valley, and then Martin, without being compelled to do so, rolled about on the grass, and went after the young foals when they came out to challenge one another to a game.  He tried to do as they did, prancing and throwing up his heels and snorting, but when they ran from him they soon left him hopelessly behind.  Meanwhile the wild man kept watch over him, feeding him with mare’s milk, and inviting him from time to time to smell and taste the tender grass.  Best of all was, when they went for another run in the evening, and when Martin was no longer held with a tight grip against the man’s side, but was taught or allowed to hold on, clinging with his legs to the man’s body and clasping him round the neck with his arms, his fingers tightly holding on to the great shaggy beard.

Three days passed in this way, and if his time had been much longer with the wild horses he would have become one of the troop, and would perhaps have eaten grass too, and forgotten his human speech, or that he was a little boy born to a very different kind of life.  But it was not to be, and in the end he was separated from the troop by accident.

At the end of the third day, when the sun was setting, and all the horses were scattered about in the valley, quietly grazing, something disturbed them.  It might have been a sight or sound of some feared object, or perhaps the wind had brought the smell of their enemies and hunters from a great distance to their nostrils.  Suddenly they were all in a wild commotion, galloping from all sides toward their leader, and he, picking Martin up, was quickly on a horse, and off they went full speed, but not towards the plain where they were accustomed to go for their runs.  Now they fled in the opposite direction down to the river:  into it they went, into that wide, deep, dangerous current, leaping from the bank, each horse, as he fell into the water with a tremendous splash, disappearing from sight; but in another moment the head and upper part of the neck was seen to rise above the surface, until the whole lot were in, and appeared to Martin like a troop of horses’ heads swimming without bodies over the river.  He, clinging to the neck and beard of the wild man, had the upper half of his body out of the cold, rushing water, and in this way they all got safely across and up the opposite bank.  No sooner were they out, than, without even pausing to shake the water from their skins, they set off at full speed across the valley towards the distant hills.  Now on this side, at a distance of a mile or so from the river, there were vast reed-beds standing on low land, dried to a hard crust by the summer heat, and right into the reeds the horses rushed and struggled to force their way through.  The reeds were dead and dry, so tall that they rose high above the horses’ heads, and growing so close together that it was hard to struggle through them.  Then when they were in the midst of this difficult place, the dry crust that