horses it was not for me to guess.  The mare knew, however, for as the slope grew easier, she whinnied and slackened her pace to give them time to come up.  This also gave me a chance to shift my seat a bit, for the edges of the kegs were nipping my calves cruelly.  The beach below us was like the wicked place in a priest’s sermon—­black as pitch and full of cursing—­and by this time all alive with lanterns; but they showed us nothing.  There was no more firing, though, and I saw no lights out at sea, so I hoped my father had managed to push off and make for the lugger.

We were now on a grassy down at the head of the cliff, and my mare, after starting again at a canter which rattled me abominably, passed into an easy gallop.  I declare that except for my fears—­and now, as the chill of the wind bit me, I began to be horribly afraid—­it was like swinging in a hammock to the pitch of a weatherly ship.  I was not in dread of falling, either; for her heels fell so lightly on the turf that they persuaded all fear of broken bones out of the thought of falling; but I was in desperate dread of those thundering tub-carriers just behind, who seemed to come down like a black racing wave right on top of us, and to miss us again and again by a foot or less.  The weight of them on this wide, empty down—­that was the nightmare we seemed to be running from.

We passed through an open gate, then another; then out upon hard road for half-a-mile or so (but I can tell you nothing of the actual distance or the pace), and then through a third gate.  All the gates stood open; had been left so on purpose, of course; and the grey granite side-posts were my only mile-stones throughout the journey.  Every mortal thing was strange as mortal thing could be.  Here I was, in a foreign land I had never seen in my life, and could not see now; on horseback for the first time in my life; and going the dickens knew whither, at the dickens knew what pace; in much certain and more possible danger; alone, and without speech to explain myself when—­as I supposed must happen sooner or later—­my runaway fate should shoot me among human folk.  And overhead—­ this seemed the oddest thing of all—­shone the very same stars that were used to look in at my bedroom window over Roscoff quay.  My mother had told me once that these were millions of miles away, and that people lived in them; and it came into my head as a monstrous queer thing that these people should be keeping me in view, and my own folk so far away and lost to me.

But the stars, too, began to grow faint; and little by little the fields and country took shape around us—­plough, and grass, and plough again; then hard road, and a steep dip into a valley where branches met over the lane and scratched the back of my head as I ducked it; then a moorland rising straight in front, and rounded hills with the daylight on them.  And as I saw this, we were dashing over a granite bridge and through a whitewashed street, our hoofs drumming the villagers up from their beds.  Faces looked out of windows and were gone, like scraps of a dream.  But just beyond the village we passed an old labourer trudging to his work, and he jumped into the hedge and grinned as we went by.